The three passages, as above discussed and illus- trated, suggest the following conclusions: (1) The evangelists were inferior to the apostles. They are placed third in order in Eph ; PhUip was unable to impart the Holy Spirit to the Samaritans ; Timothy was the assistant and delegate of St. Paul. Consistent with tliis conclusion is the epigram of Pseudo-Jerome (in Eph 4") 'omnis apostolus evan- gelista, non omnis evangelista apostolus.' (2) They were travelling missionaries, preaching the Gospel to those unacquainted with it, yet sometimes with a settled place of abode, as Philip at Ca3sarea, and Timothy at Ephesus. Thus they were officers act- ing for the whole Christian community, not for a single church only. Their function could be general, covering wide districts, or it could be, in
Practice, local and circumscribed. Thus Theo- oret's apparently contradictory statements can be reconciled : Trcpuoyres iidipvnov, yet ^t] Trepudvrei iraiToxoO. ' Going about they used to preach,' yet ' not going about everywhere ' (as apostles might do). [3) They were charismatically endowed. Com- pare the influence of the Holy Siiirit iipon Philip, and the x<ipiirMa of Timothy (1 Ti 4>*, 2 Ti 1"). Yet the revelations to the prophet and apostle were of a higher and more striking order. The apostles were fitted to be the direct authoritative repre- sentatives of Christ (Mt lO", Gal 4", 1 Co U=») ; the prophets, to sway the heart and conscience by the demonstration of the Spirit and of power ( 1 Co 14'^'') ; the evangelists were more ' matter-of-fact men,' preaching the word, communicating the facts of the Gospel, paving the way for the more system- atic work of the pastors and teachers (see order in Eph 4") who watched over and trained the churches when founded (2 Ti 4^"'). But while this may suffice for a distinction in work, it must not be taken as exclusive, so that apostles could not be prophets, or that apostles and prophets could not be evangelists, or that evangelists could not be pastors or teachers, or both. In the floating constitution of the h.olf-organized early Church, different kinds of work were amalgamated (as most always happen) according to qualifications
and circumstances (cf. 1 Co 1", .-^c 8", and the mi.xed instructions to Timothy and Titus). (4) J'hcy were, sometimes at any rate, suh'ninly set apart for the special functivn. Thus Timothy (1 Ti 4", 2 Ti 1') ; and probably Paul and Barnabas (Ac 13'"') were (so far as the Church was concerned) set apart, in the first instance, not as apostles, but as evangelists from among the 'prophets and teachers ' at Antioch.
But we are still left in much uncertainty as to the exact position of the eva.yye\i<rrrii, and this un- certainty is increased ratlier than diminished by the contributions of later literature to the subject. Why, for instance, is there no mention of evan- gelists in the Apostolic Fathers? Because, says Harnack, there was no definite primitive distinc- tion between apostle and evangelist, and in the Didachf the ' apostles ' are just evangelists. But why should not evangelist have sur\ived, and apostle have been reserved (as in later days) for the first direct representatives of Christ ? And, further, Avhen in the Didachi the ' apostles ' ara forbidden to stay more than two days in the same place, can we regard them as parallels to Paul, oi Philip, or Timothy, especially as in a letter to the last named such constant itinerancy is condemned (1 Ti 5") ? Of course the strict injunction in the Didachi may be due to the growing opportunities for imposing upon the hospitality of well-to-do Christians, and the missionaries referred to in 1 Ti may have been caricatures of the evangelist type ; but the difference is striking. A partial reply to the former question may be that the ex- tension of the apostolate beyond the Twelve and St. Paul (an extension obtaining apparently in the apostolic age itself) soon submerged the less familiar and less dignified name of evangelist. This, however, scarcely accounts for the speedy and growing exclusiveness of the apostolic title ; or for the fact that Eusebius recognizes in Pan- tijenus the evangelist a type of an old order still largely survi^-ing in the days of the Alexandrian, but not common in his own days (Eus. HE v. 10).
The material Eusebius attbrds us on this subject, though to some extent unhistorical, throws back light on the primitive use of the term evangelist. He tells how Pant.-enus found that his arrival in India had been anticipated by the written Gospel of Matthew ; he tells how Thaddsus, one of the Seventy, had been sent by the Apostle Thomas, under divine impulse, to Edessa, as a preacher and evangelist of the teaching of Christ (HE i. 13), and this ' teaching ' (also called ' the seed of the word of God') is the story of Jesus (§ 19). We may combine these hints with the fact that Euse- bius (leaving the rest unmentioned) avowedly re- cords ' the names of those [post-apostolic evan- ''elists] only who have transmitted the apostolic doctrine to us in writings still extant ' ; that Theo- doret definitely restricted the name to this class ; that, finally, (Ecumenius and Chrysostom confined the name to the writers of the Four Gospels ; and that <i'a77eXi<rr^t became (in the Apostolic Ordin- ances, Harnack, Texte, ii. 5) an appellation of the avayvaariji, the reader of the Gospel for the day, who had also to be Snyyv'fis. capable of explaining it. We may further recall that Philip interpreted the prophet Isaiah to the eunuch ; that Apollos (probably an evangelist) was mighty in the Scrip- tures ; tliat he had been taught the ' way of the Lord' more perfectly by Aquila and Priscilla (i)rob- ably evangelists also, as Theophylact believes) ; that Timothy the evangelist was strong in the Scriptures, one of the reasons doubtless for his choice ; that Paul passes on to Timothy the ' de- posit ' of the Gospel he had received from Christ, exhorts him to keep the original model of sound words, and reminds him of the word that is trust-