Philip of Bethsaida

Philip is one of the Twelve Apostles, a native of Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee and the townsman of Peter and Andrew (John 1:44), among the earliest the Lord called. The Synoptic Gospels and Acts name him in their lists of the Twelve but give him no words; it is the Gospel of John that draws his portrait — the apostle who reckons, who seeks, and whose questions draw out the Lord’s deepest answers. This file establishes who the canonical Philip is and how securely, before the later and more contested tradition is taken up.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

A Man of Bethsaida

The Fourth Gospel fixes Philip’s origin precisely: “Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter” (John 1:44; KJV). Bethsaida — “house of fishing” — lay at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, near the inflow of the Jordan, in a region where Greek and Aramaic met and where the population was mixed enough for the prophet’s phrase “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Isa 9:1; Matt 4:15) to have force. That Philip shares this home town with Andrew and Peter places him in the same circle of Galilean fishermen and seekers from which the Lord drew His first disciples (John 1:35–44). The Evangelist’s care to note the town is not incidental: it sets Philip among the very first to be called and links him, by geography and by the structure of John 1, to the chain of one disciple finding another that runs through the chapter (John 1:40–46).

Philip bears a thoroughly Greek name — Philippos, “lover of horses” — as does Andrew (Andreas). Such Greek names among Galilean Jews reflect the Hellenistic culture that had long overlaid the region, and they will matter later in the Gospel, where it is to Philip (and Andrew) that the Greeks who come up to the feast naturally turn (John 12:20–22; see The Greeks at the Feast). The Greek name is a small datum, but it is one of the few concrete things the canonical text gives, and the later tradition of Philip’s apostolate among the Greek-speaking cities of Phrygia would draw upon it.

In the Lists of the Twelve

In all four Synoptic-and-Acts catalogues of the Twelve, Philip stands at the head of the second group of four, after the two pairs of brothers (Peter and Andrew, James and John) and before the more obscure names. He appears in Matthew 10:3 (“Philip, and Bartholomew”), Mark 3:18 (“Philip, and Bartholomew”), Luke 6:14 (“Philip and Bartholomew”), and Acts 1:13 (“Philip, and Thomas”). In three of the four lists Philip is paired immediately with Bartholomew, a pairing the later tradition would make much of, since Bartholomew (often identified with the Nathanael whom Philip brings to Christ in John 1:45–46) becomes Philip’s missionary companion in the Hierapolis tradition (see The Companions). In the lists themselves, however, Philip is a name and no more: the Synoptic tradition assigns him no saying and no scene. Whatever the Church knows of Philip’s character it knows from the Gospel of John.

It must be said at once, because it governs everything that follows, that this Philip — Philip the Apostle, one of the Twelve — is to be carefully distinguished from Philip the Deacon and Evangelist of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 6:5; 8:5–40; 21:8), a different man, one of the Seven appointed to serve tables and later the evangelist of Samaria and the Ethiopian eunuch. The two were already confused in antiquity, and the confusion touches the Hierapolis tradition directly; it is set out in full in the companion file (see The Two Philips) and in The Conflation Problems.

The Johannine Portrait

What the Fourth Gospel gives, it gives vividly. Philip appears in four scenes, and across them a consistent character emerges.

First, he is the one who is found and who finds. “The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me” (John 1:43; KJV). Philip is, with this, among the very first disciples, and unusually he is called directly by the Lord’s own word “Follow me,” not through the mediation of another. His immediate response is to seek out Nathanael: “Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). When Nathanael objects, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”, Philip answers with the great evangelistic word, “Come and see” (John 1:46) — the pattern of one disciple bringing another that is the engine of John 1 (see Come and See).

Second, he is the reckoner. Before the feeding of the five thousand, “Jesus . . . saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do” (John 6:5–6; KJV). Philip answers with a calculation: “Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little” (John 6:7). The Evangelist tells us plainly that the question was a test, and Philip’s answer is the honest, arithmetic response of a practical man who sees the impossibility but not yet the One who will overcome it (see Come and See).

Third, he is the one the Greeks approach. “And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip . . . and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:20–21; KJV). Philip brings the request to Andrew, and the two together bring it to the Lord (John 12:22) — a scene treated in its own section (see The Greeks at the Feast).

Fourth, and weightiest, he is the seeker of the Father. At the Supper, in answer to the Lord’s “from henceforth ye know him [the Father], and have seen him,” Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us” (John 14:8; KJV) — and receives the answer on which much of the Gospel’s Christology turns: “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” (John 14:9; see Show Us the Father).

The Shape of a Disciple

Taken together, the four scenes give a coherent and humane portrait. Philip is among the first to be called and immediately becomes a finder of others; he is practical to the point of arithmetic, the disciple who measures the loaves against the crowd; he is approachable, the one outsiders come to; and he is a genuine seeker, whose longing to see the Father — however much it shows that he has not yet grasped Who stands before him — opens the way to the Lord’s clearest self-disclosure. The Fathers would read his questions not as mere dullness but as the occasion of revelation: it is because Philip asks that the Church has the answer (see Patristic Reception). This is the Philip the canonical Gospels secure. Everything beyond — the Greek-speaking apostolate, the mission to Phrygia, the companions, the martyrdom — belongs to a later and graded tradition, and to the careful work of distinguishing him from the deacon who shares his name.

References

The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version and Revised Standard Version. (John 1:43–46; 6:5–7; 12:20–22; 14:8–9; Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13.)
John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John 20, 42, 66, 74. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 14. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1889.
Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John (I–XII). Anchor Bible 29. New York: Doubleday, 1966. (Philip in John 1, 6, 12.)
Huttner, Ulrich. Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley. Leiden: Brill, 2013. (The later Hierapolis tradition and the Greek-named apostle.)