Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (97 page)

The exoneration of Pilate serves not only an obvious apologetic purpose; it also makes it possible to denigrate the Jews, hated on other grounds, principally
for refusing to admit that Jesus really is the messiah. This double purpose is nowhere more evident than in the Christian Acts of Pilate, allegedly written by a good Jewish rabbi who saw Jesus as the true king and Son of God, as opposed to most of the other Jews, who were hardheaded, hardhearted, hateful villains who opposed both the Roman authority embodied in Pontius Pilate and the divine authority embodied in Jesus Christ.

Among the other works traditionally located in the Pilate cycle are several written in the names of well-known figures connected with the Passion of Jesus: Pontius Pilate, Herod Antipas, and Joseph of Arimathea (others are anonymous narratives). A number of these may well have been produced toward the end of the period of our concern: the first four Christian centuries. No one thinks that any of them is authentic. They were written by later Christians intent on applying their imaginations to the question of what those connected with Christ might have said about their role in his death and resurrection. In some instances these authors may have been motivated by rumors that some such writings once existed, as found in the references of Justin and Tertullian previously mentioned, or possibly the later report of Eusebius (based on Tertullian):

Our Saviour’s marvellous resurrection and ascension into heaven were by now everywhere famous, and it had long been customary for provincial governors to report to the holder of the imperial office any change in the local situation, so that he might be aware of all that was going on. The story of the resurrection from the dead of our Saviour Jesus, already the subject of general discussion all over Palestine, was accordingly communicated by Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius. For Pilate knew all about Christ’s supernatural deeds, and especially how after death he had risen from the dead and was now generally believed to be a god. It is said that Tiberius referred the report to the senate, which rejected it. The apparent reason was that they had not gone into the matter before, for the old law still held good that no one could be regarded by the Romans as a god unless by vote and decree of the senate; the real reason was that no human decision or commendation was required for the saving teaching of the divine message. (
H.E
. 2.2.1–2)

The “Report” of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius relates the events of Jesus’ trial, death, and resurrection from the perspective of the Roman governor, but in much briefer compass than the Acts of Pilate. Like that other account, the Anaphora celebrates Jesus’ miraculous character, exculpates Pilate for his death, and inculpates the Jews. It is doubtful that the surviving Report is the one referred to by Tertullian, if in fact he really knew of an actual document (which seems
unlikely). As it survives in the manuscript tradition, the Anaphora does not appear to date from a period earlier than the late fourth century.
⁸¹

The first half of the brief account is largely devoted to testimony of Pilate himself to the wondrous deeds Jesus performed during his public ministry, recorded in no small measure to show the blindness of the Jews in rejecting him. And so we are told, the “whole multitude of the Jews” is hardened to these signs, and thus turn Jesus over to Pilate without being able to “convict him of a single crime” (v. 1).
⁸²
His one fault, in their eyes, is “that Jesus accomplished these deeds on the Sabbath.” Pilate, on the other hand, sees the truth: “For my part, I know that the gods we worship have never performed such astounding feats as his” (v. 5).

The Jewish leaders and people are unmoved, however, and to prevent a general rebellion, Pilate orders Jesus crucified. The astounding deeds Jesus had performed while living are surpassed by those that transpire at his death and resurrection, which take up most of the second half of the narrative:

The light did not cease that entire night, O King, my master. And many of the Jews died, being engulfed and swallowed up in the chasms in that night, so that their bodies could no longer be found. I mean to say that those Jews who spoke against Jesus suffered. But one synagogue was left in Jerusalem, since all the synagogues that opposed Jesus were engulfed. (v. 10)

Presumably it was the synagogue of Jesus’ followers that survived destruction. For this account, the nonbelievers received what they deserved for refusing to recognize Jesus as the one sent from God.
⁸³

The letter allegedly written by Pontius Pilate to the emperor Claudius (!) has survived in several textual forms.
⁸⁴
A Latin version accompanies the accounts of the Descent to Hades from the B text of the Acts of Pilate. In Greek it is quoted in Pseudo-Marcellus,
The Passion of Peter and Paul
. Yet different forms occur in
Armenian and Syriac, and as incorporated in the fifth century
Acts of Peter and Paul
(chs. 40–41), whose anonymous author has probably taken the letter over from an earlier source. This final iteration may represent the apocryphon in its earliest surviving form.

In these Acts the letter is cited in the following context. Years after Jesus’ death, we are told, the apostle Simon Peter and the heretic Simon Magus appear before the emperor Nero. When the emperor hears about Christ, he asks Peter how he can learn more about him. Peter tells him to retrieve the letter sent by Pilate years earlier to his predecessor, the emperor Claudius, and to have it read aloud. He does so, and the text of the letter is then reproduced.

It is not clear what to make of the anachronistic reference to Claudius as the emperor at the time of Jesus’ death. The forger of the letter, living so long after the fact, may simply not have known the facts of Roman imperial history. It is also possible that the surviving letter was originally said to have been sent to Tiberius (as in Tertullian and as mentioned in the Anaphora), and that a later editor—conceivably the author of the fifth-century
Acts
that presents the letter—altered the name of the addressee (e.g., to make it refer to Nero’s immediate predecessor).
⁸⁵
In any event, the letter could have been composed any time between Tertullian and the fifth-century
Acts of Peter and Paul
. Scheidweiler and Elliott have suggested that it may have served as the basis for the Anaphora Pilati, in which case it would likely have arisen somewhat earlier in that period.
⁸⁶

The themes of the letter resonate with other works in the Pilate cycle. The Jews are totally oblivious to what God has done in sending Christ into the world:

Pontius Pilate, to Claudius. Greetings. I myself have uncovered what has just now happened. For the Jews, out of envy, have brought vengeance both on themselves and on those who come after them by their terrible acts of judgment. They have been oblivious to the promises given to their ancestors, that God would send them his holy one from heaven, who would naturally enough be called their king; he promised to send this one to earth through a virgin. And now this one has come to Judea, during my governorship.

Despite his many miracles—or to be more accurate, precisely because of his many miracles—the Jewish leaders sought to have Jesus executed:

They saw that he brought light to the eyes of the blind, that he cleansed lepers, healed paralytics, drove demons out from people, raised the dead, rebuked the winds, walked on the waves of the sea, and did many other miracles; and that all
the people of the Jews called him the son of God. For this reason the chief priests were moved by envy to seize him and deliver him over to me; and they told lie upon lie, saying that he was a magician and that he acted contrary to their law.

As a result, Pilate himself is not responsible for Jesus’ death; the stiff-necked and godless Jews are. In fact, it is not Pilate who has Jesus crucified in order to placate the Jewish leaders; they do the foul deed themselves: “Since I believed their accusations, I delivered him over to their will, after having him flogged. And they crucified him.”

Moreover, after they commit the foul deed, they bribe the guards at the tomb to say that he was not raised from the dead. And that, indicates Pilate, is the reason for his letter: “In case someone else might lie about it and you be led to believe the false reports told by the Jews.”

A reply of the emperor (Tiberius) to Pilate survives from manuscripts of the later Middle Ages, but as it appears to have been written no earlier than the eleventh century,
⁸⁷
it is of no concern to us in this context.

The letter allegedly written by Herod Antipas to Pilate, found in a fifteenth-century Greek manuscript, is first attested in a Syriac version of about the sixth century. The document may have been forged in the late fourth century.
⁸⁸
In it, Herod affirms the divine principle that “each will receive his due” for the evil deeds he has done. In his case, Herod’s beheading of John the Baptist has been divinely reciprocated in the grisly death of his stepdaughter, Herodia, who literally loses her head when she is swept away by a flood: her torso is borne downstream but her severed head is left in the grasp of the hands of her mother, who was trying to save her. Herod too is facing God’s judgment: as he writes, “already worms are coming up from my mouth.” Here the author of the letter appears to confuse Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, connected with Jesus’ death, with Herod Agrippa, who according to the book of Acts was eaten by worms and died (Acts 12:23). So too, the soldier Longinus, who stuck a spear in Jesus’ side on the cross, meets a gruesome fate, condemned to be torn apart by a lion every night, only to have his body restored during the day in preparation for another night’s agony, much as Prometheus of Greek myth.

There are clear connections between this text and the Acts of Pilate and the Anaphora Pilati. The Roman governor Pilate is portrayed in a positive light, representing the gentiles who will receive the future kingdom, as opposed to the Jews, represented by Herod, who have been rejected by God. Among its anti-Jewish sentiments is Herod’s condemnation of the Jewish leadership, and with them the entire Jewish people, the one-time “children of light”:

There is no peace for the priests, says the Lord. Death will soon overtake the priests and the ruling council of the children of Israel, because they unjustly laid hands on the righteous Jesus. These things will be fulfilled in the culmination of the age, so that the Gentiles will become heirs of the kingdom of God, but the children of light will be cast out, because we did not keep the commandments of the Lord nor those of his Son.

As a final forgery to be considered from the Pilate cycle, the Letter of Pilate to Herod is principally concerned with showing how Pilate, along with his wife Procla and Longinus, the soldier at the cross, all converted to become followers of Christ after the resurrection.
⁸⁹
One might expect the letter to have close connections with the one preceding, but apart from the titles and the appearance of some of the same names (Herod, Pilate, Longinus), the letters have almost nothing to do with one another, and in fact stand at odds in their views. Nowhere is this clearer than in their respective accounts of Longinus. In the Letter of Herod, the solder is subject to cruel and eternal torment as an unbeliever; in the Letter of Pilate he converts to become a blessed devotee of Jesus after being confronted by him, personally, after the resurrection. It may be that the two letters were combined in the textual tradition (this one is found in the same Syriac and Greek manuscripts) simply because of their comparable titles.

This letter is also much less ostensibly polemical against the Jews, although an implicit polemic may be found in its historically remarkable claim that Pilate became a Christian convert after the resurrection. This claim may stand at odds with everything that we can know about Pilate, sparse as that is; but it stands very much in line with what some Christians wanted to say about him, in no small measure because it demonstrates yet further his basic sympathy with the cause of Christ. And if Pilate was sympathetic with Christ, who was antipathetic? It was obviously the Jews, culpable for his murder and responsible for the suffering that they have, as a result, brought upon themselves.
⁹⁰

The two letters of the Abgar correspondence form part of the larger Abgar legend, recounted by Eusebius (
H.E
. 1.13) and, in a later version, by a fifth-century
Syriac work, the
Doctrina Addai
.
⁹¹
It may well be, as will be argued below, that the legend was built around the correspondence, which existed independently of it. The legend itself tells of the conversion of Edessa to Christianity after the resurrection through the preaching of Jesus’ apostle Thaddeus (Eusebius) or Addai (
Doctrina
). Eusebius claims to have uncovered the story in the archives of Edessa, and to have translated it literally from the Syriac. Sebastian Brock, among others, has argued that both claims are improbable.
⁹²
Where Eusebius actually found the tradition cannot be known. Eventually it came into wide circulation: it is preserved in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Arabic, Persian, and Slavonic witnesses.

There have been long and hard debates over the legend as a whole in both of its basic iterations, especially over when it came into existence and what its overarching purpose is. The classic views of F. C. Burkitt and of W. Bauer have been superseded in modern times by the intriguing thesis of H. J. W. Drijvers that the legend was generated at the end of the third century among the proto-orthodox minority of Christians in eastern Syria in order to counter the religious claims that the Manichaeans made for Mani, the founder of their religion.
⁹³
In a later chapter I will consider whether the letters themselves may have derived from the context of anti-Manichaean polemic. For now I need say only a few words about the anti-Jewish slant of the correspondence. We can leave the larger legend to one side, as it is not itself a forgery but an anonymous narrative.