insistence on the return of Onesimus to his master; and in the se- cond place, it may have some bearing on the words in vv. 18, 19) ‘ But if he hath wronged thee at all, or oweth thee aught, put that to mine account; I Paul write it with mine own hand, 1 will repay it’; these last words are perhaps meant literally, the reference being to manual labour, or the like, which St. Paul was prepared to under- take in order to make up for the time lost by Onesimus, this lost time having presumably occasioned loss to Philemon. For the above see further Exod. xxi. 2-11, Lev. xxv. 39-54, Deut. xv. 12-18, xxiii. 16, 17 (15, 16 R.V.); Hamburger, Real-Encycl. des Fudenthums i. p. 947; Fewish Encycl. xi. 404 ff.
These few data are sufficient to show the spirit of mercy and fellow-feeling which characterised Jewish slavery.
Utterly different from this was the Roman system; this is well described in Lighfoot’s Colossians and Philemon, pp. 320 ff., and with great minuteness in Wallon’s Hist. de l’esclavage dans I’ anti- quité (2nd ed.), which is the chief authority on the subject. For details concerning slavery in the Roman empire recourse must be had to these works; and for a description of the appalling moral effects of the institution upon both masters and slaves, see Vincent’s Commentary, pp. 163 ff. While there were undoubtedly exceptions, cp., ¢.g., the letter written by the younger Pliny (Ep. ix. 21), quoted by Lightfoot, of. cit. p. 316, the general rule was that the Roman system was, practically, the antithesis of the Jewish.
St. Paul’s attitude towards slavery must be understood in the light of the Jewish system; this contained within itself the germs of the Christian conception of man, which was bound sooner or later to prove fatal to slavery.. ‘‘ When the Gospel taught that God had made all men and women upon earth of one family; that all alike were His sons and His daughters; that, whatever conventional dis- tinctions human society might set up, the supreme King of Heaven refused to acknowledge any; that the slave, notwithstanding his slavery, was Christ’s freedman, and the free, notwithstanding his liberty, was Christ’s slave; when the Church carried out this prin- ciple by admitting the slave to her highest privileges, inviting him to kneel side by side with his master at the same holy table ; when, in short, the Apostolic precept that ‘in Christ Jesus is neither bond nor _ free’ was not only recognised, but acted upon, then slavery was doomed” (Lightfoot, op. cit. p. 325).
δ IV. Literature :—
Lightfoot, Colossians and Philemon, 1884.
Von Soden, “ Philemon,” in Holtzmann’s Hand Kommentar, 1891 VOL. IV. 14