PILATE. It is a kind of theological romance partly founded on the canonical gospels. The first part, to the end of ch. xv., is little more than a paraphrastic account of the trial and death of Christ, embellished with fabulous additions. From that to the end (ch. xxviii.) is a detailed account of Christ's desccnt into hell to liberate the spirits in prison, the history of which is said to have been obtained from Lenthius and Charinus, sons of Simeon, who were two of those ` saints who slept,' but were raised from the dead, and came into the holy city after the resurrection. This part of the histoiy is so far valuable, that it throws some light upon the ancient ideas current among Christians on this subject. It is therefore considered by Birch (Auctarium, Proleg. p. vi.) to be as valuable in this respect as the writings of the Fathers.
The subscription to this book states that it was found by the emperor Theodosius among the pub lic records in Jerusalem, in the hall of Pontius Pilate (A.D. 38o). We read in chap. xxvii. that Pilate himself ,wrote all the transactions from the relation of Nicodemus, who had taken them down in Hebrew ; and we are informed by Epiphanius that the Quartadecimans appealed to the Acts of Pilate in favour of their opinions as to the proper time of keeping Easter. It was written in these Acts that our Saviour suffered on the eighth Kal. of April, a circumstance which is stated in the subscription to the present Acts. It is uncertain, however, when this work was first called by the name of Nicodemus.
The two ancient apologists, Justin Martyr and Tertullian, both appeal in confirmation of our Saviour's miracles and crucifixion to the Acts of Pilate (Justin Martyr, Apology, pp. 76, 84_ ; Ter tullian, Apol. C. 21, or English transl. by Cheval lier, 1833). From this circumstance it has been generally held that such documents must have existed, although this fact has been called in ques tion by Tanaquil Faber and Le Clerc ( Jones, On the Canon, vol. p. 282, pt. iii. ch. 29). These appeals, however, in all probability first furnished the idea of the present pious fraud. Mr. Jones
supposes that this may have been done in order to silence those pagans who denied the existence of such Acts. The citations of those Fathers are all found in the present work. [Henke, De Rudd Pilati actr's causa .7. C. ad Tiber. missis, 1784-] We have already seen that a book entitled the Acts of Pilate existed among the Quartadecimans, a sect which originated at the close of the 3d cen tury. We are informed by Eusebius that the heathens forged certain Acts of Pilate full of all sorts of blasphemy against Christ, which they pro cured (A.D. 303) to be • dispersed through the empire ; and that it was enjoined on schoolmastets to put them into the hands of children, who were to learn them by heart instead of their lessons.
But the character of the Gospel of Nicodemus, which contains no blasphemy of the kind, forbids us to identify it with those Acts. This gospel pro bably had its origin in a later age From the cir cumstance of its containing the names of Lenthius and Charinus, Mr. Jones conceives it to have been the work of the celebrated fabricator of gospels, Lucius Charinus, who flourished in the beginning of tbe 4th century-. It is certainly not later than the 5th or 6th. During the persecution under Maximin,' says Gieseler (Eccles. Hist., vol. i. sec. 24, note), the heathens first hrought forward cer tain calumnious Acts of Pilate (Euseb. ix. 5), to which the Christians opposed others (Epiphan. Her. 79, sec. i), which were afterwards in various ways amended. One of these improved versions was called aftenvards the Gospel of Nicodemus.' Beausobre suspected that the latter part of the book (the descent into hell) was taken from the Gospel of Peter, a work of Lucius Charinus now lost. Thilo (Codex Apocryphus) thinks that it is the work of a Jewish Christian, but it is uncertain whether it was originally written in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. The only Greek writer who cites it is the author of the Synaxarion, and the first of the Latins who uses it is the celebrated Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. i. 20, 23).