Ethiopian Eunuch

The Ethiopian eunuch was a high official — the treasurer — of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, who had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning by chariot when Philip the evangelist was sent by the Spirit to meet him (Acts 8:26–40). He was reading aloud from Isaiah 53 when Philip came alongside and explained that the passage referred to Jesus. Upon Philip's instruction he believed and was baptized, and the Spirit immediately carried Philip away. The eunuch's conversion is one of the most significant episodes in the early chapters of Acts: it represents the gospel's first recorded witness to sub-Saharan Africa, fulfills Isaiah's prophecy that eunuchs who love God will have a name better than sons and daughters (Isaiah 56:3–5), and anticipates the Spirit's continued dissolution of ethnic and geographic boundaries in Acts 10–11. Ethiopian Christian tradition regards this unnamed man as the founder of the Ethiopian church.