In the New Testament book The Acts of the Apostles, the Apostle Philip explains to a traveling Ethiopian court official a passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, a passage of sacrificial suffering. The Apostle Philip interprets the Old Testament material as a prophecy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who suffered death to pay for the sins of others.

The Ethiopian official, in the New Testament account, believes and asks to be baptized immediately at the roadside.

Butler's Philip explains to the woman who sees both her father and her God in terms of Old Testament Law and rejection for her sexual activity, that her father is not God, and she should not construe her God as being as loveless as her father had been. In allusive parallel, not to the evangelist and explicator Philip, but to the Jesus of Nazareth depicted in the...