Texts in Conversation
Paul’s letter to Philemon asks the slaveholder to welcome his slave Onesimus back as a brother. Decades later, the Christian author Ignatius writes to the Ephesians and their bishop Onesimus, which may have been the same man now leading that church.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philemon 1:10
New Testament
9 I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—I, Paul, an old man and even now a prisoner for the sake of Christ Jesus— 10 I am appealing to you concerning my child, whose spiritual father I have become during my imprisonment, that is, Onesimus, 11 who was formerly useless to you, but is now useful to you and me.
Ignatius Epistle to the Ephesians 1:1
Early Christian
1 I have become acquainted with your name, much-beloved in God, which ye have acquired by the habit of righteousness, according to the faith and love in Jesus Christ our Saviour. Being the followers of God, and stirring up yourselves by the blood of God, ye have perfectly accomplished the work which was beseeming to you. For, on hearing that I came bound from Syria for the common name and hope, trusting through your prayers to be permitted to fight with beasts at Rome, that so by martyrdom I may indeed become the disciple of Him "who gave Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God," [ye hastened to see me ]. I received, therefore, your whole multitude in the name of God, through Onesimus, a man of inexpressible love and your bishop in the flesh, whom I pray you by Jesus Christ to love, and that you would all seek to be like him. And blessed be He who has granted unto you, being worthy, to obtain such an excellent bishop.
Date: 160-180 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... When Ignatius, bishop of Syrian Antioch, was on his way to Rome to be thrown to the wild beasts, about A.D. 110 or shortly after, the name of the bishop of Ephesus was Onesimus. “What of that?” it might be asked. Onesimus was a common enough name–especially a common enough slave-name. “Profitable” or “Useful” was a name bestowed on many slaves in accordance with a well-known principle of nomenclature, not because a slave was actually profitable or useful, but in the fond hope that the attachment of this name of good omen to him would make him so. Why, then, should one connect the Onesimus who was bishop of Ephesus about A.D. 110 with the Onesimus who figures in the letter to Philemon between fifty and sixty years earlier? Because, says Professor Knox, Ignatius in his letter to the church of Ephesus shows himself familiar with the Epistle to Philemon; it is one of the rare places in patristic literature where the language of our epistle is clearly echoed ...
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