Epigraphical Commentary on Paul’s Letter to Philemon

Paul`s letter to Philemon is a private letter from the middle of the 1st century AD, in which the apostle, who was in captivity, addresses a specific problem: the slave Onesmius had come to Paul and had been baptized by him. But now he was to go back to Philemon, his owner, who was also a Christ-believer. Paul now asks that Onesimus should not be punished for leaving the household of his owner. Rather, he should be treated as a brother in Christ. However, a release from slavery is not mentioned. Paul would also like Philemon to leave Onesimus to him later as a helper for preaching the gospel. Despite these very real social concerns, the letter also contains some theological topics that are intended to persuade Philemon to take the action that Paul was seeking. In previous research, the letter has been interpreted primarily on the basis of philosophical and legal literature and papyrological sources. In this project, the numerous epigraphic testimonies for the words used by Paul and the socio-historical circumstances addressed are now being used for the first time in an interdisciplinary collaboration. This is being done within the framework of the "Epigraphical Commentary on the New Testament" (ECNT), which focuses on this previously neglected source genre. On the one hand, the project will examine the use of lexemes (nouns including names, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) found in the Epistle to Philemon in Greek inscriptions and assess their range of meaning. On the other hand, the social constellations addressed in the letter will be examined, e.g. slavery, imprisonment, household structures or the principle of egality. In addition to the methods of historical-critical interpretation, postmodern and gender-sensitive approaches will also be applied. The inscriptional evidence relevant to the research will be searched for in epigraphic databases and collected and organized for the ECNT project, paying particular attention to local, temporal and linguistic aspects. These finds will be used for the interpretation of the Epistle to Philemon in such a way that a commentary will be created. It will, on the one hand, systematically present the epigraphic evidence and, on the other, use it to understand the Epistle to Philemon. In this way, a new interpretation of this New Testament text is developed that focuses on the everyday linguistic and social contexts of the letter in the context of Greco-Roman antiquity.