SCRIPTURE
IN PHILEMON
The Letter to Philemon lacks
any marked and unmarked citations and verbal allusions. Or, as Wilhelm Dittmar
states in his collections of Old Testament citations: “Philemon vacat.” A few
conceptual allusions might be discussed. Paul praises Philemon’s faithful love
“to all the holy ones,” which might refer to the well-known biblical epithet of
Israel as a holy nation ( גוֹי קָ דוֹשׁ /ἔθνος ἅγιον, Exod 19:6; cf. Lev 19:2;
2 Sam 7:23). Paul’s efforts to mediate between the escaped slave Onesimus and
his owner Philemon might, depending on one’s general interpretation of the
letter, be influenced by or contradict Lev 25:39–40 and Deut 23:16–17: “You
shall not hand over to an owner a servant … he shall reside with you.” The
latter biblical command was discussed by Paul’s contemporary Philo, who called
surrender of a slave to his cruel master a sacrilege, while at the same time he
tried to harmonize the biblical commandment with the Greco-Roman legal
circumstances of his time (Virt. 124). Yet, one has to admit that Paul’s
petition on behalf of Onesimus does not go deep into Israel’s Scriptures. (Angela
Standhartinger, “Israel’s Scriptures in Philippians and Philemon,” in Israel’s
Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New,
ed. Matthias Henze and David Lincicum [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2023], 437-38)
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