Le témoignage de Justin sur les Actes de Pilate

Summary

As part of a collective project to produce multilingual editions of the Acts of Pilate for the Series apocryphorum of the Corpus christianorum (Brepols), this contribution comments on the first attested mention of the title of this apocryphon in the work of Justin, in the middle of the second century. It shows that Justin is not referring to the minutes of the trial of Jesus in the Praetorium of the Roman governor Pilate, but to a theatrical script of Jewish origin, which discusses the traditions reported in the canonical Gospels. The testimony of Tertullian’s treatise Des spectacles , from the end of the same century, confirms the circulation of this literary work.