PHILIP, ACTS OF. One of the later apocryphal books of Acts, dependent on older legends and dating at the earliest from the end of the 4th cent. It is composed on the pattern of the Acts of Thomas, as a series of separate Acts done in various places, of which Acts 1-9 and from Acts 15 to the end are extant. Among the wonders related is the story of a leopard and a kid which believe. At his martyrdom, Philip loses his temper, and is condemned to wait forty days before admission to paradise. “If grotesque,” says James, “it is yet a Catholic novel.”

Bibliography Text in Lipsius-Bonnet, Acta apostolorum apocrypha II. 2. 1-90; summary in ANT 439ff.; literature in NTAp, II, 577.