Philemon: An Introduction and Study Guide: Imagination, Labor and Love (T&T Clark’s Study Guides to the New Testament)

This Guide Explores And Summarizes Scholarship On Philemon, Acquainting Beginning Students With What Has Been Said About Philemon, And Equipping Them To Understand The Larger Debates And Conversations That Surround It. It Explores How Different Initial Scholarly Assumptions Result In Different Interpretations And Meanings; These Meanings Always Have Ethical Implications. Reading Philemon Challenges Us To Rethink The Process Of Commentary And The Communities Interpretation Creates. Though Only One Chapter Long, Paul's Letter To Philemon Has Generated A Remarkable Amount Of Commentary And Scholarship Over The Centuries, Figuring In Debates Over Textual Reconstruction, The Formation Of Biblical Canon, The Culture Of Ancient Rome, Greek Language And Its Translation, And The Role Of The Bible In Western Politics And Economics. The Focus Of This Short Letter Is Labor, Love And Captivity. Tradition Since Chrysostom Has Argued The Letter Is An Appeal To Philemon On Behalf Of A Fugitive Slave Onesimus, Now A Convert To Christianity. Yet This Interpretation Depends Upon Several Assumptions And Reconstructions. Other Equally Plausible Contexts Could Be -- And Have Been -- Argued. A Quick Overview Of Paul's Letter To Philemon -- I Appeal To You For My Child, Onesimus -- Rethinking Onesimus And Philemon -- Rethinking Paul: Love, Labor And Affect In Philemon -- Letters Lost In The Mail. Robert Paul Seesengood. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction : On Reading Lost Letters 10 Of interpretation, there is no end 15 The plan of this book 19 1 A Quick Overview of Paul’s Letter to Philemon 22 Character and outline of Philemon 23 The characters in Philemon 26 Paul and Timothy 26 Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus 28 Onesimus 30 Luke, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Epaphras 34 Philemon’s trouble spots 35 Whose church assembly? 35 Why this roundabout rhetoric? 36 What does Paul really want? 40 Who is the real center? 41 How are they related? 43 Conclusion 47 2 “I Appeal to You for My Child, Onesimus” 48 Traditional interpretations of Philemon 49 Slavery in the Greco-Roman world 51 Comparisons to modern slavery 53 Paul and slavery 58 Philemon, Paul, and the ethics of slavery 61 Paul’s pragmatism and indifference 61 Ethics of interpretation 63 Sex and slavery 64 Conclusion 65 3 Rethinking Onesimus and Philemon 68 Troubling the “standard reading”: John Knox and modern reimaginings 68 Not quite the parallel 69 Not just a slave 71 Not so obvious 72 John Chrysostom and the patristic reading of Philemon 73 Reading Philemon and the master class 77 Resisting Chrysostom and the “master class” 81 Conclusion 84 4 Labor and Love: An Affect Reading of Philemon 86 Erasing Paul: F. C. Baur and a pseudepigraphic Philemon 86 Forged letters and lost letters 87 Philemon’s authenticity and canonization 88 A letter without origin or ending 92 Affect theory and Philemon: Emotional labor and invisible slaves 94 Turning to affects 95 Emotional labor then and now 97 Love works: Love, faith, and labor 101 Conclusion 102 Conclusion: Letters Lost in the Mail 104 Commentary and/as story: On the building of backgrounds 104 Reading Philemon again for the first time 106 Works Cited 108 Index of Biblical References 114 Index of Subjects 118