Philip

Philip the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ and is known in the New Testament almost entirely from the Gospel of John. That Gospel states that he came from Bethsaida in Galilee, the same town associated with Andrew and Peter. Jesus found Philip and called him to follow; Philip then sought out Nathanael and announced that the one of whom Moses and the prophets had written had been found, identifying Jesus as from Nazareth. Nathanael’s initial doubt and subsequent confession form one of the earliest call narratives in John. The Synoptic Gospels and the list of the Eleven in Acts name Philip among the Twelve but record no further incidents about him. No contemporary source gives a year of birth.

In John’s Gospel Philip appears at several later moments that show both a practical cast of mind and incomplete understanding. Before the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus asks him where bread might be bought for the crowd, and Philip answers in terms of the impossibility of the sum required. When certain Greeks who had come to worship at Passover wish to see Jesus, they approach Philip—perhaps because of his Greek name—and he and Andrew bring the request to Jesus. At the Last Supper Philip asks that the Father be shown to the disciples, prompting the reply that whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father. These scenes constitute virtually all that the canonical texts relate about him.

Later Christian tradition, much of it legendary and often entangled with the distinct figure of Philip the Evangelist (one of the Seven chosen in Acts), placed the apostle’s missionary work in Greece, Syria, and especially Phrygia in Asia Minor. The apocryphal Acts of Philip describe journeys with a sister named Mariamne and with Bartholomew, ending at Hierapolis. There, according to varying accounts, he suffered martyrdom by crucifixion, hanging, or stoning after preaching against local cults. Eusebius of Caesarea and other early writers mention a Philip at Hierapolis who had daughters; modern historians generally treat that notice as referring to the Evangelist or as a conflation of the two men. No source that can be controlled historically records a spouse or children of the apostle, and no precise year of death is attested. Archaeological work at Hierapolis has uncovered a martyrion long associated with his tomb.

Veneration of Philip is ancient in both East and West. In the Roman calendar he has long been commemorated together with James the Less; the feast, formerly kept on 1 May, is now observed on 3 May. The Byzantine tradition keeps his feast on 14 November and also remembers him among the Twelve on 30 June. Relics have been claimed by the Church of the Twelve Holy Apostles in Rome as well as by the shrine at Hierapolis. He is invoked as a patron of Luxembourg and, because of the Johannine episode of the loaves, of pastry cooks and hatters. He held neither the Roman papacy nor an Eastern patriarchate, and he belonged to no later religious order. Distinction from Philip the Evangelist, whose four prophesying daughters are named in Acts, remains essential for any cautious account of his life.