John Paul Heil, «The Chiastic Structure and Meaning of Paul’s Letter to Philemon», Vol. 82 (2001) 178-206

This article proposes a new chiastic structure for Paul’s letter to Philemon based on rigorous criteria and methodology. The center and pivot of the chiasm, ‘but without your consent I resolved to do nothing, so that your good might not be as under compulsion but rather under benevolence’ (v. 14), is a key to explicating the letter’s supposedly unclear purpose. Paul wants Philemon to give his former slave Onesimus back to Paul as a beloved brother and fellow worker for the gospel of Jesus Christ, because of Philemon’s response to the grace of God evident in his faithful love for the holy ones as a beloved brother and fellow worker of Paul.

Although chiastic structures of Paul’s letter to Philemon have been proposed in the past, none has proven to be entirely satisfactory¹. Not convincing as true chiasms, they have failed to disclose the real purpose of the letter². We wish to propose a more compelling chiastic structure and to utilize its rhetorical function to reveal more precisely the purpose and meaning of this shortest and subtlest of Paul’s letters³.