The early Christians had the audacity to forge an account of the Resurrection by Pontius Pilate himself, which may be read in the
Apocryphal New Testament. Century after century, until the advent of rational criticism, the orthodox were taught to believe that Pilate informed Tiberius of the unjust sentence of death he had pronounced on an innocent, and as it appeared, a divine person; that Tiberius endeavored to place Christ among the gods of Rome; that his servile senate ventured to thwart his design; that Tiberius then protected the Christians against the fury of the laws; and that the account of this extraordinary transaction was preserved in the public records. But the disproofs of this legend are overwhelming. No historian of Greece or Rome ever saw these documents in the imperial archives, or even heard of their existence. They were only visible to the eyes of Tertullian, who composed his Apology one hundred and sixty years after the death of Tiberius.
The legend itself is first mentioned by Justin Martyr, who is described by Jortin as "of a warm and credulous temper," by Mosheim as "wholly undeserving of credit in much of what he relates," and by Middleton as the author of many "silly writings." ... Justin's story of Pontius Pilate passed through the hands of Tertullian, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Orosius, Gregory of Tours, and the authors of the various editions of the
Acts of Pilate, acquiring successive improvements as it went along. But it has melted away like a legendary snowball before the sun of rationalism... We have devoted what would otherwise be a very disproportionate space to this ridiculous story, in order to show how credulous and unscrupulous the Fathers were in regard to the "evidences" of their faith.
