05 — The Acts of Philip
The flagship source-critical section on the apocrypha: the Acts of Philip, a fourth-century, strongly encratite Greek apocryphon whose fullest text was recovered by François Bovon from a fourteenth-century Mount Athos manuscript in 1974. Its fifteen acta and a martyrdom narrate Philip’s mission with Bartholomew and his sister Mariamne to “Ophiorhyme” (a Hierapolis of serpent-worshippers), complete with a converted talking leopard and kid goat. These files set out what the Acts are and claim, and how an Orthodox reader holds a text that is at once a major witness to the Philip tradition and doctrinally unreceived — reported, assessed, never endorsed.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)
The Acts of Philip is the single richest narrative source for the apostle’s later life, and also the most problematic. It is late (fourth-century), heterodox (markedly encratite, with a vegetarian and water Eucharist), and fantastical (talking animals, a dragon-cult, a cosmic she-serpent cast into the abyss). It is not Scripture, not history, and not the Church’s teaching; yet it cannot be ignored, because so much of the developed Philip tradition — the Hierapolis martyrdom, the companions Bartholomew and Mariamne, the manner of his death — flows from or through it. This section follows the repository’s discipline for such texts (METHODOLOGY §3.5): the Acts are reported with their date, provenance, and character named, and assessed for what they are worth, without being suppressed or adopted.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Acts of Philip | What the Acts of Philip are: date and provenance (4th-c., encratite, the Bovon Athos manuscript of 1974); the fifteen acta and martyrdom; the mission to Ophiorhyme/Hierapolis; Mariamne and Bartholomew; the talking leopard and kid; the dragon-cult and the she-serpent (Echidna). |
| Assessing the Apocrypha | How the Church received — and did not receive — the Acts: the encratite theology, the place of the text in the family of apocryphal Acts, what it is good for (the Hierapolis tradition, fourth-century Asian Christianity), and the discipline of reporting it without endorsing it. |
See Also
- The Mission — the earlier, firmer tradition the Acts embellish
- The Companions — Bartholomew and Mariamne, central to the Acts
- The Martyrdom — the death the Acts narrate
- Reception and Legacy — the apocrypha weighed against the evidence
- St. Irenaeus of Lyons — the refuter of the gnostic and encratite currents behind such texts
References
- Bovon, François, and Christopher R. Matthews. The Acts of Philip: A New Translation. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012. (Introduction, translation, and notes; date, the Athos manuscript, the encratite character, the fifteen acta.)
- Bovon, François, Bertrand Bouvier, and Frédéric Amsler, eds. Acta Philippi: Textus. Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 11. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999.
- Elliott, J. K., ed. The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. (Introduction to the apocryphal Acts.)