Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast, and I don't know for sure if what I'm about to tell you is true, but I think it is because the Mexican kids who told me seemed really credible. You know how in English, if somebody says, See you later, alligator, do you know what you're supposed to say? What are you supposed to say? Do you have it? Come on. Everybody knows what to say. After a while, crocodile, right? What does it mean? I don't know. Where did it come from? I don't know. Wait, actually, let's see if we can know. I'm gonna Google that crap right now. Where did hang on a second? Ha! Okay, I deleted the Google searching time, but this is what I just found. Apparently, it was teen slang that originated in the early 1950s, possibly in Hawaii, where to the best of my knowledge, they do not have alligators. Looks like there are some articles, maybe even a bunch of articles written in the early 1950s that were getting a kick out of new teen slang that was becoming a thing in this new age of youth culture. And yeah, it looks like this is one of them, the see a later alligator thing. And then it was a song by Bobby Charles, and it got covered and became very popular when Bill Haley and his Comets recorded it in 1955. There. Okay, now I guess I do have some idea where see a later alligator and after a while crocodile came from. That's it. That's been a thing for 75 years. It doesn't have to make sense. It's slang, right? Well, back to these Mexican kids. A couple of Mexican kids told me that that doesn't make any sense if you translate it into Spanish. It just doesn't rhyme. It doesn't work. But they told me that they have their own. The Spanish version, apparently, or the Mexican version, is que pasa calabasa, which would be like, what passes pumpkin? Doesn't have to make sense. Like it's just, you know, what's up, pumpkin? And then you respond to that by saying, nada nada, limonada, nothing, nothing lemonade. Again, see, it just doesn't work in English. It totally breaks down, but it's really fun in the native language. And if I if I just translated that to you and said that at you, like, what's happening, pumpkin? Nothing, nothing lemonade. It would sound ridiculous in English, but totally works in Spanish, because there's a rhythm to it, there's a cadence to it. Well, likewise, the language that the New Testament was originally written in, which is almost entirely a form of New Testament Greek, it was a very robust language. It was a language that God, in his providence, was a part of his calculation for what is the fullness of time, that concept described in the book of Galatians, that being the time where it would make sense for God to take on flesh and be born of a virgin, and for Jesus to live his life and teach his teachings and go to the cross and be resurrected. That was the moment that God picked. And the language that God picked for most of that to be recorded in was Greek. Well, you'd expect it to be a pretty clever language, then, that might have a little capasa kalabasa action going on. And it turns out it does. And the wordplay that is in question here that causes me to think about all of this is actually with the name Onesimus. So let me read this chunk of Philemon to you again, and then we're going to go find the word play. See if you can catch it in English. It's not real overt, but maybe you'll get it. Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me. I totally cheated. I emphasized it. You you caught it. It's the useless and useful thing. Now, the way I found out about this play on words was not through genius biblical scholarship performed by me. I found out about it by somebody told me. And then I went and looked it up, and a whole bunch of real smart people were all like, oh yeah, that's that's totally a thing. And they wrote about it in their books. I was like, huh. Well, I didn't catch that at all when I bumbled through that with some of my very clumsy, horrible, rudimentary, embarrassing Greek that I still kind of remember from school, but not very well. So what we have here is a tense situation, right? The first half of Philemon, you have social sense. You can tell when there's a tough request coming. You can tell when your kid is going to ask you for money. You, I mean, these things are you can tell when somebody's warming that up. Philemon's not an idiot. He can tell Paul has a tough request coming. What other little hint that might have given Philemon that impression is that his runaway slave handed him a letter from Paul and was like, before you say anything, read this. So he knows something's coming. The the moment is probably tense. There's a tension in the air with the reading of the letter. Then it kind of feels like maybe there's a little play on words here that sort of eases the tension, lightens the mood a little bit. So the name Onesimus in Greek literally means useful. There are brilliant people who look at that and say, that is an honorific. That is a very generous name that Onesimus received either from a slave dealer. We don't know Onesimus' origin. Maybe he was somebody who was captured by a neighboring tribe outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire and was taken to some sort of slave trading base where the Romans would meet up with the barbarians and the outsiders, and maybe then there was some kind of chain of command, and eventually Onesimus ends up in the custody of Philemon, and he just keeps the name that was kind of given to him as an advertisement, like a like a red sticker slapped on him. I mean, that's demeaning. I understand what I'm saying here, but like you got to figure these people viewed slaves as products, particularly the slavers would have, and they're trying to get the most bang for their buck out of their product. I'm making little bunny air quotes because I don't think that. And so what do you do when you're trying to sell something? Well, you frame it in the best possible light. This fellow here is strong. This fellow here is intelligent. This fellow here is useful. Well, and then maybe that name just stuck. So it's entirely possible that if Onesimus was not born into slavery, that his original name, his real name, is lost and it's replaced with this declaration of his functionality. So I guess I'm doing this backwards. That would be the demeaning side to consider his name in that light. Other people say, well, maybe he got his name from Philemon, and maybe he's been Philemon's slave since he was very young, and maybe it is a title of honor. And Philemon was like, You're downright talented. And this is the kind of name that slaves have in culture. And so it just seemed right, and he didn't ethically think twice about what kind of name he would put on this slave, and maybe to Philemon. It was a title of great honor. Don't know, can't tell. Smart people disagree. But what we do know for sure is that Onesimus means useful. Okay, now to the K Pasa Kalabasa business. Paul says, formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me. So I've gone and looked this up. You can do this as well. I've got a lovely little leather-bound Greek New Testament that I keep over here that I bumble around with like a monkey trying to grab a stick of hot butter. And in it, the word useless here looks like it is akrestos. A-C-H-R-E-S-T-O-S. Akrestos. It looks like the word for useful in this Greek New Testament is eukrestos, E-U-C-H-R-E-S, T-O-S. So then if we keep all of it English except those two words, it would be formerly he was a krestos to you, but now he has become ukrestos, both to you and me. But that's not the play on words. The play on words is that useless and christless in Greek would have been pronounced identically. It would be virtually indiscernible, I would guess, between most people. So akrestos, useless, a-c-h r-e-s-t-o-s, that's useless, and then Christless is a christos, a-c-r-i-st-o-s. This is a very different time. People had a very different sense of humor. Greek is a very different courier of thoughts and jokes and interpersonal relationships. Every language carries those meanings and those relational things differently. But it looks like what Paul is doing here is that in a very playful way, he's acknowledging what they both knew, which is Onesimus used to be without Christ. And when he was, he was not very useful to you. I mean, he ran away. That's not very useful to you. But now he is with Christ, and in the truest sense of the word, is now Onesimus, that is useful. And in this context, there is no ambiguity as to whether Onesimus's name is being invoked as a title of honor, a name of honor, or a name of degradation. It is clearly intended in this context, even if we might feel different with modern sensibilities. In this context, all parties, Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus, would have been like, oh yeah, I see what you're doing there. That was nice. Thank you. That was a kind remark. Now, Paul is making the point that Onesimus has been really useful. He's been really helpful. In other words, Onesimus has jumped in almost like on behalf of Philemon and has helped Paul in that crucial time we've talked about so much at the end of the book of Acts, where everything wraps up. Like, you know, those last couple of verses that I read you a few days ago. Paul was in prison and he was there for two whole years and he stayed there in a rented house and he welcomed everybody who came to see him. He did so boldly and he wasn't hindered, and he preached the kingdom of God and he taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, very likely, I mean, it is possible that Paul wrote Philemon from a different imprisonment we don't know about, but most likely Paul wrote from that imprisonment given the timeline. And that means Onesimus is there in the background of that passage at the end of Acts. It means Onesimus rubbed elbows with Mark and Barnabas and Epaphras and Peter and Luke. I mean, two gospel authors are there and knew Onesimus. Dang, do you think that didn't rub off on him? You think that didn't level up Onesimus? I mean, you better dang well believe it did. It isn't just that he became a Christian. He was in the room, yo. I mean, what an amazing thing for Onesimus to just get started at Christianity and like, well, you know, who were the first Christians you hung out with? Oh, you know, nobody that was that big a deal. Just Saints Peter, Paul, Mark, Luke, Barnabas, Timothy. Maybe you've heard of him. What a figurative baptism for Onesimus, who no doubt, in addition to becoming a follower of Christ, just leveled up in his knowledge of the thing and being around people so competent, so action-oriented, so motivated. What a way to get started in the faith. And Paul captures a whole lot of all of that just with this simple little play on words that I think communicates a lot in a really fun way and releases some of the tension that would have come with the letter. And I think this little play on words probably increased to the likelihood of a favorable outcome for all parties involved. All right, pressing on with more Fein Lemon Manana. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.