Onesimus

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This article is about the biblical figure. For other uses, see Onesimus (disambiguation).

Onesimus was a slave whose name appears twice in the New Testament (Phil 10; Col 4:9). Onesimus ran away from his master Philemon of Colossae and made his way to where the apostle Paul was imprisoned (probably in Ephesus).^[1] Paul converted Onesimus to the Christian faith and sent him back to his master along with the Epistle to Philemon. In it Paul asks 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, Philemon 1:18). The name Onesimus means "useful".

[edit] In video games

The engine of Jill of the Jungle 3; Jill Saves the Prince was licensed to a company called ArK Multimedia Publishing and used for a Christian-themed game called "Onesimus: A Quest for Freedom". Most of the graphics from the original game were recycled into "Onesimus", which is also known as "Escape From Rome". The protagonist was a slave of Philemon who had to travel to Rome to find the apostle Paul and find true freedom as a Christian. Interestingly, while it seems to be that Jill Saves the Prince (along with the rest of the trilogy) was developed first, references to Onesimus can be found in the string section and level code of the Jill games. However, the credits for Onesimus include a "thanks" to the Epic MegaGames staff, which suggests that "Onesimus" was developed either simultaneously with Jill of the Jungle 3 or developed immediately after it. No other reasonable explanation exists for the presence of the "Onesimus" references in Jill 3's code.