The Eventual Confirmation
Of
Jesus Christ As
The Messiah
By
The Chief Priest, Priests, Israelites,
And
Government And
Leadership
By
The
Twelve Apostles
Pilate goes to the
temple. Calls together the rulers, and scribes, and doctors. Commands the
gates to be shut. Orders the book of the Scripture. And causes the Jews to
relate what they really knew concerning Christ. They declare that they
crucified Christ in ignorance, and that they now know him to be the Son of God,
according to the testimony of the Scriptures. Which, after they put him to
death, they are examined.
After these things Pilate went to
the temple of the Jews, and called together all the rulers and scribes, and
doctors of the law, and went with them into a chapel of the temple. And
commanding that all the gates should be shut, he said to them, “I have heard
that you have a certain large book in this temple. I desire you therefore, that
it may be brought before me.”
And when the great book, carried by
four ministers of the temple, and adorned with gold and precious stones, was
brought, Pilate said to them all, “I adjure you by the God of your Fathers, who
made and commanded this temple to be built, that you conceal not the truth from
me. You know all the things which are written in that book. Tell me therefore
now, if you in the Scriptures have found anything of that Jesus whom you
crucified, and at what time of the world he is destined to have come, and show
the same to me.”
Then having sworn Annas and Caiaphas, they commanded all the rest who were
with them to go out of the chapel. And they shut the gates of the temple and of
the chapel, and said to Pilate, “You have made us to swear, O judge, by the
building of this temple, to declare to you that which is true and right. After
we had crucified Jesus, not knowing that He was the Son of God, but supposing
He wrought His miracles by some magical arts, we summoned a large assembly in
this temple.
And when we were deliberating among
one another about the miracles which Jesus had wrought, we found many witnesses
of our own country, who declared that they had seen Him alive after His death,
and that they heard Him discoursing with His disciples, and saw Him ascending
into the heavens, and entering into them.
“And we saw two witnesses, whose
bodies Jesus raised from the dead, who told us of many strange things which
Jesus did among the dead, of which we have a written account in our hands. And
it is our custom annually to open this holy book before an assembly, and to
search there for the counsel of God.
“And we found in the first of the seventy books, where
Archangel Michael is speaking to the third son of Adam, Set, an account that
after five thousand five hundred (5500) years, Christ the most beloved Son of
God shall come on earth,
And we further considered, that
perhaps He was the very God of Israel who spoke to Moses, ‘You shalt make the
ark of the testimony, two cubits and a half shall be the length, and a cubit
and a half the breadth, and a cubit and a half the height.’
By these five cubits and a half for
the building of the ark of the covenant, we perceived and knew that in five
thousand years and a half (5500) years, Jesus Christ was to come in the ark or
tabernacle of a body.
“And so our scriptures testify that
He is the son of God, and the Lord and King of Israel. And because after His
suffering, our chief priests were surprised at the signs which were wrought by
His means, we opened that book to search all the generations down to the
generation of Joseph and Mary the mother of Jesus, supposing Him to be of the
seed of David.
“And we found the account of the
creation, and at what time He made the heaven and the earth and the first man
Adam,
and that from thence to the flood,
were two thousand, two hundred and twelve (2,212) years.
And from the flood to Abraham, nine
hundred and twelve (912) years.
And from Abraham to Moses, four
hundred and thirty (430) years.
And from Moses to David the king,
five hundred and ten (510) years.
And from David to the Babylonish captivity, five hundred years (500) years.
And from the Babylonish
captivity to the incarnation of Christ, four hundred years (400) years.
The sum of all which amounts to five
thousand and half (5500) years.
“And so it is, that Jesus whom we
crucified, is Jesus Christ the Son of God, and He is true and the Almighty God.
Amen.”
Confirmatory Close And
Signature
In the name of the
Holy Trinity, thus end the Acts of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, which the Emperor Theodosius the Great found at Jerusalem, in the hall
of Pontius Pilate among the public records. The things were acted in the
nineteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Emperor of the Romans, and in the
seventeenth year of the government of Herod the son of Herod king of Galilee,
on the eighth of the calends of April, which is the twenty-third day of
the month of March, in the CCIId Olympiad, when
Joseph and Caiaphas were Rulers of the Jews. Being a History written in Hebrew
by Nicodemus, of what happened after our Saviour's
crucifixion.