Authenticity of Philemon

[davidlau17]

I've always found the consensus around Philemon to be a bit surprising. It seems its alleged authenticity centers around its brevity and subject matter. The epistle lacks any major theological points - but is this a strong basis for authenticity?

It names persons (Luke, Aristarchus, Demas, Mark, Epaphras, Onesimus) that can only be found elsewhere in Colossians, Ephesians, and the pastorals. If Philemon is inauthentic, this would have implications regarding whether Paul ever truly had a coworker named Luke. It would also weaken any case for authenticity for either Colossians or Ephesians.

Is anyone aware of any work since Bauer that has critically examined the supposed authenticity of Philemon? I think comparing the language of Philemon to other undisputed letters could be enlightening.

[schillingklaus]

The consensus is absurdly false, as almost everything in NT scholarship. Of course, Philemon is nowhere near original but corrupted piecemeal like all epistles.

Only Stuart G. Waugh has hitherto been able to appraise Philemon in a non-hypocritical and non-superstitious manner.

[lclapshaw]

I'm on the fence regarding Philemon. It seems to belong to the Colossians/Ephesians letter set but could predate them and be authentic. The shortness of the letter makes it hard to analyze in context with the other 'authentic' letters. Based on that I think most of us give it a pass.

[Secret Alias]

Fake

[Chrissy Hansen]

I've always found the consensus around Philemon to be a bit surprising. It seems its alleged authenticity centers around its brevity and subject matter. The epistle lacks any major theological points - but is this a strong basis for authenticity?

It names persons (Luke, Aristarchus, Demas, Mark, Epaphras, Onesimus) that can only be found elsewhere in Colossians, Ephesians, and the pastorals. If Philemon is inauthentic, this would have implications regarding whether Paul ever truly had a coworker named Luke. It would also weaken any case for authenticity for either Colossians or Ephesians.

Is anyone aware of any work since Bauer that has critically examined the supposed authenticity of Philemon? I think comparing the language of Philemon to other undisputed letters could be enlightening.

I know this post is ancient, but since I'm working on a book on the subject (arguing against Philemon's authenticity) I kinda want to revive the subject. Here's a list of academics (and relevant publications) who have argued against Philemon's authenticity:

Baur, F. C. Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, translated by Robert F. Brown and Peter C. Hodgson. Ori. 1845; Eugene: Cascade, 2021. [pages 305-8]

Bauer, Bruno. Kritik der paulinischen Briefe. 3 vols; Berlin: Hempel, 1850–52. [vol. 3, page 117]

Paley, Justin. “Questioning the Pauline Authorship of Philemon: Crackpot Theory or Plausible Alternative?” Expository Times 134, no. 1 (2022): 11–20.

Price, Robert M. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul. Salt Lake City: Signature, 2012.

Price, Robert M. Holy Fable III: The Epistles and Apocalypse Undistorted by Faith. n.p.: Mindvendor, 2018. [pages 152-54 this one also includes some off the cuff casual racism from Bob, so... fair warning]

Price, Robert M. The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-four Formative Texts. Salt Lake City: Signature, 2006.

Schwab, Günther. Echtheitskritische Untersuchungen zu den vier kleinen Paulusbriefen. Band I: Halbband A. Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2011. [pages 87–199]

Steck, Rudolf. “Plinius im Neuen Testament.” Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie 17 (1891): 545–84. [pages 570–75]

Van den Bergh van Eysinga, G. A. La littérature chrétienne primitive. Paris: F. Rieder, 1926. [pages 139–41]

Van den Bergh van Eysinga, G. A. “Paulus’ Brief aan Philemon.” Nieuw Theologisch Tijdschrift 29 (1940): 1–18.

Van Manen, W. C. Handleiding voor de Oudchristelijke Letterkunde. Leiden: L. Van Nifterik, 1900. [page 59]

Van Manen, W. C. "Philemon," in A Wave of Hypercriticism: The English Writings of W. C. van Manen. Valley: Tellectual, 2014.

Additionally, Seesengood, Robert. Philemon: An Introduction and Study Guide. London: Bloomsbury, 2017, pages 79-83 seriously entertains the possibility of Philemon's inauthenticity.

[davidmartin]

i have a theory on Philemon
Roger Parvus tells us Apelles the Marcion breakaway was accused of sourcing his revelations from one Philomena
Her name is almost identical to Philemon. It's worth exploring

Parvus makes much of Apelles and really worth to read his ideas on vridar about Ignatius and the gospel of John
but if Apelles has real problems with Philomena (accusations) maybe the same thing could apply to the epistles?
that they are accused of depending in some way on a figure that is dubious to others

then might not Philemon be a way to deny a Philomena connection?
if it turns out it's merely about a slave Philemon is a kind of defence
and Paul in Acts exorcises an apparently Christian prophetess
and Paul in Galatians denies partying with other leaders or getting his info from others

at this point i gave up as we know nothing much about Philomena, but i'll bet she pre-dated Marcion

[Chrissy Hansen]

I'm going to check when I get back but I have a number of surface doubts for a few reasons. Firstly is Philemon's overt lack of much theology that would be of any concern in Marcionite setting. Comparing to other forgeries like 2 Timothy which does seem to have an overtly anti-Marcionite approach, I think we'd just expect more from that type of pseudonymous work.

Additionally we have the issue that Philumena and Philemon are first attested by the exact same person, Tertullian, who also intimates he has his own edition of Philemon separate the Marcionite edition, as he was able to discern that Marcion had not tampered with (or the Marcionite version was not substantially different from) Philemon.

So at that point I don't think there is remotely enough to go on since we don't know what Marcion's or Tertullian's versions of Philemon look like. To my knowledge there is no complete version of Philemon until the third or fourth century CE. So we have desperately little to work with.

Personally, I am becoming more partial to Steck's theory (later used by Van Manen and taken by Price who erroneously attributes its origination to Van Manen) that the letter may be actually a stoic Christian forgery that was (a) a commentary on passages in 1 Cor 7, Col, and Eph and was also partly (b) modeled on Pliny's letters to Sabinianus.

[DCHindley]

Please excuse me if I seem to come out of left field, but do not ancient personal letters often follow cliché norms that were considered "the way to do it?" Personal letters will tend to follow certain norms.

What do you think of David Trobisch's idea that the Pauline corpus was an aggregate of smaller collections of various types, two to to communities and one to individuals? How would Marcion have come across this letter to an individual if he otherwise had only seen letters to communities?

So, you are saying that whatever Marcion had access to, which was same as what Tertullian had access to, may not be same as the Letter to Philemon in the NT, perhaps fabricated by the early Christian forgery machine? I'm using hyperbole, yes, but thinking that the entire NT canon was somehow created in reaction to an original version of Marcion's Gospel & 10 letters. Sounds a little, mmm, conspiratorial.

I'm not suggesting that everything in these collections was genuine, but I do think that some of it is interpolated, and I'll consider some could be pseudepigrapha. This suggests a pretty complicated prehistory of collections of works marketed as Paul's, and there is the final editor's agenda to wonder about.

Are you going in the right direction? Seems you are actually making the transmission history more complicated, not simpler.

DCH

[ebion]

How would Marcion have come across this letter to an individual if he otherwise had only seen letters to communities?

It wouldn't be a problem for Marcion if he made them all (10) up (or edited scraps others had gathered),

I don't know Philemon but it does show signs that it was originally written in Aramaic.

[DCHindley]

How would Marcion have come across this letter to an individual if he otherwise had only seen letters to communities?

It wouldn't be a problem for Marcion if he made them all (10) up (or edited scraps others had gathered),

I don't know Philemon but it does show signs that it was originally written in Aramaic.

Sounds like a letter from one retainer of a Lord to another retainer, Philemon, who may have been one of Paul's business partners, about running across one of his partner's runaway slaves, who he has taken under his wing, but now returns to his master a new kind of man, a "brother." Besides Philemon, Paul speaks of several other "brothers" and "sisters," so this suggests a society of some kind. Philemon may be a Freedman or a freedman's son, perhaps like Paul himself, hence a "brother."

Stripping out the relatively few Christ passages as interpolations, the keyword here is simply "faith." Not wanting to derail this thread, but I have argued that an original Paul had adopted a view that the faith of Abram was what justified him before God, not the eventual circumcision of his household or the eventual giving of the Law to his physical descendants, and now accepted that gentiles who also believed God will pull off the golden age thing, were co inheritors of this new bountiful world. He just wanted acceptance for faithful gentiles who wanted to be part of all that, hence the whole apostle thing, arranged to allow him to collect freewill offerings from faithful gentiles to be taken to Jerusalem, leveraged by being a retainer of a Herodian prince, which if anyone asks I think was Antipas the Tetrarch.

Obviously, under this POV, Paul would have problems after around 39 CE when Antipas was deposed by Caligula and his gift estates transferred to newly appointed King Agrippa I. Paul and Philemon may have been free, but if sons of freedmen, may still have had family obligations to their former master's family. It was around 35 CE that Antipas and Aretas IV had their skirmish, where Aretas had defeated Antipas' army. If Paul had a hand in Antipas' affairs, it seems that Aretas kept a grudge against anything or anyone representing Antipas. This could explain why an ethnarch representing Nabatean residents of or visitors to Damascus would try to detain one of Antipas' retainers, or at least used to be a retainer of Antipas. There may have been financial claims from that war that Aretas' own retainers (the ethnarch) wanted to extract from any of Antipas' retainers they could lay their hands upon.

Enuf said ... Sorry Chrissy

DCH