PHILIP, Apostle, Saint. - One of the "twelve," from Bethsaida (v.), the fifth in the lists (Mt. 10:3; Mk. 3:18; Lk. 6:14; Acts 1:13). In the Gospels, only John gives biographical information about him. Called by Jesus, he informed his friend Nathanael or Bartholomew (?) thus: "We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and the prophets wrote: it is Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jn. 1:43-45). He spoke according to the common opinion, still ignorant of the mystery. As he was about to multiply the loaves, to Jesus who asked him, to test him, "where to find bread" for all, P. replied that "two hundred denarii would not be enough to give each one a small portion" (Jn. 6:5-7). It does not follow from this that P. was the steward of the apostolic college.
The Greek proselytes of Judaism, in order to approach Jesus, turned to P., who spoke of it to Andrew, and both presented them to the Master, obtaining an answer confirmed by a voice from heaven (Jn. 12:21-31). At the Last Supper, to P.'s lofty question: "Lord, show us the Father," Jesus replied among other things: "P., whoever has seen me has seen the Father... Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me...?" (Jn. 14:9-11).
Tradition is unanimous in attributing to P. the evangelization of Phrygia: it is uncertain about the rest of his biography. Some confused him with P. the Deacon (v.). Pseudo-Abdias attributes to him the evangelization of Scythia. According to Polycrates (in Eusebius, Hist. eccl., III, 31: PG 20, 280) he would have died at Hierapolis in Phrygia. From his three daughters, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, would have learned that P. raised a dead man (Eusebius, loc. cit., 39). The kind of martyrdom is uncertain: several attest that he was crucified upside down. The apocryphal Acts of P. are legendary (v. below). The Church celebrates him together with St. James the Less on May 1, a commemoration of the dedication of the church now called that of the Twelve Apostles in Rome.
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ACTS OF PHILIP
Apocryphal work, whose origins go back to the first half of the 4th century.
The textual tradition is very complicated. The complete text has not been preserved, but only fragments of individual Acts, which probably represent different recensions of the original text, including in Eastern languages (Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Arabic); the difficult literary problem has not yet been well studied. The author of these Acts, of a low intellectual level, knew the great apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and was a heretic of the Messalian type who perhaps lived in Asia Minor. The Coptic Manichaean Psalter (cf. A Manichean Psalm-Book,
PHILIP, APOSTLE, saint. - St. Philip the Apostle by Luca Della Robbia, Florence, Cloister of Santa Croce, Fazzi Chapel.
II, ed. C. R. Allberry, Stuttgart 1938), written according to the editor (p. xx) around 340, presupposes the existence of apocryphal Acts of Philip (p. 192, 10; 194, 11).
Edition of the Greek fragments: M. Bonnet, Acta apostolorum apocrypha, II, II, Leipzig 1903, p. 1 ff. The Syriac recension is in Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, I, London 1871, p. 73 ff. (Syriac text), II, ibid. 1871, p. 69 ff. (English translation).
Bibliography6 works
Erik Peterson
THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP
An apocryphon in use among the Gnostics of Egypt, which Epiphanius (Haer., 26, 13, 1) knew and from which he quotes a sentence.
The soul, in ascending to heaven, answers each of the higher powers that it has known itself, "having handed over its roots," by not procreating children for the archon of this aeon, knowing itself destined for the heights. The idea is clear (cf. also the formula of the Messalians, in Irenaeus, I, 21, 5). The soul comes from on high; by not procreating children it frees itself from this world and can ascend again on high.
Recently the Coptic translation of this gospel has been found (J. Doresse, Nouveaux textes gnostiques coptes, in Vigiliae Christianae, 3 [1949], p. 134). Only after the publication of this text will it be possible to judge how much truth there was in the hypotheses about the influence of the Gospel of Philip on other apocrypha in the Coptic language. Leontius, De sectis act., III, 2 (PG 86, 1. 1213) reports that the Gospel of Philip was read by the Manichaeans.
Bibliography
Erik Peterson