Ecumenical Commemoration
Deacon & Evangelist
October 11
also known as Philip the Evangelist, Philip the Deacon, St. Philip
Philip was one of the seven men chosen in Jerusalem to serve the widows of the early church, and after the apostles he became its first great missionary. Scattered from the city by persecution, he preached in Samaria, baptized an Ethiopian court official on the desert road to Gaza, and settled at Caesarea, where his four unmarried daughters prophesied and where he later lodged Paul. Acts calls him Philip the evangelist. His feast is October 11. He is not Philip the Apostle.
Philip was one of the Seven. When the church in Jerusalem was young and growing fast, its Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked in the daily sharing of food, and the twelve apostles said it was not right that they should leave the preaching of the word to wait on tables. So the disciples chose seven men, "of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom," to take up that work, and the apostles laid their hands on them. Stephen was the first of the seven, and Philip the second. This is that Philip, the deacon and evangelist, and not the apostle who bore the same name.
Then Stephen was stoned to death, and a great persecution broke over the church, and everyone but the apostles was driven out of Jerusalem, scattered through the countryside of Judea and Samaria. It might have looked like the end. Instead, "those who were scattered went about preaching the word," and the persecution that meant to snuff out the gospel only flung its sparks farther. Philip went down to a city of Samaria and preached Christ there, and the crowds listened with one mind, and there was much joy in that city.
While he was on that road an angel of the Lord told Philip to go south, to the desert road that runs down from Jerusalem toward Gaza. There he came upon a traveller: an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a high official in charge of all the treasure of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, riding home in his chariot from worship in Jerusalem. This was no small man. He had come a long way to seek the God of Israel, and now he was going back with his questions unanswered. And he was reading aloud, as men did, from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit told Philip to go and join the chariot.
Philip ran up and heard the man reading, and asked him, "Do you understand what you are reading?" The Ethiopian answered, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" and asked Philip to come up and sit beside him. The words he had been reading were the words of the suffering servant: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth." Of whom, the eunuch asked, does the prophet say this? Himself, or someone else? And "beginning with this Scripture," Philip told him the good news about Jesus, the Lamb who was led to the slaughter and opened not his mouth.
As they went along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?" He commanded the chariot to stop, and the two of them went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. And when they came up, "the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing." The gospel had reached the treasury of a distant African kingdom on a lonely road, in a single afternoon, through one man who obeyed the Spirit and knew his Scripture; the new believer went home rejoicing while the evangelist was already gone.
Philip found himself at Azotus, on the coast, the old Philistine town the Bible called Ashdod, and from there he went up the shore preaching in every town until he came to Caesarea. Caesarea Maritima was the great harbour city and the seat of Roman power in Judea, and there Philip made his home. Years later, when Paul was travelling to Jerusalem for the last time, Luke, who was with him, records that they stopped at Caesarea and "entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him. He had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied." The man who had once run beside the Ethiopian's chariot ended as a settled householder in a city on the sea, his daughters full of the Spirit, his door open to Paul. The gospel he had carried to a Samaritan city and to an African official did not stop at Caesarea. It ran on, as he had, to the ends of the earth.
How we know Philip is chiefly how we know the whole first generation of the church: through Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote as the companion of Paul and the historian of the early mission, and the three passages that carry Philip are woven into that larger account: the choosing of the Seven (Acts 6), the Samaritan mission and the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), and the stay at Caesarea on Paul's last journey (Acts 21). The Caesarea passage is one of Luke's "we" passages, written in the first person plural, so that at the end of Philip's story we have the report of a man who says he lodged under Philip's roof. Acts gives him the title by which the church has known him ever since: Philip the evangelist, one of the seven.
The central difficulty in his history is not doubt about the events but a persistent confusion of persons. There were two Philips in the apostolic age: Philip of Bethsaida, one of the Twelve, and this Philip, one of the Seven. Both had daughters remembered for prophecy, and from an early date the two were run together. The confusion has an ancient and honest root. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus late in the second century, and the writer Caius after him, both located a Philip with prophesying daughters at Hierapolis in Asia Minor, and both called him one of the apostles. Eusebius of Caesarea, writing his Church History around 325, preserved their testimony and set beside it the plain notice from Acts, that "this man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy," and that Luke places them at Caesarea. Eusebius laid the two accounts down together without forcing them into one; later readers, seeing daughters and prophecy in both, often did not.
Modern scholarship generally holds that the Hierapolis tradition belongs to the deacon and evangelist, whose four prophesying daughters Acts records, rather than to the apostle to whom Polycrates assigned them; but the sources themselves do not settle it, and the church has long been content to honour both Philips and to keep their feasts apart. Beyond Acts the record thins. The Eastern church numbered Philip among the Seventy and told that the apostles made him a bishop and sent him to Tralles, a city of Asia Minor near the modern Aydın in Turkey, where he preached and baptized and died in old age. That tradition is late and cannot be traced back to the apostolic sources; but it is the memory of a real church that received him as one of its founders, and it stands where such memories stand, honoured and undated, a witness to how far the evangelist was believed to have carried the word.
Philip the deacon and evangelist is kept on October 11 in the West and the East alike, distinct from Philip the Apostle, whose feast falls on May 1. He is honoured as one of the seven first deacons and as the first missionary of the church beyond Jerusalem, the evangelist of Samaria and the baptizer of the Ethiopian. In art he is shown as a deacon, often young and beardless, sometimes holding a book, and most often at the moment that made him famous: standing beside the chariot, baptizing the Ethiopian official in a wayside stream. His four daughters, "who prophesied," are remembered among the first women of the church to bear that gift, and the Eastern tradition of his later episcopate at Tralles keeps his name alive in the calendar of Asia Minor.
The Acts of the Apostles (chapters 6, 8, 21)(Greek (Luke), 1st century)
The only substantial source for Philip: the choosing of the Seven (Acts 6), the Samaritan mission and the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), and the stay at Caesarea with his four prophesying daughters on Paul's last journey (Acts 21).
Public domain: ESV at Bible Gateway
Church History (Historia Ecclesiastica), Book III(Greek, c. 325)
Book III preserves the second-century testimony of Polycrates and Caius about a Philip with prophesying daughters at Hierapolis, set beside Luke's notice of the four daughters at Caesarea; the root document of the ancient two-Philips confusion.
Public domain: New Advent (McGiffert, NPNF)
The Message of Acts(English, 1990)
Recommended: John Stott (The Bible Speaks Today)
The believing lay-and-pastor commentary on Acts, warm and careful, strong on the missionary movement of the Samaritan chapter and the Ethiopian's baptism; in print from IVP.
The Book of the Acts(English, 1988 (rev. edn.))
Recommended: F. F. Bruce (NICNT)
The classic evangelical commentary on Acts from within the believing tradition, sober on the sources and generous to the text; in print from Eerdmans.
Primary sources. Everything of substance about Philip comes from the Acts of the Apostles: chapter 6 (the choosing of the Seven), chapter 8 (Samaria and the Ethiopian eunuch), and chapter 21 (the stay at Caesarea), read here in the ESV at Bible Gateway. Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History (c. 325), Book III, chapter 31, preserves the early testimony of Polycrates and Caius about a Philip and his prophesying daughters at Hierapolis, and sets it beside Luke's notice of the four daughters at Caesarea; it is free in the New Advent and CCEL editions.
Principal study. The Catholic Encyclopedia's article "The Seven Deacons" (New Advent) is the compact standard reference on Philip's place among the Seven and the ancient confusion with the apostle; free online.
Recommended modern reading. John Stott's The Message of Acts (The Bible Speaks Today; IVP) is the believing lay-and-pastor commentary to put in a reader's hand: warm, careful, and alert to the missionary drive of the Samaritan chapter and the eunuch's baptism; in print. For a deeper study from within the same tradition, F. F. Bruce's The Book of the Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Eerdmans) is the classic evangelical commentary on Acts, sober on the sources and generous to the text; in print.
Further reading. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article "Philip the Apostle" (Wikisource) lays out the two-Philips problem in the older scholarship; useful for seeing how the confusion was argued.
Online resources. The three Acts passages are at Bible Gateway in the ESV; Eusebius, Church History, Book III, is at New Advent and CCEL, with the Philip material in chapter 31.
Almighty and everlasting God, you called your servant Philip the Deacon and Evangelist to preach the Gospel to the people of every nation: Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Readings for a Missionary
Isaiah 49:1–7Psalm 98Romans 10:11–18Luke 5:1–11