Brock, S.

, A Fragment of the "Acta Pilati" in Christian Palestinian Aramaic , Journal of

Theological Studies, n.s.:22 (1971) p.157

NOTES AND STUDIES 157

l\1arcan sunlmary such as is found at i. 39 and ii. 13. l\lany of these
summary statements show Jesus' popularity (e.g. i. 28, ii. IS) or his need
to escape from the cro\\Tds follo,ving him (e.g. ii. I f., iii. 7££., iii. 20, iv. I,
vi. 31 f., vi. 54 ff., vii. 24, ix. 30). Mark i. 45 also tells of Jesus' popu-
larity and need to escape from the cro,vd. All these summaries fit Mark's
alleged secrecy motif. Most of the summary statements are either
isolated verses or editorial additions to a story. Mark i. 45 is just such
an isolated verse and consequently unconnected with the story of the
leper. If, as many writers on the synoptic problem admit and argue,
many of the pericopes in Matthew and Mark are based on either one
another's work or a common source, then the parallel to the story of the
healing of the leper in Matthew needs to be taken into account, and it
re-enforces our case. The Matthaean parallel is in Matt. viii. 1-4 and
supports the argument that the pericope in Mark ends at i. 44. There
is no Matthaean parallel to i. 45 after this healing. I
Thus, consideration of the context re-enforces the general tendency
of the linguistic and syntactical arguments, namely that Jesus is the
subject of ijpgaTo in i. 45, that AOyO~ refers to the gospel message and that
the verse is independent of and unconnected with the healing of the
leper. This story reaches its climax in a characteristically Marcan way
with a command to silence; and i. 45 is a summary statement-a
device used often by Mark to provide a link with the next story as well
as to give a progress report on the popularity of Jesus' mission.
J. K. ELLIOTT

A FRAGMENT OF THE ACTA PILATI IN

CHRISTIAN PALESTINIAN ARAMAIC
IN the Anhang to his Christlich-Paliistinische Fragmente aus der Oma-
jjaden-lVloschee zu Damaskus,2 F. Schultess printed (pp. 134-6) the
text of two palimpsest fragments containing, as the underwriting, a very
imperfect text of an unidentified apocryphal Gospel. 3 Schultess probably
failed to make the obvious identification of the fragments as coming
from the Acta Pilati because of his misreading of the word aal~ClO
(Fr. XXI, recto 2) as utayovaS'4 instead of signa.
I The Lucan parallel (Luke v. 12-16) follows Mark but avoids the ambiguity

inherent in Mark i. 45. Luke does not state that the healed leper himself was
responsible for spreading the fame of Jesus.
2 Abh. Kon. Ges. Wiss. zu Gottingen, ph£l.-hist. KZ., N.F. viii. 3 (Berlin, 19 0 5).

3 p. 134 n. I: 'Offenbar aus einem apokryphen Evangelium.'

4 See his lexical notes on p. 137. In his Grammatik des christlich-paliistinischen
Aramiiisch (Tubingen, 1924), however, the word is quoted and correctly identi-
fied on p. 42.

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Brock, S., A Fragment of the "Acta Pilati" in Christian Palestinian Aramaic , Journal of
Theological Studies, n.s.:22 (1971) p.157

NOTES AND STUDIES

Schultess's fragments XX and XXI correspond as follo\vs to the
Greek text:
T == C. Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha (Leipzig, 1876).
V = P. Vannutelli, Actorum Pilati textus synoptici (Rome, 1938).
Schultess § T V
XXI, r. 1 i.6 p. 2226 - 8 p. 3 61 4-22
r.2 i. 6-ii. I 2221°-223 1 37 14-3 81
V. I 11. 1 223 3- 5 3 810-18
V. 2 ii. 1 223 7 - 9 3 823 - 8
XX,V.I ii. 5 227 1- 2 4 618-19
r. 1 ii. 5 227 6- 7 47 18- 27
r.2 ii. 5 228 1- 2 4 810-15

Schultess un fortunately I gave no photograph for the fragments in

question, and presumably they are included in his general dating of the
Damascus fragments (apart from nos. VII and XIX) to the ninth
century or earlier.
The Christian Palestinian Aramaic text of the Acta P£lat£ is definitely
translated direct from Greek, and not tv£a Syriac, although a Syriac
version of the work exists in two slightly different forms:
(I) Published by Rahmani in Stud£a Syr£aca, ii, pp. ~-a1a, on the
basis of a fourteenth-century Mosul manuscript, with the variants of an
eighth-century Midyat manuscript. 2
(2) The beginning of the text, lost in Rahmani's edition, is found in
a fragment of c. A.D. 1200, preserved as Mingana 8yr. 639. Mingana
printed the text (rather inaccurately)3 in volume III of his Catalogue
(pp. 79-81), and added an English translation. 4 SEBASTIAN BROCK

I Especially in view of the very late date given to the other oriental versions

of the Acta Pilati by O'Ceallaigh, 'Dating the Commentaries of Nicodemus' ,

H. T.R. lvi (1963), pp. 21-58.
2 For these manuscripts see J.S.S. xiv (1969), pp. 21 1-15, esp. 213.

Rahmani's date of the Midyat manuscript is grudgingly admitted by O'Ceallaigh

(p. 42). As far as Syriac is concerned it seems unlikely that this type of literature
would have been translated from Greek much after the seventh century.
3 Among the more glaring misrepresentations of the manuscript are:

p. 79, 1. 2 (of Syriac text): (r<';~L~) ~1Z:l] r<~(.\,~b ms (last four

letters very uncertain).
p. 80, 1. 6: The manuscript has nothing corresponding to the words t='l and
tCT.JCt!i.a~ t~:t of Mingana's text.
p. 8r, 1. 14: After Q2l.~~ Mingana's text has lost the following vlords through
homoioteleuton: <nl.~aa\ OOm ~;r< ____~m~ ___~_~l~ t .. ~r<'a
... The Anaphora and Paradosis Pilati also survive in Syriac, and have been
published, from a thirteenth-century manuscript (Sinai syr. 82), by Mrs. Gib-
son in Studia Sinaitica, v. t<-!\.. (she also gives two Arabic versions, one of

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