The wealth and diversity of the Greek, Latin and Eastern manuscript traditions, offer at the beginning of the Acts of Pilate a privileged field which allows both to approach the state of the oldest text and to identify some stages of its evolution. The study of the title and prologue proposed in these pages is based on a reconstruction of the text as it was read in the first half of the fifth century. From these textual data, on the one hand a thorough analysis of the complex dating contained in the first lines of the Acts of Pilate will highlight the influence of Eusebius of Caesarea, on the other hand a detailed study of the first components of the text will lead to propose a new understanding: originally the "title" and "prologue" formed a single literary unit. This was a bipartite title, each member of which corresponding to one of the two main parts of the text: acts of the trial (ch. 1-11) and the investigation by the Jewish leaders (ch. 12-16). How these results could clarify the history of the text will be discussed briefly in conclusion.