British law is also idiosyncratic because of the Norman Conquest, in which William claimed to own the whole island (actually islands) and everything and everybody in it.

At any rate, there is in Locke an undertone that everything and everybody must be owned, so that to be “free” must be to be “self-owned”.

The real crudity of Paul is in saying, “You are self-owned”, rather than “I don’t own you”, as if it were some vastly useful, vastly enlightening gift.

It is the reflexive part that plays the role of Judas Goat. Are we now to acknowledge some naive and logically crude idea of “property”, “ownership”, and “law” because Paul tells us it applies to “ourselves”?

That is where you jump to conclusions with an unstated “either/or”–to wit, all property is either private or (aut) public.

That does not hold save as convention and fiat, and very inconsistently.

Also, even were it so, under the rubric “communal”, as as under “private”, all sorts of different concepts and schemes are conflated.

“…can I, plant corn or wheat on this plot of land?”

Given only that, how would I know? A Navajo might answer, perfectly sensibly, have you asked the land?