Eunuch the Kandake

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Philip baptizes the eunuch of Ethiopia , baptismal font in the parish church of St. Martin, Unteressendorf (Upper Swabia)
Representation of the place of baptism on the Madaba card (the building with the round basin above the red writing).

The Kandake eunuch was a dignitary of the Nubian or Ethiopian Queen Kandake . According to biblical tradition, he was the first non-Jew to be baptized.

Biblical tradition

The biblical story in Acts 8 : 27-39  EU describes the baptism of the chamberlain of Kandake by the deacon Philip . The story is dated to the first year after the resurrection of Christ . The Kandake may have been the Amanitore attested to around 50 AD .

“Now there was an Ethiopian, a chamberlain, court official of the Kandake, the queen of the Ethiopians, who administered all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship God and was now going home. He sat on his chariot and read Isaiah the prophet . And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go and follow this chariot". Philip ran over and heard him read Isaiah the prophet. Then he said: "Do you understand what you are reading?" The latter replied: "How can I do it if nobody guides me?" And he asked Philip to get in and sit next to him. The passage he read read: "Like a sheep he was brought to the slaughter; and like a lamb that falls silent when it is sheared, he did not open his mouth. In humiliation his condemnation was lifted. His descendants, who can count them? For his life was taken from the earth. " The eunuch turned to Philip and said, "I beg you, from whom is the prophet saying this? Of himself or of someone else?" Then Philip began to speak and based on these scriptures he preached the gospel of Jesus to him. As they moved on, they came to a watering place. The chamberlain said: "Here is water. What is still in the way of my baptism?" He stopped the chariot, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him. But when they got out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord abducted Philip. The chamberlain didn't see him anymore and he moved on with joy. "

What is striking about the story is that the baptized is expressly referred to as εὐνοῦχος / eunuch . According to Dtn 23.2  EU , emasculated people were not allowed to join the Jewish community and were excluded from the temple worship service. The prophet Isaiah, on the other hand, assessed the law-abidingness and piety of a eunuch (not only belonging to the congregation) as more pleasing to God than simply belonging to the people of Israel ( Isa 56,3  EU ). Nevertheless, eunuchs could not convert to Judaism even in Jesus' time.

The baptism of the Chamberlain of Kandake is the first recorded baptism of a Gentile in the Acts of the Apostles. Only in ( Acts 10  EU ) is the baptism of the Roman centurion Cornelius reported. In this story, too, the baptizing person, in this case Simon Peter , is expressly requested by the Holy Spirit to cross the boundaries of belonging to Judaism and the people of Israel and also to accept non-Jews into the community. Unlike Cornelius, whose baptism was the first occasion for the early church to deal with the question of their relationship to the baptism of Gentiles and the admission of Gentile Christians into the community, which was clarified in the Apostolic Council , the eunuch apparently no longer came into contact with after his baptism Early church.

tradition

The church father Irenaeus of Lyons described the eunuch of the Kandake as a godly one, one who was close to Judaism, and the first Christian missionary in Ethiopia. Eusebius of Caesarea calls him the first baptized among the Gentiles. According to him, he is said to have died a martyr's death.

In late antiquity, pilgrims located the place where the baptism is said to have taken place, at the so-called Philip's fountain near the garrison town of Beth-Zur north of Hebron . A church with a baptismal font was erected in front of the building. The basilica and the baptismal font are shown on the mosaic map of Madaba from the middle of the 6th century. The Greek caption translates as: "The (sanctuary) of St. Philip, where, as they say, Kandake the eunuch was baptized." The title of the Ethiopian queen is incorrectly given as the name of her chamberlain. According to various later traditions, his name (Simeon) is said to have been Bachos or Djan Darada . He probably owed the name Simeon to his identification with the Simeon Niger called Acts 13.1  EU .

To this day, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church can be traced back to the eunuchs. According to Coptic and Byzantine tradition, after his conversion to Christianity , he preached the Gospel in southern Arabia ( Arabia eudaimon ) and in Ceylon ( Taprobane ). The Greek Orthodox Church celebrates Memorial Day on August 27th.

Artist's impression

In Christian art , the baptism of the chamberlain is shown comparatively rare. Most of the representations come from the Calvinist Netherlands from the middle of the 16th century. The most famous example is The Baptism of the Chamberlain by Rembrandt van Rijn from 1626. In Dutch art, the baptism of the chamberlain largely disappears soon after 1660. The motif became popular in Germany in the 18th century, often as a copy of this and other illustrations by Rembrandt.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. In the original Greek text εὐνοῦχος ( eunuchos ) ( Acts 8:27 in Greek )
  2. Isa 53,7-8  EU
  3. Schneider: εὐνοῦχος . In: Gerhard Kittel (Hrsg.): Theological dictionary for the New Testament . 2nd vol. Δ-Η. Stuttgart 1950, pp. 763-767.
  4. Irenaeus: Adversus Haereses 3, 12, 8 and 4, 13, 2
  5. Euseb: Church History 2, 1, 16
  6. Othmar Keel, Max Küchler, Christoph Uehlinger: Places and Landscapes of the Bible: a manual and study guide to the Holy Land, Volume 2. Göttingen 1982, pp. 715–722
  7. ^ A b Moses the Ethiopian, the Black Saint & Teacher (& other Ethiopian saints in the Orthodox Church)
  8. Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints: Philip the Evangelist , accessed on August 6, 2020.
  9. Ethiopia truly stretches forth her hands to god
  10. Lothar Störck: The eunuch of the Kandake as a missionary of South Arabia and Ceylon. In: Studies on Ancient Egyptian Culture. Vol. 26, Buske, Hamburg 1998, ISSN  0340-2215 , pp. 239-250, abstract and first page .