All therefore who read and copy into other books remember me and pray for me, that God may be propitious to me, and be gracious to my sins which I have committed against him.[1]
Peace to those who read and those who hear, and to their servants. Amen.
In the 15th year of the government of Tiberius Cæsar, king of the Romans; and of Herod, king of Galilee, the 19th year of his reign, on the 8th before the calends of April, which is the 25th of March; in the consulship of Rufus and Rubellio; in the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad, when Joseph Caiaphas was high priest of the Jews.[2]
Whatsoever, after the cross and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour God, Nicodemus recorded and wrote in Hebrew, and left to posterity, is after this fashion.[3]
- ↑ Ancient scribes were very much in the habit of putting in requests for the prayers of their readers.
- ↑ The fifteenth of Tiberius is the date of our Lord's baptism (Luke iii, 1), but some ancient writers also give it as the date of the crucifixion, which is an error. For the nineteenth of Herod we must substitute the thirty-second, [Lewin's Fasti, p. 173]. Rufus and Rubellio may have been the consuls in the fifteenth of Tiberius, but were not when our Lord suffered. The fourth year of Olympiad 202 answers to the nineteenth of Tiberius. The phrase Joseph Caiaphas is justified in the note at p. 172. The placing of our Lord's arrest on March 25, is in harmony with several early authorities, but Clement of Alexandria mentions some who referred it to three or four months later in the year. The paragraph which contains these indications of time is found in many copies, but not in all.
- ↑ The ascription of this book to Nicodemus and a Hebrew original is evidence that it was not supposed to be the Acts of Pilate referred to by Justin Martyr and Tertullian.
