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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.
('Aspa/zetai/), ‘Epaphras’, ‘fellow captive’ (sunaixma/lwto/j) (v. 23), ‘Mark’, ‘Aristarchus’, ‘Demas’, ‘Luke’ (v. 24), and ‘spirit’ (pneu/matoj) (v. 25) demonstrate this unit’s distinctiveness within the letter.
II. The Parallels and Pivot of the Chiastic Structure
A. Paul begins with a framework of imprisonment and partnership under grace (vv. 1-3).
A'. Paul closes with a framework of imprisonment and partnership under grace (vv. 23-25).
Verbal repetitions of significant words in the same sequence indicate the parallelism between the opening A unit (vv. 1-3) and the closing A' unit (vv. 23-25) in the chiasm. ‘Epaphras, my fellow captive in Christ Jesus’ (v. 23) parallels ‘Paul a prisoner of Christ Jesus’ (v. 1). The greeting from Paul’s ‘fellow workers (sunergoi/)’ (v. 24) corresponds to Paul’s address to Philemon as ‘our beloved and fellow worker (sunergw=|)’ (v. 1). ‘The grace (xa/rij) of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your (u(mw=n) spirit’ (v. 25) parallels ‘grace (xa/rij) to you (u(mi=n) and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ (v. 3). That the nouns ‘fellow worker(s)’, ‘grace’, and the full designation ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ occur only in these two units enhances the parallelism.
The sequence of repeated nouns is the same in both units: Christ Jesus – fellow worker(s) – grace – Lord Jesus Christ. Only the pronouns do not occur in the same position in the sequence. ‘To you’ (u(mi=n) occurs before ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ in the opening greeting (v. 3) and ‘your’ (u(mw=n) occurs as the last word of the letter after ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ in the closing greeting (v. 25). This straight parallelism stands in contrast to the inverted parallelism that, as we will see, characterizes the other chiastically paired units. This distinguishes the opening (vv. 1-3) and closing (vv. 23-25) units of the chiasm as constituting a framework of imprisonment and partnership under grace for the entire letter. Within this framework the argument of the letter is conducted in the other, inversely parallel units of the chiasm.
B. From love Philemon’s partnership can result in doing good for Christ (vv. 4-7).
B'. From obedience Philemon will do good in benefiting Paul with Onesimus (vv. 20-22).
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