Onesiphorus (Hastings' Dictionary)

A friend of St. Paul at Rome, menting only in the NT, 2 Ti 1!%-18 48 From the former of these passages it appears that Onesiphorus when he arrived in Rome and learnt that St. Paul was in captivity, sought him out diligently, and ‘re. freshed’ him, not with bodily nourishment only, * Or at least seriously weakened. Er appears in1(h 42 as a sub-clan of Shelah, and Onan is perhaps=Onam of 1 Oh 2%, @ sub-clan of Jerahmeel. ONTARES ONIAS 623 but with ets token of friendship. Of this friendship St.

Paul retained a very lively recol- jection, the more so that others, the Asiatics Phygelus and Hermogenes, had deserted him (2 Ti 1%); and in writing to Timothy recalled further the many good offices which Onesiphorus had performed at Πρ οτας of which Timothy from his residence there would know ‘better’ (βέλτιον) than St. Paul or any one else could tell him. It should be noted that these offices are not repre- sented as extended specially to St.

Paul himself, as the AV, by the insertion of ‘ unto me,’ implies; nor is the use of the verb d:axovéw sufficient warrant for the belief that Onesiphorus oceupied the office of a deacon at Ephesus (see Wieseler, Chronol. p. 463). It is not perfectly clear whether, at the time when St. Paul wrote, Onesiphorus was alive or dead; but the references to his ‘house’ rather than to himself in 2 Ti 116 419.

and still more the words of the prayer in 2 Ti 118 ‘The Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day,’ make it most probable that he was now dead (so de Wette, Huther, Alford, Ellicott, Fairbairn, y. Soden). If so, the passage gains an additional interest from the use that has been made of it in connexion with the argument for prayers for the dead.

Thus it is appealed to in support of such a practice by Bishop Archibald Campbell in his pea iey nets published book on The Inter- mediate or Middle State of Departed Souls, 1713, Bi 72; and amongst more recent writers by lumptre (The Spirits in Prison, Ps 128, 266) and Luckock (After Death, p. 77, The Intermediate State, p. 211). Others, as Barrett (The Inter- mediate State, p. 113), find in the words no more than ‘a pious wish.

’ On the whole question it may be suflicient to quote the carefully weighed words of Hammond (Paraphrase and Annot. on the NT, im loco): ‘How far it may be fit to pray for them that are departed this life, needs not to be disputed here.

*Tis certain that some measure of bliss, which shall at the day of judgment be vouch- safed the Saints, when their bodies and souls shall be reunited, is not till then enjoyed by them, and therefore may safely and fitly be prayed for them (in the same manner as Christ prays to his Father, to glorifie him with that glory which he had before the world was).

And this is a very distant thing from that prayer which is now used in the Romish Church for deliverance from temporal pains, founded in their doctrine of sch let which would no way be conclusible from hence, though Onesiphorus, for whom Saint Paul here prays for mercy, had been now dead.’ Winer (RWB ii. 175) quotes a tradition from Fabricius (Lux. Evang. p. 117) that Onesiphorus became bishop of Corone in Messenia. G. MILLIGAN.