CHAPTER IX.
[9.1] Acts viii. 1, 4; xi. 19.
[9.2] Acts viii. 5, and following. That it was not the apostle is evident from a comparison of the passages, Acts viii. 1, 5, 12, 14, 40; xxi. 8. It is true that the verse, Acts xxi. 9, compared with what is said by Papias (in Eusebius His. Ecc. iii. 39), Polycrates (ib. v. 24), Clement of Alexandria (Strom, iii. 6), would identify the Apostle Philip, of whom these three ecclesiastical writers are speaking, with the Philip who plays so important a part in the Acts. But it is more natural to admit that the statement in the verse in question is a mistake, and that the verse was only interpolated to contradict the tradition of the churches of Asia and even of Hierapolis, whither the Philip who had daughters prophetesses retired. The particular data possessed by the author of the 4th Gospel (written, as it seems, in Asia Minor), in regard to the Apostle Philip are thus explained.
[9.3] See Life of Jesus, ch. xiv. It may be, however, that the habitual tendency of the author of the Acts shows itself here again. See Introd., and supra.
[9.4] Acts viii. 5–40.
[9.5] Jos. Ant. XVIII. iv. 1, 2.
[9.6] At this day Jît, on the road from Nablous to Jaffa, an hour and a half from Nablous and from Sebastieh. See Robinson Bib. Res. ii. p. 308, note; iii. 134 (2d ed.), and his map.
[9.7] The accounts relative to this personage, given by the Christian writers, are so fabulous that doubts may be raised even as to the reality of his existence. These doubts are all the more specious from the fact that in the Pseudo-Clementine literature “Simon the Magician” is often a pseudonym for St. Paul. But we cannot admit that the legend of Simon rests upon this foundation alone. How could the author of the Acts, so favorable to St. Paul, have admitted a doctrine the hostile bearing of which could not have escaped him? The chronological series of the Simonian School, the writings which remain to us of it, the precise facts of topography and chronology given by St. Justin, fellow-countryman of our thaumaturgist, are inexplicable, moreover, upon the hypothesis of Simon’s having been an imaginary person. (See especially Justin Apol. ii. 15, and Dial. cum Tryph. 120.)
[9.8] Acts viii. 5, and following.
[9.9] Ib. viii. 9, and following.