Ethiopian Eunuch. The Ethiopian eunuch is a figure in the New Testament of the Bible. The story of his conversion to Christianity is recounted in Acts 8. Philip the Evangelist was told by an angel to go to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, and there he encountered the Ethiopian eunuch, the treasurer of the Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians. The Jewish eunuch had been to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home. Sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah, he was reading Isaiah 53:7-8. Philip asked the Ethiopian, Do you understand what you are reading? He said he did not, and asked Philip to explain the text to him. Philip told him the Gospel of Jesus, and the Ethiopian asked to be baptized. They went down into some water and Philip baptized him. In the King James Version and the Catholic Douay-Rheims Version, the Ethiopian says, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but this is omitted in most modern versions. Hubbard suggests that confession is not supported in the better manuscripts, although the Ethiopian is still one of the outstanding converts in Acts. After this, Philip was suddenly taken away by the Spirit of the Lord, and the eunuch went on his way rejoicing. Church Father St. Irenaeus of Lyons in his book Adversus haereses 3:12:8, wrote regarding the Ethiopian eunuch, This man was also sent into the regions of Ethiopia, to preach what he had himself believed, that there was one God preached by the prophets, but that the Son of this had already made appearance in human flesh, and had been led as a sheep to the slaughter; and all the other statements which the prophets made regarding Him. In Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo tradition he was referred to as Bachos and in Eastern Orthodox tradition he is known as an Ethiopian Jew with the name Simeon also called the Black, a name used in Acts 13:1. The Ethiopian eunuch's religion of origin is significant because of the subsequent implications of his conversion to Christianity. There are many competing theories for the eunuch's pre-conversion religious status in relation to Judaism and Christianity. Religious Status Evidence Supporters Jew After the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, Irenaeus wrote, Conversion is more difficult with gentiles than with Jews, indicating that the eunuch was a Jew. Pontius, Irenaeus Jew-Gentile Eunuch occupies an intermediary position between Jew and gentile, which could indicate the status of proselyte or God-fearer. Jerome Gentile Eunuch must have been a Gentile because he was Ethiopian. Eusebius, Ephrem the Syrian as well as Bede, Nicephorus Callistus, Nicholas of Lyra, and Martin Luther proselyte Eunuch must be read as a proselyte since Acts presents Cornelius the Centurion as the first gentile to be baptized into the Christian community. D.A Hubbard, Lancelot Andrewes, John Calvin, John Wesley God-fearer Eunuch cannot have been a proselyte and must have been a God-fearer since Deut 23:2 would have prohibited a castrated male from becoming a proselyte. Paul Mumo Kisau, C.K. Barrett, Justo L. Gonzalez, many other contemporary scholars. Modern scholarship tends to place the Ethiopian eunuch in the intermediate position between Jew and Gentile. Scott Shauf suggests that theprimary point of the story is about carrying the gospel to the end of the earth, not about establishing a mission to Gentiles, and thus Luke does not bring the Gentile status of the Ethiopian into the foreground. However, the suggestion that the eunuch is or at least might be a Gentile in the story, by both his ethnic and possibly physical description may leave more formative possibility than if he had been explicitly categorized. Ernst Haenchen builds on Ferdinand Christian Baur's work in concluding that the author of Acts made the eunuch's religious identity ambiguous intentionally so as to preserve the tradition that claimed Cornelius as the first Gentile convert as well as the tradition that claimed the Ethiopian Eunuch as the first Gentile convert. Commentators generally suggest that the combination of eunuch together with the title court official indicates a literal eunuch, who would have been excluded from the Temple by the restriction in Deuteronomy 23:1.
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