The Letter to Philemon has been read by generations of interpreters, including towering figures such as John Chrysostom, as having to do with Paul returning the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master. Hence the letter, at best, was made complicit in the institution of slavery and, at worst, was foundational for the view that slavery was God ordained. This oppressive interpretation still holds sway in the academy and church alike.
In his interdisciplinary study, Stephen E. Young sets a new trajectory for understanding this unassuming epistle. Our Brother Beloved: Purpose and Community in Paul's Letter to Philemon opens with a case study on the use of the Letter to Philemon in the debates surrounding slavery and fugitive slaves in antebellum America. The book then analyzes the major background stories that have been used as keys to interpret the letter, showing that past and present oppressive uses of the Letter to Philemon are due not to the letter's contents but to the persistence of erroneous readings. Young provides a new interpretation that accounts for every element of the Letter to Philemon while also addressing many shortcomings of previous interpretations. In so doing he pioneers the use of Positioning Theory, from the field of social psychology, as an analytical approach, opening up a new avenue for the study of ancient texts.
That texts shape the identity of readers is widely recognized, but biblical scholars tend to disregard the process by which that influence unfolds. Young demonstrates how the Letter to Philemon sought to shape the identity of its readers within their sociocultural context by molding them into a community of deliverance, one that could receive Onesimus no longer as a slave but as a brother and fellow worker in the gospel. Such a fresh reading carries strong implications for the ongoing cause of social justice.
Industry Reviews
"...[Young] saturates his study with sterling scholarship on enslavement ( Keith R. Bradley, Orlando Patterson, and Sandra Joshel), on Paul (Lloyd A. Lewis, Clarice J. Martin, and Wayne A. Meeks), on the effective history of Paul's short letter (E. Fox-Genovese, E.D. Genovese, Mark A. Noll, and David Brion Davis), and on some of the most pressing matters of more recent times, from the War on Drugs to 'contemporary forms of slavery such as debt bondage, child slavery, forced prostitution, servile marriage, and sweatshops' (197 n. 59). Perhaps along the way as well, Young offers us a summons to rethink our traditional way of referencing one of Paul's prison letters." --Abraham Smith "Review of Biblical Literature" In Our Brother Beloved, Stephen Young offers a careful reading of Philemon that reckons with the complicated interpretive history of Paul's letter, considers the text through an alternative methodological lens, and proposes that the letter offers a fresh way in which to view both first-century and twenty-first-century community construction. --Jonathon Lookadoo "Reviews in Religion and Theology" Young's work is thorough, well-argued, and hermeneutically and theologically perceptive. But perhaps most of all, it is timely. At this moment in the history of the United States when issues of race and racial justice are demanding attention by those who name Christ as Lord, Young has provided a fresh and convincing liberative reading of a text that offers a potential healing balm for the diseased social imagination that characterizes much of White American Christianity. --Andy Johnson "Bulletin for Biblical Research" Young's book is complex, but his lesson is masterful, more urgent and necessary than ever. --Alvaro Silva "Mayeutica"
![NRSV Catholic Bible Gift Edition [Brown] : Holy Bible - Thomas Nelson](https://www.booktopia.com.au/covers/200/9780785230397/1242/nrsv-catholic-bible-gift-edition-brown-.jpg)
