Philemon Summary

1. INTRODUCTORY ISSUES

The book of Philemon is the most private and shortest letter of Paul in the New Testament exemplary of a personal letter customary of the first century Greco-Roman world. As its title also would suggest the letter addresses Philemon (v. 1) who is the owner of the slave Onesimus (v. 10,16). In some way Onesimus had left his master (v. 15). The reason for that separation has been the topic of much scholarly dispute. In any case Paul sends Onesimus with this letter back to Philemon. (v. 12) The inducement for this is seems to be that Onesimus had converted. That Philemon lived within Colossae is derived from Col. 4.9 and 17 which refer to Onesimus and Archippus.

Observing that the letter 's address follows the pattern

Some scholars even suggested that around Rome the population for at least eighty percent existed out of slaves, though others argue more carefully for a amount of 20-35 percent. Though there has been academic debate about the proportion of slaves within the Roman Empire, slavery as institution was so great a Roman culture that Joshel speaks of "slave society." As slaves made up a great part of the workforce, such as being farm laborers, servants, financial agents, teachers and philosophers, they were important for the empire 's economy but more importantly slaves provided their dominus social status and were seen as a symbol of one 's power. Though a servus ("male slave") or an ancilla ("female slave") are human persons legally they had no caput ("civil status") or status and therefore no public or private rights, because Roman law regarded them as a res mancipi, "a thing of which one has complete legal ownership."

2.3. CONCEPTS OF THE NATURAL LAW AND LAW OF NATIONS In Roman legal thought jurists had made a distinction between the ius naturale, "natural law", and the ius gentium, "law of nations." In regard to the concept of ius naturale, "the law " the Roman jurists conceded that fundamentally all men are born free by the laws of nature. The second century jurist Gaius described the ius gentium in his Institutiones (181 C.E.)

Clearly it opposes the precept of the ius naturale that men are born free. However though according to Roman jurists the ius gentium had a close correlation with the ius naturale Roman jurists did not view the Natural Law as the highest moral code that was to be strict obeyed. Instead of ethical concerns they were more interested with the practical side of legal life and saw in the content of nature and as well in the universal application of customs devices that could be discovered through natural human reasoning to formulate appropriate solutions for the legal order of the Roman society. I.e. Roman jurists sought to examine whether the Roman rules in their application functioned reasonable and used the ius naturale together with the ius gentium as an interpretation tool which assisted them to constitute the Roman empire 's legal system.