The bonds of peculiar affection which united St. Paul to his Philippian converts are impressed on every line of the letter (see PHILIPPIANS, EPISTLE TO THE) which he wrote to them from Rome, prob- ably at the beginning of his first captivity there (c. A.D. 59-60).
That St. Paul again visited Philippi during the eastern travels implied in the Pastoral Epistles, is not recorded, but may almost be assumed. The apostle journeyed to Macedonia from Ephesus (1 Ti 15), and the journey would naturally be made vid Troas and Philippi. And if the recorded visit to Troas (2 Ti 4") lace as is probable, to a different and later occasion, the indications of the Pastoral Epistles suggest two visits to Philippi rather than one.
At the beginning of the 2nd cent. the Church of Philippi emerges once more for a moment into the light of history, when it received a visit from one apostolic father and a letter from another. Some time in the reign of Trajan (i.e. before A.D. 117), Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was condemned to death as a Christian, and sent in charge of a guard of soldiers to be thrown to the beasts at (eas His route, as we know from his Epistles, lay through Philadelphia, Smyrna, and Troas. Thence, like St. Paul, he must have crossed to Neapolis and so reached Philippi (his guards were probably making for one of the Adriatic ports by ΜΝ of the Egnatian road), since the urch of Philippi ‘welcomed’ and ‘ escorted’ him, and on his depar- ture wrote two letters, one to the Church at Antioch consoling them for the loss of their bishop, and one to Polycarp of Smyrna asking for copies of as many as possible of the letters which Ignatius had written in Asia Minor.* St. Poly- carp’s answer is his Epistle to the Philippians, the sole source of our knowledge of this episode of Philippian history. We learn from it, further, that scandal had been caused at Philippi by the conduct of the presbyter Valens (the name is singularly frequent in ἢ se ΟΡ inscriptions), aad his wife, who had apparently, like Ananias and Sapphira, combined to carry out some dishonest financial transaction. Avarice would seem specially reprehensible to a Church which had distinjruished itself for liberality as the Philippian Church had done in St. Paul’s day (Ph 4*"; and of Macedonia generally, 2 Co 115" 8”), {Ce
Of the subsequent history of the Philippian Church nothing seems to be known till we meet
* It is not impossible that this request of the Philippians wae
the origin of the collection of a corpus of the Ignatian letters, and therewith of their preservation for later ages.
840 PHILIPPIANS, EPISTLE TO THE
the names of a few of its bishops among the sub- scriptions to 4th and 5th cent. councils: ‘ Por- phyrius a Macedonia de Philippis’ at Sardica in A.D. 344 (the Church of Philippi was therefore Athanasian, not Arian); ‘ Flaviano Philippensium qui Rufi quoque reuerendissimi Thessalonicensium episcopi locum gerebat’ (he signed next after the bishops of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Ephesus) at the ecumenical Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 ; *Sozon Philippi’ at the Latrocinium of Ephesus in A.D. 449, and the same bishop, ‘Sozon Philippensis,’ at the Council of Chaleedon, which undid the work of the Latrocinium, in A.D. 451.
Lrrerature.—For the topography—Leake, Travelsin Northern Greece, ree esp. pp. 214-225; and the Austrian and Bul- an staff maps of Vansichia: For the secular history— ivy, xlv. 29; Diodorus ; Strabo, vii. fr. 41; Dio, li. 4, § 6, and the Corpus Inacriptionum Latinarum, 11. i. 633-707, m1. Supple- mentum, 7337-7358. For the history of the ae Church generally—Lightfoot, St. Paul's Epistle to the ilippians 4, p. 47-65, S. Ignatius and 8. Polycarp}, τι. ii. pp. 897-934 ; fecans Series Episcoporum, p. 429; Le Quien, Oriens Chris- tianus, il. pp. 66-70. For further discussion and illustration of points f St. Luke's account (Ac 161249) gee, eg., the commentaries of Wetstein (1752) and Blass (Acta apostolorum, 1895), ad loc, ; Conybeare and Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, ch. ix.; Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire 1893), esp. pp. 156-158, and St. Paul the Traveller and the in Citizen (1895), pp. 213-226. C. H. TURNER.
PHILIPPIANS, EPISTLE TO THE.—
i. The Ohurch of Philippi. il. Time, Place, and Circumstances of Writing. iii. Contents of the Epistle. iv. Characteristics of the Epistle. Note 1. On Ph 11.
2. 25-11, et See pe y. Genuineness and Integrity of the Epistle. Literature.
i THe CHURCH OF PHILIPPI.—On the town see pene ane article. The Church of Philippi was ounded by St. Paul during his Second Missionary Journey, about the year A.D. 52 Turner, 50]; it was the first Church which he founded on the soil of Europe (Ac 16%), On his arrival in the city, accord- ing to his custom, he sought out the Jews, who do not appear to have been numerous, for they had no synagogue within the city, only a ‘place of prayer’ (προσευχή) outside the gates, on the banks of the river Gangites. Paul, accompanied by Silas and Timothy, and possibly by Luke (the use of ‘ we’ in Ac 16%, and the graphic character of the whole narrative, betray the hand of an eye-witness), re- Et to this place on the Sabbath day and spoke
some women whom they found there. A certain God-fearing proselyie named Lydia [or this may be simply an ethnic name=‘ the Lydian’; see above, Ρ. 177°], from the city of Thyatira, received the word, and was baptized with her household. Paul and his companions remained for some time in Philippi, continuing to frequent the Jewish place of prayer; there does not appear to have taken place any breach between him and the Jews on this occasion. The incident of the maid with the ‘spirit of divination,’ and the subsequent arrest of Paul and Silas, led to their abrupt departure, but not until the nucleus of a Christian Church had been formed. The author of the Book of Acts says (16%) that before leaving Philippi, Paul and Silas entered the house of Lydia and comforted ‘the brethren.’