There is a connection not difficult to be traced be- tween this fact and that which follows on the last re- currence of Philip's name in the history of the Gospels. The desire to see Jesus gave occasion to the utterance of words in which the Lord spoke more distinctly than ever of the presence of his Father with him, in the voice from heaven which manifested the Father's will (ver. 28). The words appear to have sunk into the heart of at least one of the disciples, and he brooded over them. The strong cravings of a passionate but unenlightened faith led him to feel that one thing was yet wanting. They heard their Lord speak of his Father ami their Father. He was going to his Father's house. They
1 PHILIP THE APOSTLE
were to follow him there. But why should they not have even now a vision of the divine glory? It was part of the childlike simplicity of his nature that no reserve should hinder the expression of the craving. " Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us" (xiv, 8 i. And the answer to that desire belonged also specially to him. He had all along been eager to lead others to see Jesus. He had been with him, looking on him from the very commencement of his ministry, and yet he had not known him. He had thought of the glory of the Father as consisting in something else than the Truth, Righteousness, Love that he had witnessed in the Son. " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father ; and how say est thou, then, Show us the Father?" (John xiv, 9). No other fact connected with the name of Philip is recorded in the Gospels. The close relation in which we have seen him standing to the sons of Zebedee and Xathanael might lead us to think of him as one of the two unnamed disciples in the list of fishermen on the Sea of Tiberias who meet us in John xxi. He is among the company of disciples at Jerusalem after the ascension (Acts i, 13) and on the day of Pentecost.
2. Traditionary Notices. — Besides the above all is uncertain and apocryphal. Philip is mentioned by Clem- ent of Alexandria as having had a wife and children, and as having sanctioned the marriage of his daughters instead of binding them to vows of chastity (Strom, iii, 52; Euseb. //. E. iii, 30) ; and he is included in the list of those who had borne witness of Christ in their lives, but had not died what was commonly looked on as a martyr's death {Strom, iv, 73). There is nothing im- probable in the statement that he preached the Gospel in Phrygia (Theodoret, in Psct. cxvi ; Niceph. //. E. ii, 36). Polycrates (in Euseb. //. E. iii, 31), bishop of Ephesus, speaks of him as having fallen asleep in the Phrygian Hierapolis, as having had two daughters who had grown old unmarried, and a third, witli special gifts of inspiration (tv'Ayioj RvtvpaTi Tvo\iTivacifiii'7]).\\ho had died at Ephesus. There seems, however, in this mention of the daughters of Philip, to be some confu- sion between the apostle and the evangelist. Eusebius in the same chapter quotes a passage from Cains, in which the four daughters of Philip, prophetesses, are mentioned as living with their father at Hierapolis, and as buried there with him, and himself connects this fact with Acts xxi, 8, as if they referred to one and the same person. Polycrates in like manner refers to him in the Easter Controversy, as an authority for the Quartodeci- man practice (Euseb. //. E. v, 24). It is noticeable that even Augustine (Serm. 2GG) speaks with some uncer- tainty as to the distinctness of the two Philips.
Epiphanius (xxvi, 13) mentions a Gospel of Philip as in use among the Gnostics. See Gospels, Spuri- ous. The apocryphal "Acta PkilippF are utterly wild and fantastic, and if there is any grain of truth in them, it is probably the bare fact that the apostle or the evan- gelist labored in Phrygia, and died at Hierapolis. He arrives in that city with his sister Mariamne and his friend Bartholomew. The wife of the proconsul is con- verted. The people are drawn away from the worship of a great serpent. The priests and the proconsul seize on the apostles and put them to the torture. John suddenly appears with words of counsel and encourage- ment. Philip, in spite of the warning of the Apostle of Love reminding him that he should return good for evil, curses the city, and the earth opens and swallows it up. Then his Lord appears and reproves him for his vindictive anger, and those who had descended to the abyss are raised out of it again. The tortures which Philip had suffered end in his death, but, as a punish- ment for his offence, he is to remain for forty days ex- cluded from Paradise. After his death a vine springs up on the spot where his blond had fallen, and the juice of the grapes is used for the Fucharistic cup (Tischen- dorf, Acta Apocrypha, p. 7c-94). The book which con-
I'll I LIP
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PHILIP
t.-iins this narrative is apparently only the last chapter to take to flight, and Philip was among them. The