early on the Lord's day[1] thou shalt be delivered to death. Thus they said, and sealed with a seal the prison, which was fastened with all manner of bolts and locks.
Thus, then, when the preparation was finished, early on the Sabbath the Jews went to Pilate, and said to him, Lord, that deceiver said that after three days he would rise again. Lest therefore his disciples should steal him by night and deceive the people by such a falsehood, command that his sepulchre should be guarded. Pilate therefore, on this, gave them five hundred soldiers,[2] who also were set about the sepulchre to guard it, and they put seals upon the stone of the sepulchre.
Therefore, when the day began to break on the Lord's day, the chief priests and the Jews held a council, and sent to bring Joseph out of prison in order to put him to death; but on opening it they found him not. And they wondered at this, how when the doors were shut and the locks secure, and the seals remaining, Joseph was not to be seen.
- ↑ That the Jews should speak of the Lord's day before it was instituted is an amusing anachronism, but worthy of notice, as a fresh evidence of the utter disregard of truth and consistency with which these apocrypha have been made up.
- ↑ Pilate, most likely, did not appoint a guard of more than four or five soldiers — hundreds are easily written. The paragraph is one of the interpolations.
