When the bitter persecution that followed the stoning of Stephen had scattered the church abroad over the neighbouring countries, they also departed at the same time from Jerusalem (Acts viii. 1), and Philip, who was now the most notable of their number, officiated henceforth only as an evangelist, that is, as an itinerant preacher of the gospel, in the region about his own house in Cæsarea (Acts viii. 5; xxi. 8; comp. Eph. iv. 11; 2 Tim. iv. 5). Upon the reorganization of the church at Jerusalem, the Apostles beginning more clearly to appreciate their own special calling (Matt. xxviii. 19), gave themselves more and more to the preaching of the gospel even outside of Jerusalem, and thus the need became urgent of an authoritative court for the conducting of the affairs of the church even during their absence. In these circumstances it would seem, according to Acts xi. 30, that those who ministered to the poor, chosen probably from among the most honourable of the first believers (Acts ii. 41), passed over into a self-constituted college of presbyters. At the head of this college or board stood James, the brother of the Lord (Gal. i. 19; ii. 9; Acts xii. 17; xv. 13; xxi. 15), and after his death, according to Hegesippus, a near relation of the Lord, Simeon, son of Clopas, as a descendant of David, was unanimously chosen as his successor. The episcopal title, however, just like that of Deacon, is first met with in the New Testament in the region of the Pauline missions, and in the terminology of the Palestinian churches we only hear of presbyters as officers of the church (Acts xv. 4, 6, 22; xxi. 18; James v. 14). In 1 Peter v. 2, however, although ἐπίσκοπος does not yet appear as an official title, the official duty of the ἐπισκοπεῖν is assigned to presbyters (see § 17, 6). It is Hegesippus, about A.D. 180, who first gives the title Bishop of Jerusalem to James, after the Clementines (§ 28, 3) had already ten years previously designated him ἐπισκόπων ἐπίσκοπος.