In Orthodoxy, the idea of a closed biblical canon is relatively late. For centuries apocryphal gospels were intertwined in the liturgical readings, creating new non-canonical textual forms. The role played by apocryphal gospels in the making of Orthodox liturgy is obvious in such hybrid textual forms as the Strasti Khristovy, but maybe less so in other aspects. The present paper traces back the history of the Slavic versions of the Acta Pilati, or Evangelium Nicodemi, in Orthodoxy in order to understand the religious and cultural impact of this text in the textual and the religious canon from the eleventh up to the seventeenth centuries.
