of a coming Messiah. Jesus had set the example to his followers of freely associating with the Samaritans and even of preaching and ministering to them. Above all, in one of his great parables he had singled out a Samaritan as a supreme example of neighborliness. The Samaritans were on the whole much more open-minded and tolerant than the Jews. Samaria, therefore, was a field which appealed strongly to a Hellenistic Christian like Philip.

III. The Results of Philip's Preaching in Samaria. Philip's Greek name suggests that he was a Hellenist, as does also his place among the seven appointed to guard the interests of the Hellenistic section of the Jerusalem church. Acts 218 states that his home was in Cæsarea, a strong Græco-Roman city. Apparently his teachings stood midway between those of the native Judaizing Christians and those of the extreme Hellenists. The content of his teaching, as well as the fact that he was a resident of Palestine, strongly point to the conclusion that he had personally seen and heard Jesus. Later Christian tradition even confuses him with Philip the disciple. Another tradition makes him one of the Seventy, who, according to Luke's later version of the sending out of the Twelve, were commanded to proclaim the Gospel to the people. This tradition is probably based on the fact that Philip's teachings and method of work closely resemble those adopted by Jesus during his Galilean ministry. According to the testimony of Acts, Philip alone of all the apostolic teachers made the Gospel of the Kingdom of God central in his preaching. To this he added "the Gospel of the Name of Jesus" (Acts 812). In the light of the teachings of the earlier apostles, it is evident that this peculiar phrase refers to the primitive interpretation of the character and messianic work of Jesus. With the aid of these meagre records, it is possible to reconstruct partially at least the content of Philip's addresses. Evidently his preaching consisted chiefly in a reiteration of the teachings of Jesus. On his lips may well have been preserved many of the matchless parables of the kingdom which reappear only in Luke's gospel.

The scene of his work was apparently the city of Samaria itself, the metropolis and capital of the province which bore that name. Herod the Great had encircled the hill on which this ancient city rested with a great highway, flanked on either side by stately colonnades. The top of the hill he had crowned with a great temple dedicated to Augustus, the foundations of which have only recently been laid bare. Philip had evidently stopped at this centre of Samaritan life on his way back

THE RESULTS OF PHILIP'S PREACHING

to his home at Cæsarea, for the city of Samaria lay on the main highway which led northward and westward from Jerusalem to the sea. The Samaritans throughout their later history showed themselves a simple, childlike people, especially superstitious and susceptible to suggestion. Philip's teaching, like that of Jesus at certain periods of his ministry, was accompanied by acts of healing which appealed powerfully to the multitudes. Those who accepted his teachings were baptized. Thus Philip developed a new and effective type of evangelism which combined the teachings of Jesus and the methods of John the Baptist with a supreme devotion to the Master and the declaration that he was the fulfilment of the messianic hopes which the Samaritans shared in common with their Jewish brothers.

The passage in Acts 814-25 seems to imply that the people of Samaria as a whole had been converted and that the apostles Peter and John came as the official representatives of the Jerusalem church to receive these new converts into its membership. The inference that this apostolic sanction was necessary reflects strongly the point of view and conceptions which first became prevalent during the latter part of the first Christian century. The older record implies that Philip's work was spontaneous, almost accidental, and that the results were themselves sufficient evidence of divine approval. If the apostles came to Samaria attracted by the success of his work, they probably came not in an official capacity but as fellow workers. To the same later churchly tendency is doubtless due the theory that the Holy Spirit came to the Samaritans only as a result of the laying on of the apostles' hands.

The underlying purpose of the story in Acts, however, is to illustrate the significant fact that, although Christianity doubtless often attracted impostors, its innate moral and spiritual character quickly revealed what was spurious. Philip's work among the Samaritans was new evidence of the potency and adaptability of the Gospel of Jesus and of the Gospel about Jesus that was being rapidly formulated by his followers. There was nothing in Philip's work to arouse even the most conservative Jewish Christians; and yet the prominence which the narrator gave to Philip's mission to the Samaritans indicates that it represented an important stage in the expansion of Christianity. It was apparently not in itself permanent and far-reaching largely because of the fickle character of the Samaritans. Possibly it was also because neither Philip nor Peter had Paul's organizing and pastoral skill.

IV. Philip's Conversation with the Ethiopian Eunuch. The early apostles inherited from the Hebrew prophets and from Jesus the consciousness of acting at each important crisis in their lives under direct divine guidance. This conviction is everywhere apparent, not only in Acts but in the writings of Paul. The terms by which this guidance is described vary, as in the present narrative. In Acts 826 it is stated that an angel of the Lord gave the command to Philip. In 29 it was simply the Spirit, and in 39 the Spirit of the Lord that directed his evangelistic activity. In each case the impulse evidently came from within. The account of Philip's memorable conversation with the Ethiopian eunuch implies that the impulse to follow him came after the evangelist had already returned with the apostles to Jerusalem. The visit of a prominent proselyte, such as the treasurer of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, to Jerusalem must have been quickly known to all of its inhabitants. Doubtless as a worshipper he also brought rich gifts to the temple. Ethiopia was the vast, mysterious region to the south of Egypt, whence in the days of Augustus had emerged a queen by the name of Candace who had attempted to drive the Romans out of the Thebiad, but who had been defeated by the Roman general Petronius in 24 B.C. and her capital, Meroë, captured. According to the testimony of Pliny the name Candace was regularly borne by the queens of Ethiopia, and probably corresponded to the Egyptian term Pharaoh. As early as 300 B.C. Greek culture had penetrated Ethiopia, and this fact explains how the Ethiopian eunuch was able to read the Greek version of the Old Testament which Philip found in his hands. It also reveals the influences which led him to make a pilgrimage of fully one thousand miles to the Jewish sanctuary at Jerusalem.

The fact that he was reading from Isaiah 537, 8, which describes the suffering of Jehovah's servant, and questioning the meaning of this passage, strongly suggests that while at Jerusalem he had come in contact with the teachings of the apostles and their interpretation of this passage as a direct reference to Jesus. A knowledge of this fact may well have come to Philip and, if so, it constituted one of the chief elements in the impulse which led him to follow the returning pilgrim. It was a case which must have appealed strongly to Philip's instincts as an evangelist. A late tradition places the spring where the Ethiopian official was baptized on the narrow road, practically impassable for chariots, which leads southwestward from Jerusalem. An older and more probable tradition, however, identifies it with the copious

THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH

spring a little north of Bethzur on the main road southward through Hebron and Gaza. The latter corresponds more perfectly to the desert road definitely mentioned in Acts 826. In a mind already prepared Philip sowed the seeds of the Gospel and thereby added to the rapidly growing ranks of the believers one whose influence may go far to explain why before the end of the first Christian century in distant Abyssinia there was a strong and flourishing Christian community. The conversion and baptism of the Ethiopian was not contrary to the narrow traditions accepted by the Palestinian Christians, for, as a proselyte, he had already been accepted within the ranks of Judaism. The incident, however, represents the gradual opening of the door to the Gentiles and was evidently reported for this reason.

With the true spirit of the evangelist, Philip, as he set out again for his home at Cæsarea, stopped at Azotus on the coast, about twenty miles north of Gaza, and at the other towns on his way and preached the Gospel at every point until he finally carried it to his home city.

V. The Spread of Christianity to Antioch. The interest of the author of Acts 21-1536 in Paul and Peter led him to introduce immediately after the story of Philip's baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch the accounts of the way in which these two leading apostles were divinely led to see that God's gracious purpose included Gentiles as well as Jews. In developing the symmetrical plan of his history, the author recorded the mission of the apostles first to the Jews, then to the Samaritans, then to the Gentiles. Out of deference to Paul and Peter and in keeping with his point of view, it was also natural that he should give Paul and Peter the precedence; although Acts 931 plainly states that the events underlying the account of Peter's vision and baptism of the Roman centurion Cornelius were not immediately after the death of Stephen but during a period of peace, after the church had been extended widely "all over Judea, Galilee, and Samaria." Fortunately, however, Luke has cited definite evidence of what Paul states in his letter to the Galatians (cf. 28, 9), namely, that the pioneer in proclaiming Jesus to the Gentiles was not Peter. It was not even Paul but certain Hellenistic Christians, natives of Cyprus and Cyrene, who at Antioch, soon after the death of Stephen, "told the Greeks also the Gospel of the Lord Jesus." This reading is supported by excellent texts and is clearly implied by the context, although in the accepted version it reads Hellenists (Greek-speaking Jews) instead of Hellenes (Greeks). Probably Luke wrote Hellenists, although his

source read Hellenes. It was this significant step in the extension of Christianity to the whole world which led the author to add in Acts 1122, 23 that, when the news of this preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles reached the church in Jerusalem "they despatched Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain loyal to the Lord with hearty purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith." The narrator has apparently forgotten for the moment that Barnabas was a Hellenist and therefore among those who had fled from Jerusalem after Stephen's martyrdom. The next verse, evidently quoted from an early source, states that "Barnabas went off to Tarsus to look for Saul." Barnabas was the leading spirit in the Antioch church. It is exceedingly probable that this Cypriot was the leader of "the citizens of Cyprus" who first preached the Gospel to the Greeks. Lucius, another leader at Antioch, was a native of Cyrene (Acts 131). To these generous, noble-hearted Hellenistic Jews, Barnabas and Lucius, beyond reasonable doubt belongs the honor of first breaking the bonds of Judaism and of establishing the important precedents which Paul later made an accepted principle.

While Jerusalem was the first home of Christianity, profligate, cosmopolitan Antioch was the birthplace and cradle of Gentile Christianity from which it radiated to all the great cities of the GræcoRoman world. It is significant that here the followers of Jesus, who had hitherto called themselves "brothers" or "believers" or "the saints" and by the Jews had been known as the "Nazarenes" or "the sect of the Nazarenes," were first called Christians. The presence of Greeks in the ranks of the new sect called for a broader designation. The term is akin to those which the Greeks of Asia coined to designate different parties, so that there is little doubt of its Hellenistic and Antiochian origin. It also indicates that the Christians of Antioch used the Greek language (for Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah) and that the doctrine that Jesus was the promised Messiah was a distinctive element in their teaching.

Thus within less than five years after the death of Jesus his teachings had overleaped the narrow bounds of Judaism and Palestine and were the accepted rule of life for a large body of Gentiles as well as Jews in the ancient capital city of Antiochus Epiphanes, the arch-persecutor of the Jewish race. From the first the Antioch church appears to have been strong in numbers and leadership and to have almost overshadowed the Jerusalem community. The gifts of the Antioch Chris