The Gospel Reaches Samaria and an Ethiopian Official

The persecution after the death of Stephen scattered the believers of Jerusalem, and those who were scattered preached wherever they went (Acts 8:1, 4). Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven chosen with Stephen, went down to the city of Samaria. Jews and Samaritans, John’s Gospel notes, had no dealings with each other (John 4:9). Acts says that the crowds listened to Philip and saw the signs he did, that many who were paralysed or lame were healed, and that men and women believed and were baptised (Acts 8:5–12).

Among them was a man named Simon, who had long amazed the Samaritans with his magic and was called “that great power of God” (Acts 8:9–13). When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word, they sent Peter and John the Apostle. The two, Acts says, prayed for the new believers and laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Simon offered the apostles money for the power to do the same. Peter answered, “May your silver perish with you”, and told him to repent (Acts 8:14–24). Peter and John preached in many Samaritan villages on their way back (Acts 8:25). Justin, a Christian writer of about AD 150, also knows of a Samaritan magician named Simon, from the village of Gitto, who he says was honoured as a god at Rome in the reign of Claudius (Justin, First Apology 26).

Acts then tells how an angel sent Philip south to the desert road that runs from Jerusalem down to Gaza. There he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was sitting in his chariot reading the prophet Isaiah (Acts 8:26–30). The passage was the one about the sheep led to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7–8). The man asked whom the prophet meant, and Philip, starting from that text, told him about Jesus. When they came to water the official asked to be baptised, and Philip baptised him. Acts says that the Spirit then took Philip away and that the Ethiopian went on his way rejoicing. Philip was next found at Azotus and preached in all the towns from there to Caesarea (Acts 8:31–40).

With these stories Acts moves beyond Jerusalem and Judea for the first time: to Samaritans, and to a foreign official on his way home. It does not say whether the Ethiopian was a Jew, a convert to Judaism or a Gentile who worshipped Israel’s God (Acts 8:27). The order follows the words at the opening of the book, “in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In Acts the apostles in Jerusalem did not begin this mission; they took it up by sending Peter and John (Acts 8:5, 14).