Acts 8:40

Acts 8:40. But Philip was found at Azotus. Azotus, better known as Ashdod, one of the principal Philistine cities, near to the sea-coast. The site is now marked by a mound covered with broken pottery and a few pieces of marble (see 1 Samuel 5:3; Amos 1:8).

Till he came to Cæsarea. Cæsarea became Philip's home. He probably made it for many years the centre of missionary enterprises. Here, after some twenty years, we find him still, when Saul, now breathing threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, was welcomed, together with St. Luke, the reputed writer of these ‘Acts,' by this same Philip the deacon and his four prophet daughters, as the great and honoured Christian missionary.

Cæsarea was distant about seventy miles from Jerusalem, and was situated on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Before the days of the great Herod, it was merely a station for vessels. Herod, however, designed to make it the commercial capital of Palestine; he adorned it with marble palaces, provided it with a magnificent harbour, larger than the Piraeus at Athens, and with a vast quay. In the midst of the new city rose, on an eminence, the Temple of Caesar, with statues of the Emperor and of Rome. With slavish adulation, King Herod named the city after his powerful patron Augustus, Caesarea, under whose mighty protection for the present and the far future he placed the new capital of the old Land of Promise. After Herod's death, Cæsarea became the residence of the Roman governors of the country. Here the well-known Procurators Pontius Pilate, Felix, and Festus held their ‘courts.' Here Paul was subsequently tried before that brilliant assembly, presided over by the Roman governor, and King Agrippa, and the infamous Princess Bernice.

At the commencement of the Jewish war, we read of 20,000 Jews resident at Cæsarea being massacred. Vespasian was saluted emperor first in this place. In grateful memory, probably, of this circumstance, he raised it to the dignity of a colony; but its prosperity seems gradually to have decayed. We hear of it now and again in the days of the Crusaders, but it has been for several centuries a mere heap of ruins. A few fishers' huts now occupy the site of this once proud capital.