Socrates and Jesus I have a book series called "The Great Books of the Western World" compiled by the Encyclopedia Britanica. The first book lists a ten year program of reading through most of the series, pinpointing important parts of the series. I started reading through them ove the last few weeks, following their suggested order.
The first reading is Plato's "Apology," which I call 'Socrates Last Stand.' Socrates has been charged with corruption of the youth and sentenced to death. In the Apology he makes his defense, but to no avail.
I remember hearing that Plato and other Greek philosophers were found with versions of Holy Scriptures in the Gnostic texts, which were considered heretical and the Gnostics were not well liked. I wondered if they had a story telling of Jesus' trial and his defense. THis story, if unique to the Gnostic tradition, would also be repressed and left out of later versions of the Bible.

I have another text called "The Lost Books of the Bible" which was published in 1926. One of the books is attributed to Nicodemus, who was a pharisee yet he followed Jesus. This book tells of Pilate charging Jesus and Jesus defending himself in a manner similar to Socrates.

The problem with this is that I don't think that the collection of books "The Lost Books" are wholly authentic. I even suspect them to be 19th or 20th century forgeries. I have looked at the early cannonical lists of the early Christian church and I dont' see a lot of similarity with those lists and the table of conents of "THe Lost Books." But the Lost Books also has writings of Hermas, which I have heard mentioned by Biblical scholars, so perhaps these texts are truly ancient, but I can't find evidence that they were even considered for inclusion into the Bible, or even mentioned in the debates.  ¶ 8:23 AM