Loading...I was recently asked about a letter allegedly written by Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius, explaining why he crucified the Son of God. Outside of academic circles, this apocryphal letter is not well known. For that matter, it’s not well known even within academic circles. Most New Testament scholars don’t know it exists. But it does!
It is part of a group of texts that scholars (the ones who study these things) sometimes call the “Pilate Gospels.” There are a number of these writings — all of them legendary/apocryphal, of course. This particular letter is called the Anaphora Pilati (= The Report of Pilate) . I made a new translation of the text from the Greek, along with a brief explanation of what it is all about, in the the book I co-edited with my colleague Zlatko Pleše, The Other Gospels. Here is the introduction (edited a bit) and translation. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, check out the book itself!
(in my next post I’ll give Tiberius’s [alleged] reply!)
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Introduction
The “Report” of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius (the “Anaphora Pilati”) relates the events of Jesus’ trial, death, and resurrection from
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