Who Was Polycrates of Ephesus? (8 of 9)

A bishop who lost an argument about the date of Easter, and whose letter defending his side happens to contain one of the most consequential lists in early Christian history.

He was not writing about the apostles. He was writing about a calendar. The apostolic material is incidental, which is part of what makes it interesting and part of what makes it slippery.

What Was the Quartodeciman Controversy?

A dispute over when to keep the Christian Passover.

The churches of Asia observed it on the fourteenth of Nisan, the date of the Jewish Passover, whatever day of the week that fell on. Rome and others observed it on the following Sunday, keeping the resurrection always on the first day of the week.

Both practices were old. Both sides believed they had apostolic warrant. In the 190s Victor of Rome pressed for uniformity and attempted to cut off the Asian churches over it, which was strong enough that Irenaeus wrote urging him to back down.

Polycrates was bishop of Ephesus and he wrote to Victor refusing to change.

What Does the Letter Actually Say?

That Asia keeps the day it keeps because great figures who sleep in Asia kept it, and it names them.

The list includes Philip, described as one of the twelve apostles, buried at Hierapolis with two daughters who had grown old unmarried, and another daughter who lived in the Holy Spirit and rests at Ephesus. It includes John, the one who leaned on the Lord’s breast, who was a witness and teacher and rests at Ephesus. It includes Polycarp of Smyrna, bishop and martyr, and several others by name.

Polycrates adds that he himself is the eighth of his family to serve as bishop, and that he has read all of Scripture and is not frightened by threats.

The tone is not conciliatory. This is a man defending a tradition he considers apostolic against pressure from a larger church.

Why Does the Philip Claim Matter?

Because it is the origin of nearly everything said about Philip the Apostle after the New Testament, and the description does not match him.

Look at what Polycrates supplies. Daughters. Unmarried daughters with a prophetic reputation. Asia Minor. That is the profile of Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven chosen in Acts 6, who preached in Samaria, met the Ethiopian official, and later hosted Paul at Caesarea with four unmarried daughters who prophesied.

Two men named Philip. One of them one of the Twelve, the other a deacon and evangelist. Their careers rhyme enough that the memory of the second appears to have been absorbed into the first.

The daughter count is the sharpest evidence. Acts gives the Evangelist four. Another early witness reporting on Hierapolis also counts four. Polycrates has three, split between two cities. The number wobbles, and it wobbles around the Evangelist’s figure.

Scholarship overwhelmingly reads this as a case of the wrong Philip. If that is right, then a large share of the Philip-the-Apostle tradition, including the tomb, belongs to somebody else.

What Does the Letter Say About John?

That he rests at Ephesus, that he leaned on the Lord’s breast, and that he was a priest who wore the petalon.

The first two are consistent with what Irenaeus says independently, which strengthens the Ephesus tradition.

The petalon is the strange part. That word refers to the golden plate worn on the high priest’s forehead. Taken literally the claim is impossible, since John was not of the high priestly line and there is no room in the record for it. It has been read as symbolic, as a confusion, or as evidence about a different John.

It is a good example of how a source can be valuable and puzzling in the same sentence. Polycrates is reporting what the church at Ephesus believed about its own founder. What he reports includes something nobody has satisfactorily explained.

How Reliable Is Polycrates?

Reliable about what his churches believed. Not a check on whether those beliefs were correct.

He is writing around 190, from Ephesus, about figures who were buried locally and venerated locally, in a letter whose whole force depends on his readers accepting the list. He is not going to invent names his opponents could challenge.

So the letter is strong evidence that by the late second century the church of Asia believed Philip the Apostle was buried at Hierapolis and John was buried at Ephesus. It is not evidence that the first of those was true. Local tradition about a grave is exactly the kind of memory that attaches to the more famous of two similar names.

The letter survives only in Eusebius, which adds the usual step.

Part of a series on the ancient witnesses behind what we know about the early church. See the overview of the witnesses.

Footnotes2

1. Victor's attempt to cut off the Asian churches, and Irenaeus's letter urging restraint, is worth knowing for its own sake. It shows a late second-century church in which Rome could press hard, other churches could refuse, and a third party could tell Rome it had gone too far. The eventual resolution came at Nicaea, well over a century later.
2. The petalon claim is one of the genuinely unsolved puzzles of the period. Every explanation offered has costs, and the honest position is that a late second-century bishop of Ephesus said something about John that we cannot presently make sense of.

Sources

Polycrates of Ephesus, letter to Victor of Rome, preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 5.24, with related material at 3.31. Supports the list of figures buried in Asia, the daughters of Philip, the petalon claim, and the Quartodeciman position. Free in full at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Where the sourcing stops: the conclusion that Polycrates has the wrong Philip is the standard scholarly reading rather than my own construction. The argument that a grave tradition naturally attaches to the more famous of two similar names is my own framing.