Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/99

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INTRODUCTION.
xcv

particular calls the sons of Simeon, Karinus and Leucius. New materials are introduced into it, and especially at the end, where Pilate is said to have written an account of the transactions and placed it among the archives of his prætorium; various calculations are added; and the whole concludes with a pretended letter from Pilate to Claudius. The letter is not found in all copies,[1] nor are the whole of the foregoing calculations. To point out all the discrepancies between the copies would be endless.

(6.) The second text of the Latin Gospel of Nicodemus, Part II., materially deviates from the preceding, and is a more modern recension. The editor in the commencement speaks of the Abbats (i.e. Fathers) raised from the dead at the resurrection of Christ, he was therefore probably a monk. The last chapter was almost wholly re-written by the editor, who seems to have thought the older books represented Pilate and the Jews in too favourable a light.

Treating both parts of the book before us as one, why is it called by the name of Nicodemus?

Nicodemus was a man of eminence, and had come

  1. This letter appears in Greek in the Acts of Peter and Paul, sec. 40. See Tischendorf's "Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha," p. 16.