Apostle of the 70 Philemon, Bishop of Gaza, Apostle of the 70

DOUBLE CORRECTION: (1) CATEGORY refined from plain "martyr" to "Apostle of the 70" — Philemon is venerated primarily as an Apostle of the Seventy who was later martyred, not simply as a martyr. (2) DATE corrected — the previous "March 16" is unsupported by any source; the correct, well-attested dates are February 19/March 4 (with Archippus and Apphia) and November 22/December 5 (with Onesimus, Archippus, and Apphia).

HONEST DISTINCTION: St. Philemon of Gaza is the NEW TESTAMENT APOSTLE Philemon, not the identically-named martyr-musician Philemon of Antinoë (a flute-player converted during the execution of the reader Apollonius, feast December 14) — these are two separate, unrelated stories; research showed the hypothesis of a connection to the martyrs Porphyrius/Pamphilus of Caesarea does not hold up.

Apostle of the Seventy Philemon, Bishop of Gaza, is the New Testament addressee of St. Paul's Epistle to Philemon, a wealthy and prominent resident of Colossae in Phrygia. Paul personally baptized Philemon and his wife Apphia, who turned their home into a house-church; this household is also the setting for the well-known story of the runaway slave Onesimus, whom Paul sent back to his master as a brother in Christ — Onesimus himself is later venerated as an Apostle of the Seventy.

Tradition holds that Philemon was consecrated bishop — by most accounts of Gaza, by another strand in Phrygia. During Nero's persecution, a pagan mob attacked the congregation at prayer: the apostle Archippus died of his injuries en route to trial, while Philemon and Apphia were stoned to death by order of the local governor.