Pliny's Correspondence and the Acts of the Apostles: An Intertextual Relationship?

The Acts of the Apostles depended on Pliny's famous correspondence with Trajan about the trials, execution, and sending of Christian citizens to Rome. Both texts share numerous, distinctive parallels: marketplace disturbances, puzzled reactions and official inquiries of government superiors, making a sacred appeal to the emperor, "Christian" as a trial insult, hesitancy about applying the "Christian" label, showing reverence to the empire and the public numina, maintaining standard trial procedures, and the depiction of defendants as crazy. Acts also mentions an opponent, Tertullus, whose cognomen is uncommon in epigraphical evidence prior to the 2nd century, but happens to be the name of Pliny's assistant and successor in Bithynia-Pontus.