The First Christian Slave: Onesimus in Context by Mary Ann Beavis

Abstract

Reviewed by: The First Christian Slave: Onesimus in Context by Mary Ann Beavis Sung Uk Lim mary ann beavis, The First Christian Slave: Onesimus in Context (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021). Pp. xii + 136. $21. In stark contrast to the traditional interpretation deeply entrenched in the dominant perspective of Paul or Philemon, Mary Ann Beavis takes a doulocentric, or slave-centered, perspective in analyzing Philemon in order to recover the silenced voice and repressed [End Page 351] agency of Onesimus in the dominant societies, both ancient and modern. B.'s awareness of and sensitivity to the long-lasting legacy of the slave trade even in modern history stimulates her to use a cross-cultural reading strategy across spatial and temporal constraints. Reading Philemon with Onesimus in the foreground triggers a liberationist hermeneutics for those enslaved people throughout history. In chap. 1, B. starts with a deepened understanding of the notion of "social death" coined by Orlando Patterson in his work Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Social death can be defined simply as "a way of describing a set of dehumanizing conditions imposed by slaveholders on slaves" (p. 16). B. emphasizes, however, that enslaved people, including Onesimus, have the agency to resist the oppressive system forcibly imposing social death upon them in the day-to-day tactics, most of which are not recorded in the extant documents. At the same time, B. pays due attention to the notion of "soul value" termed by Daina Ramey Berry (The Price for Their Pound of Flesh [Boston: Beacon, 2017]). Soul value is referred to as the intrinsically felt self-worth of enslaved people in marked opposition to their monetary worth estimated by the slaveholders. Even if it still remains a puzzle how Onesimus responded to Paul's perception of his soul value, B. is assured that Onesimus embraced the gospel as beneficial to the improvement of his life at the material and spiritual levels. Interestingly, B. strenuously points out that enslaved people can variously express their soul values, regardless of their situation between accommodation and recalcitrance. In contrast to the widely accepted hypothesis of white slaveholders that Onesimus was a runaway slave sent back by the apostle to his master Philemon, B. in chap. 2 assumes that Philemon sent or left Onesimus behind to provide Paul with assistance in multiple ways. To sustain a doulocentric perspective in the process of exegesis, B. leans toward the interpretations of Philemon by the (formerly) enslaved in American nineteenth-century history. Along this line of reasoning, she surmises that the letter's original recipients consisted of mixed groups of free, freed, and enslaved people as members of the so-called ecclesia. Certainly, Onesimus the slave as part of the oikos of Philemon had no choice but to participate in the cultic ceremonies practiced in the master's household. According to B., Onesimus, nevertheless, was likely to have more agency in the religious realm in his relationships with Paul than has traditionally been imagined. For instance, she concurs that Onesimus, albeit enslaved, took on diakonia ("diaconal service"). Furthermore, beyond the realm of religion, B. goes so far as to suppose that Onesimus, closely acquainted with Paul, was able to manipulate the apostle into interceding in the strained relationship between a master and a slave. In chap. 3, B. compares Paul's letter to Philemon with the letter of Pliny the Elder to Sabianus, the purpose of which was to request that Sabianus pardon an unnamed freedman for his offensive action. In spite of manifold differences between the two letters, B. demonstrates a similarity between them in that both were composed at the request of a supplicant. In cross-cultural perspective, B. goes on to juxtapose Paul's letter to Philemon with the letters written by enslaved people in antebellum American culture. Surprisingly, despite their great historical and cultural separation, such letters have much in common in that all of them have a person of higher status who asks a slaveholder to grant a favor for an enslaved person. These intercultural observations lead to the conviction that Onesimus directed Paul to contrive the letter in Onesimus's favor. [End Page 352] In chap. 4, B. discusses...