Mr. J. G. Pickard, writing from Gaza in The Quarterly Statement P. E. F., July 1873, reports on the newly discovered Samaritan Stone of which the inscription is a passage in Deuteronomy iv. 29-31. It has been suggested that this stone belonged to a Samaritan synagogue in Gaza. The spot where the stone was discovered is about a mile and a half from the sea shore.
CHAPTER VII
SOME EARLY BISHOPS OF (I) GAZA, (II) MAYOUMAS (THE PORT OF GAZA)
Palestina Prima—Cæsarea, Metropolis.
The Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, p. 1631, mentions "Philemon (1) Bishop of Gaza; commemorated February 14 (Basil Menol)."
The Kalendar of the Byzantine Church, on November 22, commemorates "Philemon, Apostle."
The Jerusalem Archimandrite Meletius Metaxakis, (now Bishop of Kition, Cyprus), in an article on the Madaba Mosaic Map, Nea Sion, May and June 1907, p. 485, states that "according to The Ecclesiastical Treatise about the Seventy Disciples of the Lord, Philemon, the Apostle, to whom the Epistle of Paul is directed, became Bishop of Gaza."
The legendary history of Philemon supplies nothing on which we can rely. The Apostolic Constitutions (vii. 46) relate that Philemon became Bishop of Colosse, and died a martyr under Nero, but this is not sustained by any other early testimony, and is expressly denied by the author of the Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, attributed to Hillary. This tradition, therefore, which Dr. Meyer (p. 59) mentions, apparently without hesitation, cannot, I think, be accepted.
I.—Bishops of Gaza
c. a.d. 285. Sylvanus. The first Christian martyr of Gaza whose name is known. Having had his eyes put out, he was beheaded at the Copper Mines of Phæno.