Pilate cycle

The Pilate cycle is a group of various pieces of early Christian literature that either purport to be written by Pontius Pilate, or else otherwise closely describe his activities and the Passion of Jesus. Unlike the gospels, these later writings were not canonized in the New Testament, and were hence relegated to apocrypha. Some writings were obscure, with few ancient textual references known today; they survived merely through happenstance, and may not have been widely read by early Christians in the Roman Empire and Christians in the Middle Ages. Others were more popular. The most notable example is the Gospel of Nicodemus (or "Acts of Pilate"), which proved quite influential in medieval and Renaissance Christianity.

The scholarly term Pilate cycle was not used by early Christians, many of whom might have had access to one or two of these accounts at most. It is rather an umbrella designation used much later to collect the writings attributed to Pilate.

None of the writings is considered by modern scholars to have been written by Pilate or his contemporaries.