Onesimus Our Brother: Reading, Religion, Race, and Slavery in Philemon

In Onesimus our Brother, scholars including leading African-American biblical interpreters tease out the often unconscious assumptions about religion, race, and culture that permeate contemporary discussions of this letter and of the apostle Paul's legacy. The editors argue that interpreting Philemon is a weighty matter from the perspective of African-American experience as Romans or Galatians have proven to be in Eurocentric scholarship. The essays gathered here continue to trouble scholarly waters, interacting with the legacies of Hegel, Freud, Habermas, Ricoeur, and James C. Scott as as well as the historical experience of African American communities.