One Philip, or Two? The Apostle, the Evangelist and the Tomb at Hierapolis

Cold open

Picture this. July 2011. A hillside in western Turkey, above the brilliant white terraces of Pamukkale. An Italian archaeologist tells the press that, after years of searching, his team has found it. The tomb of Saint Philip. One of the twelve apostles of Jesus.

Headlines everywhere: the apostle's tomb, found at last.

But here's the snag. The New Testament has two Philips who followed Jesus. One was an apostle. The other... wasn't. And by the end of the second century, the stories about them start to look... tangled. Was that a mix-up? Or does it tell us something? Scholars still argue about it.

So what does the Bible actually say about each Philip? And what was found on that hillside?

As always, I'll tell you where every claim comes from. Scripture, early tradition, modern scholarship... or legend. And today, you'll want to keep your Philips straight.

Let's begin.

Philip of Bethsaida

Scripture

Philip the apostle appears in all four lists of the Twelve: Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts. And in every one of those lists, he's fifth. Every single time.

But the Synoptic Gospels never give him a single line. For that, we need John.

John tells us that Jesus "found Philip and said to him, 'Follow me.'" And then he adds: "Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter."

Scholarship

Now, Philip is a Greek name. Philippos, "lover of horses." The name of Alexander the Great's father. Jews of the time used it too. It even ran in the royal family: one of Herod the Great's sons was Philip the tetrarch.

And Bethsaida sat just inside his territory. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that this Philip raised the village of Bethsaida "unto the dignity of a city" and renamed it Julias. Where exactly it stood, archaeologists are still arguing.

Scripture

Back to John. Next thing we're told, Philip finds a man called Nathanael and tells him: "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."

Nathanael's reply? "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

Philip answers with three words. "Come and see."

Which, honestly, is a pretty good motto for this channel.

The man with the sums

Scripture

Our next Philip scene is a famous one. A large crowd is coming towards Jesus, out on the far side of the Sea of Galilee. And Jesus asks Philip: "Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?"

And John adds: "He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do."

And Philip does the maths. "Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little."

Scholarship

A denarius was roughly a day's wage for a labourer, so that's more than six months' pay, and it still wouldn't be enough. That's Philip's answer: the numbers don't work.

Scripture

Then Andrew pipes up: there's a boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. "But what are they for so many?"

Notice Andrew. Same town as Philip in chapter one, right beside him here, and with him again later on. In John's Gospel, these two keep appearing together.

Speculation

Why ask Philip? John's answer: it was a test. But Luke links the feeding of the five thousand with a town called... Bethsaida. Philip's home town. So was he the local who'd know where to buy bread? Nice idea. But John doesn't say so. File it under "possible".

"Sir, we wish to see Jesus"

Scripture

Two more scenes, both in Jerusalem, both in the last week of Jesus's life.

First, the Passover crowds. John says that among the pilgrims who'd come up to worship were some Greeks. And they come to Philip, "who was from Bethsaida in Galilee", with a request: "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."

Philip goes and tells Andrew. And Andrew and Philip go and tell Jesus. There's that pair again.

Speculation

Why Philip? Greek name, so he must have spoken Greek? Maybe! But John doesn't say why they chose him. We'd only be guessing.

Scripture

Second scene: the Last Supper. Jesus has been talking about the Father. And Philip says: "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."

Jesus replies: "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father."

Philip appears once more, in the upper room in Acts chapter one. After that, the New Testament never again names Philip as one of the Twelve.

But there's another Philip still to come.

The other Philip

Scripture

A few chapters into Acts, the Jerusalem church has a problem: some widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve call everyone together and say it isn't right for them to "give up preaching the word of God to serve tables." Pick seven men to take this on.

And the seven chosen are: Stephen... and Philip. Then Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolaus.

This Philip is chosen so that the Twelve can get on with their own work. He's one of the Seven, not one of the Twelve.

Then, after Stephen is stoned, a persecution breaks out and, Luke says, the believers were "all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles."

And who goes off to Samaria and starts preaching? Philip. Crowds, signs, healings. The apostles in Jerusalem hear of it and send Peter and John down. Luke keeps this Philip on the other side of the line: the apostles stay in Jerusalem; Philip goes to Samaria.

Next, an angel sends him to the desert road running from Jerusalem down to Gaza. And there, in a chariot, is an Ethiopian court official, a eunuch in charge of the treasure of "Candace, queen of the Ethiopians." He's reading the prophet Isaiah, out loud.

Scholarship

"Ethiopia" here means the kingdom of Kush, on the Nile in what's now Sudan. And "Candace", or Kandake, was a royal title for its queens, not a name.

Scripture

Philip runs up to the chariot. "Do you understand what you are reading?" "How can I, unless someone guides me?" So Philip climbs aboard. The passage is "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter", and, Luke says, "beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus." They come to some water. The official asks to be baptised, and Philip baptises him.

And then... the Spirit of the Lord carries Philip away. The official sees him no more, and goes on his way rejoicing. Philip "found himself at Azotus", and preached his way up the coast to Caesarea.

Much later in Acts, we meet him one last time. Paul's party arrives in Caesarea, and they stay at "the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven." And Luke adds one more detail, and it matters: "He had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied."

Hold on to those four daughters.

One Philip, or two?

Tradition

Now we leave the New Testament. Around the year 190, a bishop called Polycrates of Ephesus writes to the bishop of Rome. The row is over the date of Easter, and to back up his churches' custom, he lists great Christians buried in his province.

At the top: "Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who fell asleep in Hierapolis; and his two aged virgin daughters." A third daughter, he says, rests at Ephesus.

Notice something? An apostle... with daughters. Now, Acts gives a Philip daughters too, but that's Philip the evangelist, and he has four, all prophetesses. Polycrates mentions three, and doesn't say they prophesied.

And the accounts don't all agree. Around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria counts Philip among the married apostles, and says he gave his daughters in marriage.

Then, in the early two hundreds, a man called Proclus, a leader of the Montanists, a movement that prized prophecy, is quoted from a debate held in Rome. He says the four prophetess daughters of Philip are buried at Hierapolis, and their father's tomb is there too. Four daughters, prophetesses, just like Acts.

And when Eusebius writes his history of the church, in the early three hundreds, he quotes Polycrates and Proclus... and then, in the very next breath, quotes Acts 21 about Philip's daughters at Caesarea. Elsewhere he writes that "Philip the apostle dwelt at Hierapolis with his daughters," and passes on a report from Papias, an early bishop of Hierapolis itself, who heard "a wonderful tale" from the daughters of Philip.

So in Eusebius's history, the apostle and the evangelist's daughters end up in the same story.

Scholarship

So who really died at Hierapolis? Honestly, it's debated.

Many scholars think it was the evangelist, and that Polycrates, or his sources, merged the two men. Those daughters, they point out, sound an awful lot like the ones in Acts 21.

Others, like the great Victorian scholar J. B. Lightfoot, argued that Polycrates was right, and that it really was the apostle. On that side: Polycrates lived in the same province, only a few generations later, and says seven of his own relatives had been bishops before him. And the families don't match: three daughters, not four, and no mention of prophecy.

And Christopher Matthews, in a 2002 study, goes further still. He argues that all the early Philip traditions, those in Acts included, trace back to a single figure: the apostle.

What the sources show is that, by the late second century, a Philip was being remembered at Hierapolis. Which one is a question nobody has settled. And the Catholic and Orthodox churches, whose traditions place the apostle's death at Hierapolis, still remember the two Philips on different days.

Snake Street

Legend

Now, legend. The Acts of Philip, probably put together in the three hundreds, sends Philip on wild adventures and ends with his death in a city it calls Ophioryme. Roughly, "Snake Street". The book says it's Hierapolis, and its people worship snakes.

The proconsul's wife, Nicanora, becomes a believer, the proconsul is furious, and Philip is hung up... head downward, by his ankles.

In the story, Philip curses his enemies and calls on the abyss to swallow them. It does! But then Jesus appears and rebukes him for repaying evil with evil. His punishment? Forty days shut outside paradise. A legend in which the hero gets told off.

Scholars read it as a religious novel, not history, written centuries after Philip. But it's the source of the upside-down Philip you'll see in later Christian art.

Scholarship

And the Gospel of Philip, found at Nag Hammadi in 1945? Most scholars date it to around the third century. The name comes from a title at the very end: "The Gospel according to Philip". Inside, Philip gets exactly one line. It's famous for a passage usually read as Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene... but the page is damaged. There are holes where who did the kissing should be, and again at where. So anyone who tells you exactly where that kiss landed is filling in the gaps themselves.

The tomb on the hill

Scholarship

So, back to that hillside, above the old Roman spa city of Hierapolis. On the hill stands a remarkable building: the Martyrion of Saint Philip, built in the early four hundreds. Eight-sided, with rooms all around, some of which excavators think housed pilgrims. Solid archaeology: by then, Philip was being honoured here in a big way.

Then, in 2011, Francesco D'Andria's Italian team excavated a church about forty metres away. At its centre was an older Roman tomb, dated to the first century AD. The church had been built around it in the late fourth or fifth century.

Why does D'Andria think it was Philip's? He points to marble steps worn down by countless feet, crosses scratched on what began as a pagan tomb, and a bronze bread stamp of unknown origin, from around the sixth or seventh century, now in a museum in Virginia. It shows "Saint Philip" between two buildings, which he identifies as this church and the Martyrion.

What was not found? No bones. No name carved on the tomb. Some 2011 news reports mentioned inscriptions, but D'Andria's own account cites none.

There is, though, an epitaph from Hierapolis, now lost, for an archdeacon at the shrine. Probably from the four or five hundreds, it honours "the holy and glorious apostle and theologian Philip." So by then, at least one man who served there called its Philip an apostle. Though one database of saints' cults notes that "theologian" was a title more usually given to... the evangelist.

D'Andria believes the relics were moved, probably to Constantinople, around the end of the sixth century.

Later Tradition

And from the sixth century on, Rome has claimed some of them, in the Basilica of the Twelve Holy Apostles, where they're still venerated today.

Scholarship

So what does the tomb tell us? That by the four or five hundreds, Christians honoured it enough to build a church around it, and D'Andria argues it was Philip's. What it can't tell us is who was actually laid there... or which Philip the earliest pilgrims had in mind.

Close

So. Two Philips.

One, from Bethsaida, who said "come and see," did the sums when Jesus asked about bread, and asked to be shown the Father.

The other, one of the Seven, who preached in Samaria, climbed into a stranger's chariot, and hosted Paul's party in Caesarea, where his four daughters prophesied.

The New Testament keeps them apart. By the late second century, writers were placing an apostle Philip, with daughters, at Hierapolis. Two men tangled together? Or the apostle himself, remembered rightly? Scholars still disagree. And on a hill in Turkey, a fifth-century shrine still marks the spot where a Philip was honoured.

Which one? Come and see. And then decide for yourself.

Next time: a tax collector called Matthew, another called Levi... and a Gospel with a question mark over who wrote it. Two names for one man? We'll see.