Onesimus

2 definitions found

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Onesimus
     useful, a slave who, after robbing his master Philemon (q.v.) at
     Colosse, fled to Rome, where he was converted by the apostle
     Paul, who sent him back to his master with the epistle which
     bears his name. In it he beseeches Philemon to receive his slave
     as a "faithful and beloved brother." Paul offers to pay to


     Philemon anything his slave had taken, and to bear the wrong he
     had done him. He was accompanied on his return by Tychicus, the
     bearer of the Epistle to the Colossians (Philemon 1:16, 18).
     
       The story of this fugitive Colossian slave is a remarkable
     evidence of the freedom of access to the prisoner which was
     granted to all, and "a beautiful illustration both of the
     character of St. Paul and the transfiguring power and righteous
     principles of the gospel."
     

From Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (late 1800's) [hitchcock]:

  Onesimus, profitable; useful