The Conflation Problems

The central historical problem of the Philip tradition is the persistent confusion of the Apostle Philip with Philip the Deacon and Evangelist of Acts — a confusion already at work in the second-century sources (Papias, Polycrates) and never resolved by Eusebius, complicated further by the “prophesying daughters” who attach, in the canonical record, to the deacon but are placed by the early witnesses with the Philip of Hierapolis. This file treats the problem in full: the data, the daughters, the early confusion, and the positions named and sourced.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Two Sets of Canonical Data

The problem begins with two clean but easily-merged sets of New Testament data (set out also in The Two Philips).

Philip the Apostle, one of the Twelve (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13), is a Galilean of Bethsaida (John 1:44), given a voice only in the Gospel of John (John 1:43–46; 6:5–7; 12:20–22; 14:8–9). Scripture assigns him no daughters and says nothing of his life after Pentecost.

Philip the Evangelist, one of the Seven appointed to serve tables (Acts 6:5), preached in Samaria, baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, and settled at Caesarea, “and the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy” (Acts 21:8–9; KJV). Luke marks him with a title — “Philip the evangelist, which was one of the seven” — evidently to keep him distinct from the apostle.

The two men are, in Scripture, clearly different: one of the Twelve, one of the Seven; one of Bethsaida, one of Samaria–Caesarea; one without daughters, one with four prophesying daughters. The trouble arises in the tradition that locates a Philip — with daughters — at Hierapolis.

The Daughters at Hierapolis

The early witnesses to Philip at Hierapolis all feature daughters, and that is precisely the mark of the evangelist, not the apostle.

Papias of Hierapolis (early second century), the bishop of the very city, received traditions, Eusebius reports, “from the daughters of Philip” who lived there — including a raising of the dead and the survival of Justus Barsabas after drinking poison (Papias, in Eusebius, HE 3.39.9; trans. NPNF II/1). Eusebius, introducing this, writes “Philip the apostle dwelt at Hierapolis with his daughters” — yet the daughters are the evangelist’s mark.

Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 190), in his letter to Victor, names “Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps in Hierapolis, and his two aged virgin daughters, and his other daughter, who lived in the Holy Spirit and now rests at Ephesus” (Polycrates, in Eusebius, HE 3.31.3 and 5.24.2; NPNF II/1). Polycrates calls him explicitly “one of the twelve apostles,” but gives him daughters — and even the number differs from Acts: Polycrates has three (two at Hierapolis, one at Ephesus), Acts has four.

Eusebius himself lays the two together without reconciling them. In the same chapter (3.31) he quotes Polycrates on “Philip, one of the twelve apostles” with his daughters at Hierapolis, and then — citing the Dialogue of Caius and Acts 21:8–9 — notes the four prophesying daughters of Philip the evangelist, “one of the seven,” as if aware of both figures yet not troubled to distinguish which the Hierapolis tradition meant (Eusebius, HE 3.31; NPNF II/1). The confusion is thus not a later corruption but is embedded in the earliest evidence.

The Positions Named

Modern scholarship has weighed the tangle, and the positions can be named (METHODOLOGY §3, §4):

[Disputed: the identity of the "Philip" of the Hierapolis tradition is contested. (1) **The apostle.** Some take Polycrates' explicit "one of the twelve apostles" at face value and hold that the Apostle Philip himself ended at Hierapolis, the "daughters" being a genuine (if extra-canonical) tradition about him — the liturgical identification the Church follows on November 14. (2) **The evangelist.** Many moderns (J. B. Lightfoot, *Colossians and Philemon*, 1875, and following) hold that the early witnesses really preserve a tradition of **Philip the Evangelist** of Acts 21 — whose daughters are the canonical mark — at Hierapolis, the title "apostle" being used loosely or in error. (3) **Already fused.** Others (R. Bauckham, *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses*, 2006) judge that by the time of Papias and Polycrates the two Philips had **already been conflated** in the memory of the Asian churches, so that the Hierapolis "Philip and his daughters" is a composite figure not cleanly assignable to either. The sources do not decide between these; Eusebius reproduces the data without resolving them.]

The Daughters Problem in Particular

The daughters deserve a word of their own, because they are the hinge of the whole confusion. In Acts they are unambiguously the evangelist’s: “four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy” (Acts 21:9). At Hierapolis the early tradition gives “Philip” daughters too — but the details drift: Polycrates has three (two aged virgins at Hierapolis, one at Ephesus); Acts has four; Clement, by contrast, says Philip “gave his daughters in marriage” (Clement, in Eusebius, HE 3.30.1), against Polycrates’ “aged virgin daughters.” These divergences are themselves evidence that more than one tradition — and perhaps more than one Philip — lies behind the notices. The prophesying daughters became, in the local memory of Hierapolis (a city that also produced the prophetic movement of Montanism nearby), a cherished link to the apostolic age; whether they were the apostle’s or the evangelist’s the sources cannot finally settle (Bauckham, 2006; Huttner, 2013).

How the Church Holds It

The Church’s resolution is liturgical and pastoral rather than purely historical, and it is honest. In her worship she venerates the Apostle Philip, one of the Twelve, as the evangelizer and martyr of Hierapolis on November 14, and she commemorates Philip the Deacon separately among the Seven (see The Feast and the Fast). This is a defensible identification — Polycrates did call the Hierapolis Philip “one of the twelve apostles” — and it is the one the present collection follows. But the collection does not pretend the historical question is closed: it reports the conflation as the genuine, ancient, unresolved problem it is, names the positions, and lets the reader see that the daughters, the divergent numbers, and the loose use of “apostle” all belong to the record. That honesty is the methodology’s whole point: the apostle is venerated, and the tangle is told (METHODOLOGY §3.3, §4). The companion file steps back to weigh the entire tradition — Gospel, Hierapolis notice, apocrypha, archaeology — in light of this central problem (see Reception and Legacy).

See Also

References

  • Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History 3.30, 3.31, 3.39, 5.24. Trans. Arthur C. McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1. 1890. (Clement, Papias, Polycrates; the unreconciled data on the two Philips and the daughters.)
  • The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. (Acts 6:5; 8:5–40; 21:8–9; John 1:43–46.)
  • Lightfoot, J. B. Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. London: Macmillan, 1875. (The two Philips at Hierapolis; the case for the evangelist.)
  • Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. (Papias, Polycrates, the daughters, and the conflation.)
  • Huttner, Ulrich. Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley. Leiden: Brill, 2013. (Hierapolis, the daughters of Philip, and the local tradition.)