The Acts of Pilate occasionally referred to as the Gospel of Pilate is a book of New Testament apocrypha.
The Harrowing of Hell episode depicts St Dismas accompanying Christ in Hell, and the deliverance of the righteous Old Testament patriarchs..
A literature of miracle-tale romance developed around a conflated Leucius Charinus as an author of further texts.
In it, Leucius and Charinus, the two souls raised from the dead after the Crucifixion, relate to the Sanhedrin the circumstances of the descent of Christ to Limbo.
The second part (xii-xvi) regards the Resurrection.
The first (chapters i-xi) contains the trial of Jesus based upon Luke 23.
The main body of Acta Pilati is in two sections, with an appendix, Descensus ad Infernos-the Harrowing of Hell-that does not exist in the Greek texts, and is a later addition to the Latin versions.
The dates of its accreted sections are uncertain, but scholars agree in assigning it to the middle of the fourth century.
The Acts of Pilate occasionally referred to as the Gospel of Pilate is a book of New Testament apocrypha
