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The Letter to Philemon: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

Sometimes regarded as trivial because of its brevity, the letter to Philemon remains valuable both for its insight into the social setting of the New Testament and for its reiteration of a central component of the gospel—brotherly love. Barth and Blanke’s commentary is unique for its exhaustive study of the ancient world at the time Philemon was written. They examine the institution of slavery in...

enforced. The dividing line between slaves and free persons was not always sharply drawn or easily recognized. A slave could own one or more slaves; he could, within certain limits, possess private property. He could work side by side with his owner or with other free persons. Often a reasonably rich man’s slave was better off than a poor citizen in possession of all civil rights. Also there were forms of a person’s legal status in which elements of total dependence and of freedom were mixed.4 In
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