Pilate and the Forged Memoirs

The historian we have already named also agrees that Archelaus came to power after Herod. He records how Archelaus took over the kingdom of the Jews by the will of his father Herod and by the decision of Caesar Augustus, and how, when he fell from power after ten years, his brothers Philip and Herod the younger, together with Lysanias, went on governing their own tetrarchies. The same writer shows in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities that in about the twelfth year of the reign of Tiberius—who succeeded to the rule of the whole empire after Augustus had held power for fifty-seven years—Pontius Pilate was entrusted with Judea, and that he stayed there ten full years, almost until the death of Tiberius. [a] So the forgery of those who only the other day circulated “memoirs” against our Savior is plainly exposed. The very date noted at their head is the first thing that proves the forgers’ lie. [d] For they place what they have dared to write about the Savior’s passion in the fourth consulship of Tiberius, which fell in the seventh year of his reign. At that time, it is clear, Pilate had not yet even arrived in Judea—if we are to use Josephus as our witness, who plainly shows in the work mentioned that Pilate was made governor of Judea by Tiberius in the twelfth year of his reign. [e]