Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete

CHAPTER XXII.

1 Pi­late goes to the tem­ple; calls to­geth­er the rulers, and scribes, and doc­tors. 2 Com­mands the gates to be shut; or­ders the book of the Scrip­tures; and caus­es the Jews to re­late what they re­al­ly knew con­cern­ing Christ. 14 They de­clare that they cru­ci­fied Christ in ig­no­rance, and that they now know him to be the Son of God, ac­cord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny of the Scrip­tures; which, af­ter they put him to death, were ex­am­ined.

AF­TER these things Pi­late went to the tem­ple of the Jews, and called to­geth­er all the rulers and scribes, and doc­tors of the law, and went with them in­to a chapel of the tem­ple.

2 And com­mand­ing that all the gates should be shut, said to them, I have heard that ye have a cer­tain large book in this tem­ple; I de­sire you, there­fore, that it may be brought be­fore me.

3 And when the great book, car­ried by four min­is­ters of the tem­ple, and adorned with gold and pre­cious stones, was brought, Pi­late said to them all, I ad­jure you by the God of your Fa­thers, who made and com­mand­ed this tem­ple to be built, that ye con­ceal not the truth from me.

4 Ye know all the things which are writ­ten in that book; tell me there­fore now, if ye in the Scrip­tures have found any thing of that Je­sus whom ye cru­ci­fied, and at what time of the world he, ought to have come: show it me.

5 Then hav­ing sworn An­nas and Ca­iaphas, they com­mand­ed all the rest who were with them to go out of the chapel.

6 And they shut the gates of the tem­ple and of the chapel, and said to Pi­late, Thou hast made us to swear, O judge, by the build­ing of this tem­ple, to de­clare to thee that which is true and right.

7 Af­ter we had cru­ci­fied Je­sus, not know­ing that he was the Son of God, but sup­pos­ing he wrought his mir­acles by some mag­ical arts, we sum­moned a large as­sem­bly in this tem­ple.

8 And when we were de­lib­er­at­ing among one an­oth­er about the mir­acles which Je­sus had wrought, we found many wit­ness­es of our own coun­try, who de­clared that they had seen him alive af­ter his death, and that they heard him dis­cours­ing with his dis­ci­ples, and saw him as­cend­ing in­to the height of the heav­ens, and en­ter­ing in­to them;

9 And we saw two wit­ness­es, whose bod­ies Je­sus raised from the dead, who told us of many strange things which Je­sus did among the dead, of which we have a writ­ten ac­count in our hands.

10 And it is our cus­tom an­nu­al­ly to open this holy book be­fore an as­sem­bly, and to search there for the coun­sel of God.

11 And we found in the first of the sev­en­ty books, where Michael the archangel is speak­ing to the third son of Adam the first man, an ac­count that af­ter five thou­sand five hun­dred years, Christ the most beloved son of God was to come on earth,

12 And we fur­ther con­sid­ered, that per­haps he was the very God of Is­rael who spoke to Moses, Thou shalt make the ark of the tes­ti­mo­ny; two cu­bits and a half shall be the length there­of, and a cu­bit and a half the breadth there­of, and a cu­bit and a half the height there­of.

13 By these five cu­bits and a half for the build­ing of the ark of the Old Tes­ta­ment, we per­ceived and knew that in five thou­sand years and half (one thou­sand) years, Je­sus Christ was to come in the ark or taber­na­cle of a body;

14 And so our Scrip­tures tes­ti­fy that he is the Son of God, and the Lord and King of Is­rael.

15 And be­cause af­ter his suf­fer­ing, our chief priests were sur­prised at the signs which were wrought by his means, we opened that book to search all the gen­er­ations down to the gen­er­ation of Joseph and Mary the moth­er of Je­sus, sup­pos­ing him to be of the seed of David;

16 And we found the ac­count of the cre­ation, and at what time he made the heav­en and the earth, and the first man Adam, and that from thence to the flood, were two thou­sand sev­en hun­dred and forty- eight years.

17 And from the flood to Abra­ham, nine hun­dred and twelve. And from Abra­ham to Moses, four hun­dred and thir­ty. And from Moses to David the King, five hun­dred and ten.

18 And from David to the Baby­lonish cap­tiv­ity five hun­dred years. And from the Baby­lonish cap­tiv­ity to the in­car­na­tion of Christ, four hun­dred years.

19 The sum of all which amounts to five thou­sand and half (a thou­sand.)

20 And so it ap­pears, that Je­sus whom we cru­ci­fied, is Je­sus Christ the Son of God, and true Almighty God. Amen.

(In the name of the Holy Trin­ity, thus end the acts of our Saviour Je­sus Christ, which the Em­per­or Theo­do­sius the Great found at Jerusalem, in the hall of Pon­tius Pi­late, among the pub­lic records; the things were act­ed in the nine­teenth year of Tiberius Cae­sar, Em­per­or of the Ro­mans, and in the sev­en­teenth year of the gov­ern­ment of Herod, the son of Herod and of Galilee, on the eighth of the cal­ends of April, which is the twen­ty-​third day of the month of March, in the CCI­Id Olympiad, when Joseph and Ca­iaphas were rulers of the Jews; be­ing a His­to­ry writ­ten in He­brew by Nicode­mus, of what hap­pened af­ter our Saviour’s cru­ci­fix­ion.)

REF­ER­ENCES TO THE GOSPEL OF NICODE­MUS, FOR­MER­LY CALLED THE ACTS OF PON­TIUS PI­LATE.

[Al­though this Gospel is, by some among the learned, sup­posed to have been re­al­ly writ­ten by Nicode­mus, who be­came a dis­ci­ple of Je­sus Christ, and con­versed with him; oth­ers con­jec­ture that it was a forgery to­wards the close of the third cen­tu­ry by some zeal­ous be­liev­er, who, ob­serv­ing that there had been ap­peals made by the Chris­tians of the for­mer age, to the acts of Pi­late, but that such acts could not be pro­duced, imag­ined it would be of ser­vice to Chris­tian­ity to fab­ri­cate and pub­lish this Gospel; as it would both con­firm the Chris­tians un­der per­se­cu­tion, and con­vince the Hea­thens of the truth of the Chris­tian re­li­gion. The Rev. Jeremi­ah Jones says, that such pi­ous frauds were very com­mon among Chris­tians even in the first three cen­turies; and that a forgery of this na­ture, with the view above-​men­tioned, seems nat­ural and prob­able. The same au­thor, in notic­ing that Eu­se­bius in his Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry, charges the Pa­gans with hav­ing forged and pub­lished a book, called “The Acts of Pi­late,” takes oc­ca­sion to ob­serve that the in­ter­nal ev­idence of this Gospel shows it was not the work of any Hea­then, but that if in the lat­ter end of the third cen­tu­ry we find it in use among Chris­tians (as it was then cer­tain­ly in some church­es), and about the same time find a forgery of the Hea­thens un­der the same ti­tle, it seems ex­ceed­ing­ly prob­able that some Chris­tians, at that time, should pub­lish such a piece as this, in or­der part­ly to con­front the spu­ri­ous one of the Pa­gans, and part­ly to sup­port those ap­peals which had been made by for­mer Chris­tians to the Acts of Pi­late; and Mr. Jones says, he thinks so more par­tic­ular­ly as we have in­nu­mer­able in­stances of forg­eries by the faith­ful in the prim­itive ages, ground­ed on less plau­si­ble rea­sons. Whether it be canon­ical or not, it is of very great an­tiq­ui­ty, and is ap­pealed to by sev­er­al of the an­cient Chris­tians. The present trans­la­tion is made from the Gospel, pub­lished by Gry­naeus in the Or­tho­dox­ographa, vol, i, tom, ii, p. 613.]

Notwith­stand­ing the di­ver­si­ty of opin­ions here al­lud­ed to, the ma­jor­ity of the learned be­lieve that the in­ter­nal ev­idence of the au­then­tic­ity of this Gospel is man­ifest­ed in the cor­rect de­tails of that pe­ri­od of Christ’s life on which it treats, while it far ex­cels the canon­ical Evan­ge­lists nar­ra­tive of the tri­al of our Saviour be­fore Pi­late, with more minute par­tic­ulars of per­sons, ev­idence, cir­cum­stance, &c.

THE EPIS­TLES OF JE­SUS CHRIST & AB­GARUS KING OF EDESSA.