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Acts of Philip

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The Greek Acts of Philip (Acta Philippi) is an unorthodox episodic apocryphal mid-to late fourth-century ^[1] narrative, originally in fifteen separate acta,^[2] that gives an accounting of the miraculous acts performed by the Apostle Philip, with overtones of the genre of Romance.

Some of these episodes are identifiable as belonging to more closely related "cycles".^[3] Two episodes recounting events of Philip's commission (3 and 8) have survived in both shorter and longer versions. There is no commission narrative in the surviving texts: Philip's authority rests on the prayers and benediction of Peter and John and is explicitly bolstered by a divine epiphany, in which the voice of Jesus urges "Hurry Philip! Behold, my angel is with you, do not neglect your task" and "Jesus is secretly walking with him".(ch. 3).

The Acts of Philip is most completely represented by a text^[4] discovered in 1974 by François Bovon and Bertrand Bouvier in the library of Xenophontos monastery on Mount Athos in Greece.^[5] The manuscript dates from the fourteenth century but its language identifies it as a copy of a fourth century original.^[5] Many of the narratives in the manuscript were already known from other sources, but some were hitherto unknown.^[6] The narrative claims that Jesus sent out a group of followers to spread his message. The followers were Philip, Bartholomew, and— a leading figure in the second half of the text— a woman named Mariamne, who is identified in the text as Philip's sister, and who Bovon at first suggested may be identical to Mary Magdalene.^[5] However, following the Discovery Channel's popularized speculations in The Lost Tomb of Jesus, Bovon publicly distanced himself from its claims, withdrawing his published assertion (Bovon 2002) that the Mariamne of the Talpiot tomb discussed in The Lost Tomb of Jesus is the same person,^[7] writing in an open letter to the Society of Biblical Literature:

the Mariamne of the Acts of Philip is part of the apostolic team with Philip and Bartholomew; she teaches and baptizes: Philip baptizes men, Mary baptizes women. In the beginning, her faith is stronger than Philip's faith. This portrayal of Mariamne fits very well with the portrayal of Mary of Magdala in the Manichean Psalms, the Gospel of Mary, and Pistis Sophia. My interest is not historical, but on the level of literary traditions. I have suggested this identification in 1984 already in an article of New Testament Studies.^[8]

The text discovered by Bovon also described a community that practised vegetarianism and celibacy.^[5] Women in the community wore men's clothes and held positions of authority comparable to men, serving as priests and deacons.^[5] The community used a form of the eucharist where vegetables and water were consumed in place of bread and wine.^[9] Among lesser miraculous accomplishments of the group were the conversion of a talking leopard and a talking goat,^[5] as well as the slaying of a dragon.^[10] "Speaking animals as helpers of the apostles are familiar figures in the apostolic Acts" (Czachesz 2002).

The manuscript discovered by Bovon has been published in a French translation. An English translation was planned "within a few years" (as of 2000).^[5] Previous English translations, such as in M.R. James are based on the collections of fragments that were known previous to Bovon's discovery.