as such for more than six years at the outside, unless he himself wished it ; the laws concerning the redemption of a slave are very explicit. But owing to the conditions of society in ancient times there can be no doubt that a slave was, as a rule, much better off in a servile condition than if he were free; it was for this reason that the Hebrews had a special law laying down the procedure in the case of those who desired to continue bondmen “for ever”. Ας- cording to Jer. xxxiv. 8-24, however, permanent enslavement of Heb- rew men and women is strongly denounced as a sin which will bring about national disaste’ According to Lev. xxv. 45, 46, the Hebrew was permitted to buy Gentile slaves, who became personal property and were inherited by the owner’s children. But the owner’s power over his slaves was strictly limited by the law; if he punished a slave in such a way as to cause permanent bodily injury the slave -gained his freedom as compensation ; if a master chastised his slave so as to cause his death, he was treated as a murderer. Then, again, according to Hebrew law, a slave who had escaped was not to be delivered up again to his master. St. Paul cannot, of course, be accused of having broken this law in the case of Onesimus, since the latter returned voluntarily ; but it is, however, possible that when St. Paul wrote, “ For perhaps he was therefore parted from thee for a season, that thou shouldest have him for ever,” he had in mind the law of the slave’s voluntary return to his master in order to remain his ‘‘bondman for ever’ (Deut. xv. 16, 17), and thought of how that law had been “fulfilled” by the teaching of Christ (see Matt. ν. 17).
Much ancient traditional matter is contained in Talmudical writ- ings ; it is, therefore, interesting to note one or-two data in these on the subject of slaves; it is said, for example, that the master of a Hebrew slave (man or woman) must place him on an equality with himself ‘‘in meat and drink, in lodging and bed-clothes, and must act towards him in a brotherly manner,’’ so that a saying is preserved in Kiddushin, 20a that, ‘‘ whosoever buys a Hebrew slave buys a master for himself”. Again, the law concerning the escaped slave, referred to above, is in the Talmud construed as applying to one who flees from a place outside the Holy Land into it; but the slave must give the master from whom he has fled a bond for his value; if the master refuses to manumit the slave by deed, the court protects the former bondman in his refusal to serve further (Gittin, 45a). According to Rabbinicalteaching a runaway slave who is recaptured must make good the time of his absence; if this is traditional and ancient law, which is very probable, it throws an interesting side-light upon our Epistle ; in the first place, it may, in part, have been the reason for St. Paul’s