Philemon — The Tyndale New Testament (1534)

The epistle known today as Philemon in Tyndale's revised New Testament of 1534, translated from the Greek and opened, as in the print, by Tyndale's prologue to the epistle. It is printed here from the copy in the British Library as keyed by the Text Creation Partnership, in the spelling of 1534; the margin notes are given as footnotes.

¶ The Prologe to the epistle of S. Paul vnto Philemon.

IN this pistle S. Paul shewet⟨illegible⟩ y⟨illegible⟩ a godlye en sample of Christen loue. Herein we se how Paule taketh poore Onesimos vnto him & maketh intercession for him vnto his master & helpetly him with all that he may / and behaueth him selfenone other wyse then as though he him selfe were the sayde Onesimos. Which thinge yet he dothe not with power and auctoryte / as he well myght haue done: but putteth of all auctorite & whatso euer he might of ryght do / that Philemō myght do likewise towarde Onesimos / and with great mekenes and wysdome teacheth Philemon to se his dutie in Christ Iesus.

The text

Chapter 1

1 PAul the presoner of Iesu Christ / and brother Timotheus. [A] Vnto Philemon the beloved / & oure helper /

2 & to the beloved Appia / and to Archippu soure felowe soudier / and to the congregacion of thy housse.

3 Grace be with you & peace / from God oure father / & from the Lorde Iesus Christ.

4 I thāke my God / makinge menciō all wayes of the in my prayers /

5 when I heare of thy love and fayth / which thou hast towarde the Lorde Iesu / and towarde all saynctes:

6 so that the fellisshippe that thou hast in the fayth / is frutefull thorow knowledge of all good thinges / which are in you by Iesus Christ.

7 And we have great ioye / and consolacion over thy love: For by the (brother) the saynctes hertes are comforted.

8 Wherfore though I be bolde in Christ to [B] enioyne the / that which becōmeth the:

9 yet for loves sake I rather beseche the / though I be as I am / evē Paul aged / & now in bondes for Iesu Christes sake.

10 I beseche the for my sonne Onesimus / whom I begat in my bondes /

11 which in tyme passed was to the vnproffetable: but now proffetable bothe to the & also to me /

12 whom I have sent home agayne. Thou therfore receave him / that is to saye myne awne bowels /

13 whom I wolde fayne have retayned with me / that in thy stede he myght have ministred vnto me in yᵉ bondes of the gospell.

14 Neverthelesse / without thy mynde / wolde I doo nothinge / that yᵗ good which springeth of the / shuld not be as it were of necessitie / but willingly.

15 Haply he therfore departed for a season / y[ᵗ] thou shuldest receave him for ever /

16 not nowe [C] as a servaūt: but above a servaunt / I meane a brother beloved / specially to me: but how moche more vnto the / both in the flesshe / and also in the Lorde?

17 Yf thou count me a felowe / receave him as my selfe.

18 Yf he have hurt the or oweth the ought / that laye to my charge.

19 I Paul ha[v]e writtē it with myne awne hōde. I will recompence it. So that I do not saye to the / howe that thou owest vnto me evē thy ne awne silfe.

20 Even so brother / set me enioye the in the Lorde. Comforte my bowels in the Lorde.

21 Trustinge in thyne obediēce / I wrote vnto the / knowynge that thou wilt do more then I saye for.

22 Moreover prepare me lodgynge: for I trust thorow yᵉ helpe of youre prayers / I shalbe geven vnto you.

23 Ther salute y[ᵉ] / Epaphras my felowe presoner in Christ Iesu /

24 Marcus / Aristarchus / Demas / Lucas / my¹ helpers.

25 The grace of oure Lorde Iesu Christ be with youre spretes. Amen.

¶ Sent from Rome by Onesimus a servaunt.

Notes to Chapter 1

Colophon

Transcribed from The newe Testament dylygently corrected and compared with the Greke by Willyam Tindale (Antwerp: Marten Emperowr, November 1534; STC 2826), British Library copy, as keyed by the Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP Phase I, text A68940): keyed by Apex CoVantage from the ProQuest page images in 2005, then sampled and proofread by Judith Siefring. The TCP transcription was released into the public domain under CC0 1.0. The printed text is in the public domain.

Spelling, capitals, punctuation (including the virgule /), abbreviation marks (the macron, as in thē, and ꝭ) and the signs ¶ ✚ ⊢ ❧ are kept as printed. The only changes are these: long s (ſ) is set as s; superscript letters are set as ᵉ ᵗ ᵒ (yᵉ = the, yᵗ = that); ▪ marks a stop the transcribers could not identify; a word divided at the end of a line, with or without a printed hyphen, is joined into one word; a letter supplied from another text, as explained below, is set in square brackets; page breaks and catchwords are removed. Woodcuts and decorated initials are not reproduced, but woodcut captions are given. The margin notes are given as numbered footnotes. Printed headings are kept, including their misprints, as italic lines under the library's chapter headings. The letters [A] to [G] are the section letters printed in the margin, by which the 1534 margin references (for example "Esaie vij. c.") and the table of lessons find a passage.

The 1534 print has no verse numbers. They are supplied here from the eBible.org Tyndale New Testament (1534), a public-domain, verse-numbered electronic text of the same edition. A word-by-word alignment showed that about 97 per cent of the two texts' words are identical across the New Testament, and the remainder differ in spelling and abbreviation, with a few slips of keying in one text or the other. The paragraphs of the print give way to one paragraph per verse.

Words that the transcribers could not read are marked ⟨illegible⟩ (2 places on this page, none in the margin notes).

In the verse text of this book, 3 places that the transcribers could not read in the printed book have been supplied from the eBible.org Tyndale New Testament (1534), a later electronic transcription of Tyndale's New Testament whose transcriber is not named. Each supplied letter is set in square brackets, as in y[ᵉ] or fal[c]e, so that it can be told from a letter the transcribers read in the print. A place was supplied only where the verse alignment was exact on both sides, the eBible reading agreed letter for letter with every legible letter, and no macron could have stood in the gap. Where the small superscript letter after y was supplied, the eBible text is the only evidence for that letter.

This is an archival transcription of Tyndale's printed English, not a Good Works Translation: nothing here has been translated or modernised by the library.

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