RT Article
T1 Paul's Epistle to Philemon: Toward an Alternative Argumentum
JF Harvard theological review
VO 86
IS 4
SP 357
OP 376
A1 Callahan, Allen Dwight
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 1993
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1784649376
AB In 1964, the Elenchus Bibliographicus Biblicus, which until that time had listed together works treating Colossians and Philemon, provided Colossians with its own heading and introduced a new rubric: “Philemon; Slavery in the NT.” So firmly established is the interpretation of the epistle as a “cover letter” addressed to the master of a repentant runaway slave that any discussion of slavery in the New Testament invariably alludes to Paul's Epistle to Philemon; all recent commentators on the epistle include in their treatments at least a brief disquisition or excursus on ancient slavery. Even in his methodologically sophisticated study of the “narrative world” of Philemon, Norman Petersen began his summary of the “story” behind the letter as follows: “Once upon a time there was a runaway slave named Onesimus.…” Furthermore, the epistle is universally construed as a delicate and canny intervention on the part of the apostle Paul into the problematic of Christian relations under the Roman slave regime, despite the concession on the part of modern exegetes that Philemon fails to elucidate Paul's attitudes toward either slaves in particular or the institution of slavery in general.
DO 10.1017/S0017816000030625