Greco-Christian stream·Patrologia (Church Fathers)·Letter of Pontius Pilate (unknown date; late) — Apocrypha (Patristic-era)
Letter of Pontius Pilate to Tiberius
Another text of the Pilate-correspondence cycle. The procurator's account of the events of the Crucifixion and the resurrection-reports.
Source context
- Theme
- Apocryphal letter attributed to Pontius Pilate reporting on the trial and crucifixion of Christ to Roman imperial authority
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Patristic apocryphal literatureLate apocryphal texts circulating under Roman official names (Pilate-cycle documents, Acts of Pilate) functioned within early Christian communities as pseudo-historical attestations of the Passion, a genre distinct from canonical testimony and from Gnostic revelation-literature.
- Roman imperial epistolary traditionThe letter-to-emperor form mirrors genuine Roman administrative reportage (relatio, litterae), lending the apocryphal text a rhetorical authority that cross-tradition congruence with secular juridical writing deliberately invokes.
Letter of Pontius Pilate (unknown date; late)
Apocrypha (Patristic-era)
[Chapter 1 (¶1)] The Letter of Pontius Pilate, Which He Wrote to the Roman Emperor, Concerning Our Lord Jesus Christ.
[Chapter 1 (¶2)] Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Cæsar the emperor, greeting.
[Chapter 1 (¶3)] Upon Jesus Christ, whose case I had clearly set forth to you in my last, at length by the will of the people a bitter punishment has been inflicted, myself being in a sort unwilling and rather afraid. A man, by Hercules, so pious and strict, no age has ever had nor will have. But wonderful were the efforts of the people themselves, and the unanimity of all the scribes and chief men and elders, to crucify this ambassador of truth, notwithstanding that their own prophets, and after our manner the sibyls, warned them against it: and supernatural signs appeared while he was hanging, and, in the opinion of philosophers, threatened destruction to the whole world. His disciples are flourishing, in their work and the regulation of their lives not belying their master; yea, in his name most beneficent. Had I not been afraid of the rising of a sedition among the people, who were just on the point of breaking out, perhaps this man would still have been alive to us; although, urged more by fidelity to your dignity than induced by my own wishes, I did not according to my strength resist that innocent blood free from the whole charge brought against it, but unjustly, through the malignity of men, should be sold and suffer, yet, as the Scriptures signify, to their own destruction. Farewell. 28th March.
[Chapter 1 (¶4)] Source. Translated by Alexander Walker. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0810.htm.
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