https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/201 ... of-pilate/French scholar Pierre Chambert-Protat today announced on Twitter that he has discovered a previously unknown ancient text in manuscript Montpellier 157. This 9th century manuscript, copied in 848, is a collection of extracts on Easter, assembled by Florus of Lyons.
Dr C-P is researching Florus, which is how he came to look at this manuscript, and to realise that the first item in it was unknown.
He has generously uploaded pre-prints of two articles on the subject at the French HAL repository. The first here discusses the manuscript and its contents. The second, here, is entitled, “Une source inédite sur la question pascale au concile de Nicée : le Liber Timothei episcopi de pascha“[1].
The letter is by a certain bishop Timothy to an unidentified group. His intention is to specify how they should calculate the date of Easter, and avoid falling into the errors of a certain Stephanus (recently condemned and otherwise unknown) and four other types of error. In the process he attacks those who want to fix the date of Easter to the Roman Julian calendar – shades of our own time! – and those who reference the apocryphal Acts of Pilate.
The language is Latin, and contains various hellenisms, not well-understood always by the Latin translator. The subject matter seems to belong to Asia Minor or Syria, where many different methods of calculation were known. However the work seems to be known to St Augustine, which indicates that copies were in circulation in the south of Spain or in African in the second half of the 4th century.
Clearly Luke dates the ministry of Jesus to the 15th year of Tiberius. But the Marcionites did not accept Luke. Were they the only ones who rejected the text? There are differences in the dating of the Passion in the synoptics and John. It is hard for me to tell what the sectarians in Lyons or known to the presbyter in Lyons used the Acts for. But if the Acts were used positively by a Christian group and Maximinus II was merely favoring that group then Eusebius's comments are taken in a different light.