Forged (20 page)

T
HE
G
OSPEL OF
N
ICODEMUS

One of the most intriguing Gospels comes near the end of the time period I am considering in this book, the first four Christian centuries. It is a lengthy account of Jesus's trial, death, and resurrection that falsely claims to be written by none other than Nicodemus, the rabbi well known to Christian readers for his important role in the Gospel of John as a “secret” follower of Jesus (see 3:1–15).
²
The
Gospel of Nicodemus
became an extraordinarily popular and influential book throughout the Middle Ages, as it was widely circulated in the Latin West and was eventually translated and disseminated in nearly all of the languages of western Europe. It was, of course, believed to have been written by Nicodemus himself. But the account was probably composed sometime in the fourth century, three hundred years after Nicodemus's death (assuming he was a historical figure). It may well be based, however, on stories that had been passed down orally for two centuries before being written down.

The Gospel begins by indicating that Nicodemus had originally written the narrative in Hebrew. In fact, the account appears to be an original Greek composition. But by claiming that it appeared first in Hebrew the real author, whoever he was, provided it with an air of authenticity, showing both that the narrative was very old and that it was (supposedly) based on eyewitness testimony.

There is no question that the account is far from historical, as it is rooted in later legends about Jesus's final hours, his death, and his resurrection. The narrative is designed to show that Pilate was
completely innocent of Jesus's execution, that the Jewish leaders and people were completely at fault, and that by rejecting Jesus the Jews have rejected God.

The divine character of Jesus is established at the outset of the narrative in one of its most interesting, and amusing, scenes. Before Jesus's trial, the Jewish authorities are speaking with Pilate, insisting that Jesus is guilty of crimes and needs to be condemned. Pilate has his courier bring Jesus into the courtroom. Inside the room are two slaves holding “standards” that have—as Roman standards did—an image of the “divine” Caesar on them. As Jesus enters the room, the standard bearers bow down before him, so that the image of Caesar appears to be doing obeisance in his presence.

The Jewish authorities are incensed and malign the standard bearers, who reply that they had nothing to do with it. The images of Caesar bowed down of their own accord to worship Jesus. Pilate decides to try to get to the bottom of the matter and so tells the Jewish leaders to pick some of their own husky men to hold the standards and to have Jesus go out and enter a second time. The leaders choose twelve muscular Jews, six for each standard, who grasp them with all their might. Jesus reenters the room, and once again the standards bow down before him.

You might think that everyone would get the point, but that would ruin the story. Pilate becomes terrified and tries to get Jesus off the hook, but to no avail. The Jewish authorities declare that Jesus is an evildoer who deserves to die. Repeatedly throughout the course of the trial they accuse Jesus of wrongdoing and insist that he be judged. And just as repeatedly Pilate insists that he is innocent of all charges, expresses puzzlement about why the Jews are so intent on seeing him killed, and urges the Jewish leaders to allow him to release Jesus. But they refuse, wanting him dead. Three times they express their willingness to assume responsibility by speaking the words of Matthew 27:25, “His blood be upon us and our children.”

When these words were first written centuries earlier, in Matthew's Gospel, they already expressed anti-Jewish sentiment. By speaking
them, the Jewish crowds showed that they were willing not only to incur the guilt for Jesus's death, but also to pass along that guilt to future generations of Jews. Over the centuries the words were used by Christian opponents of Jews to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus and to inflict horrible acts of violence against them in retribution. That heightened form of anti-Judaism is already in evidence here, in the
Gospel of Nicodemus.
The Jewish authorities are shown to be willfully blind to Jesus's true character. Even the emperor worships him (in the standards). And a number of witnesses are called who recount all the miracles he performed as the Son of God.

But to no avail. Jesus is crucified at the instigation of the Jews and their leaders. The rest of the account shows the truth of Jesus's divine character. He is raised from the dead, and the Jewish leaders themselves are given incontrovertible proof of the resurrection through the testimony of reliable witnesses.

Here, then, is a forged account, written some three hundred years after the events it narrates, to show that Jesus's death was undeserved, that the Romans (who were on the side of Christians by the mid-fourth century) had nothing to do with the crucifixion, that it was completely the Jews' fault, and that by rejecting Jesus the Jews have actually rejected their own God. No wonder an account such as this became so popular throughout western Europe in the Middle Ages, when hatred of the Jews was a constant and disturbing aspect of what it meant to be Christian.

T
HE
“P
ILATE
G
OSPELS
”

A number of writings from about the time of the
Gospel of Nicodemus
are in one way or another connected with Pontius Pilate and his role in the death of Jesus. Most of these are designed to show that Pilate was not at fault for the death of Jesus and that he felt considerable remorse after the deed was done. In several of these writings we learn that Pilate not only repented of the evil deed, but actually became a believer in Christ. In later Christianity the conversion of
Pilate became part of the accepted lore from the early church. In the Coptic church Pilate was eventually canonized as a Christian saint.

Historically, of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Pilate continued on as a brutal governor of Judea after the death of Jesus. There is nothing in the historical record to suggest that he even remembered having ordered Jesus's execution, let alone felt regret over it. Still, the reason for his later exoneration and even exaltation in parts of the Christian church is reasonably clear. If Pilate was not responsible for Jesus's death, then who was? The Jews. The legends of Pilate came to be written in a series of documents that may go back to the fourth Christian century or even earlier. A number of them are allegedly written by Pilate himself. All of them, however, are forged.

The Letter of Herod to Pilate

The first document we consider was not said to have been written by Pilate, but to him, by his colleague Herod Antipas, the
Letter of Herod to Pilate
. Historically Pilate is known to have been the Roman governor of Judea, in the southern part of Israel, when Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great (the ruler of the land when Jesus was born), was the Jewish ruler of Galilee, in the northern part of the land. Herod Antipas is best known from biblical tradition for having beheaded John the Baptist. In later legends he is said to have regretted what he did very much, as it came back to haunt him.

That is the case in this letter forged in his name, allegedly sent to Pilate.
³
Here Herod indicates that he is sorry to learn that Pilate had Jesus killed, because he, Herod, wanted to see him and to repent for the evil things he had done. God's judgment on sinners, he states, fits their crime. In a bizarre incident that he relates, his own daughter has literally lost her head in a flood that arose while she was playing on the banks of a river. The flood began to sweep her away, when her mother reached out to save her by grabbing her head. But her head was severed, so that the mother was left with just the child's head
in her hands. This came, Herod states, as retribution for his having taken the head of John the Baptist.

He himself is suffering, rotting away even before he has died, so that he says, “Already worms are coming from my mouth.” Here the pseudonymous author appears to confuse this Herod with the later Herod Agrippa, who according to the New Testament book of Acts was eaten by worms and died (Acts 12). So too the Roman soldier Longinus—the one who allegedly stuck a spear in Jesus's side when he was on the cross—has met a grisly fate. He is condemned to a cave where every night a lion comes and mauls his body until dawn. The next day his body grows back to normal, and the lion then comes again. This will go on until the end of time.

Pilate, however, the recipient of the letter, is portrayed in a positive light, as a representative of the Gentiles. Not they, but the Jews, will face judgment for what they did to Jesus: “Death will soon overtake the priests and the ruling council of the children of Israel, because they unjustly laid hands on the righteous Jesus.” It is the Gentiles, then, who will inherit God's kingdom, whereas Herod and the other Jews “will be cast out,” because they “did not keep the commandments of the Lord or those of his Son.”

The Letter of Pilate to Herod

A second forged letter goes in the opposite direction, from Pilate to Herod.
⁴
One might expect this letter to be a response to the first, but despite its title, the
Letter of Pilate to Herod,
and the fact that it names some of the same characters (Herod, Pilate, and Longinus, the spear-wielding soldier), they have almost nothing else in common. In fact, this second letter does not refer to the first and stands at odds with it at a key point. Here Longinus, rather than being subject to never ending torment for what he did, is portrayed as a convert who came to believe in Jesus after the resurrection. That, in fact, is the point of this second letter, that when Jesus was raised, not only Longinus, but also Pilate's wife, Procla, and then Pilate himself, all became believers.

According to the narrative of the letter, after Pilate did “a terrible thing” in having Jesus crucified, he hears that he was raised from the dead. Procla and Longinus go to find Jesus in Galilee. There he speaks with them, and they become convinced of his resurrection. When Pilate learns that Jesus has returned to life, he falls to the ground in deep grief. But then Jesus himself appears to him, raises him from the ground, and declares to him, “All generations and nations will bless you.” Here Pilate is not only repentant; he is a Christian convert who will be considered fortunate by later adherents of the faith.

The Letter of Pilate to Claudius

We have another letter allegedly from Pilate to a Roman official, but this time it is supposedly directed to the Roman emperor Claudius, written to explain Pilate's role in the death of Jesus, the
Letter of Pilate to Claudius
.
⁵
It may seem strange for Pilate to be writing to Claudius, in particular, given the fact that it was Tiberius, not Claudius, who was emperor when Pilate condemned Jesus to death (Claudius became emperor a decade later). Possibly this letter was forged so long after the fact that the forger did not have the facts of imperial history from two hundred years earlier straight (do you know who was president of the United States in 1811?).

One of the places the letter is preserved for us is in a fabricated account of the missionary activities of the apostles called the
Acts of Peter and Paul
. In this account we are told that years after Jesus's death, the apostle Peter and the archheretic Simon the Magician, whom we met earlier, appear before the emperor Nero, evidently in the early 60s
CE
. When the emperor hears about Christ, he asks Peter how he can learn more about him. Peter suggests that he retrieve the letter that Pilate had sent to his predecessor, the emperor Claudius, and to have it read aloud. He does so, and the letter then is quoted in full.

The idea that Pilate may have written a letter to the emperor to explain the death of Jesus was widespread in early Christianity. We have references to some such letter as early as the third century in
the writings of the church father Tertullian and in the fourth century in the
Church History
of Eusebius.
⁶
The letter I am discussing here is probably not the one referred to by these two authors. Possibly this one was composed by a forger who thought that some such letter must once have existed. The themes of the short letter are very similar to ones we have already explored. It is the wicked Jews who are responsible for Jesus's death, and they will be punished by God for it. As “Pilate” states in the letter:

According to the letter Jesus proved that he was the son of God by his many miracles, but the Jewish leaders told lies in order to have him executed. Then they (not the Roman soldiers!) crucified him. When he arose from the dead “the wickedness of the Jews was set aflame,” so that they bribed the soldiers to say that Jesus's disciples had stolen the body from the tomb. Pilate has written this letter so that the emperor will know the truth and not be “led to believe the false reports told by the Jews.”

The Report of Pontius Pilate

A longer document called the
Report of Pontius Pilate
gives yet another letter of the Roman governor to the emperor, but this time to Tiberius, soon after the death of Jesus.
⁷
This letter appears to be much closer to what the early third-century Tertullian described when he claimed: “Pilate, who was himself already a Christian with respect to his most innermost conviction, made a report of everything that happened to Christ for Tiberius, the emperor at the time.”
⁸
Again, it is doubtful if the surviving
Report
is the document Tertullian refers to.
Scholars tend to date it to a later period, possibly the fourth century or so. Its chief claims, in any event, are similar to those of the other forgeries we have looked at in this chapter: Jesus was the miracle-working son of God who was wrongly condemned by the Jews to death. Pilate was innocent of the entire proceeding.