The Logos Research Commentary is your starting point for study and research. It surveys all the relevant literature on a passage and brings the summary back to you. This commentary summarizes a broad range of views on a particular passage—views you may or may not agree with, but in all cases, views you will encounter as you critically study the text. A complete introduction to each literary unit in the Bible, it will bring new thoroughness to your research.

The New Testament finds many ways to depict the relationship of Christians and their Lord—they are his disciples, sons, daughters, and friends, but it is perhaps too little recognized that they are also his slaves. Murray J. Harris sets out to uncover what it means to be a slave of Christ. He begins by assessing the nature of actual slavery in the Greco-Roman world and the New Testament’s attitude towards it. Drawing insights from this, he goes on to unfold the metaphor of slavery to Christ. Among the topics discussed are slavery and spiritual freedom, lordship, ownership, and privilege.

Philemon is the shortest letter in the Pauline collection, yet—because it has to do with a slave separated from his master—it has played an inordinate role in the toxic brew of slavery and racism in the United States. In Onesimus Our Brother, leading African American biblical scholars tease out the often unconscious assumptions about religion, race, and culture that permeate contemporary interpretation of the New Testament and of Paul in particular. The editors argue that Philemon is as important a letter from an African American perspective as Romans or Galatians have proven to be in Eurocentric interpretation. The essays gathered here continue to trouble scholarly waters, interacting with the legacies of Hegel, Freud, Habermas, Ricoeur, and James C. Scott, as well as the historical experience of African American communities. Contributors: Allen Dwight Callahan Matthew V. Johnson Sr. James A. Noel James W. Perkinson Mitzi J. Smith Margaret B....

The Bible appears to give mixed and even conflicting signals on four contentious issues: slavery, the Sabbath, war, and God’s charge for women. In Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women, New Testament scholar Willard Swartley seeks, in a spirit of unity and dialogue, to clarify the interpretive difficulties surrounding these topics. A predecessor to his 2003 publication, Homosexuality, this book presents a thorough, spirit-filled discussion of some of the most nuanced and sensitive issues facing the church today.

Barclay brings to light the literary and historical connections between Colossians and Philemon. Paul’s theology and the early influence of Gnosticism, and he reexamines the Colossian hymn. Barclay also outlines Paul’s Christology in relation to the doctrine of creation, doctrine of God, doctrine of salvation, other-worldly powers, and the church. Regarding Philemon, Barclay concerns himself with the story behind the letter, its strategy and its outcome.