Thursday, August 17, 2006
THE STOIC AND THE APOSTLE
Turn now to Paul's Letter to the Californians, third chapter, second verse.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, aka Seneca the Younger, is a unique Roman figure for a number of reasons. Unlike other classical authors, he wasn't lost and then re-discovered--people kept reading him from the early Middle Ages right on through to the Renaissance (they just stopped last week). The reason for Seneca's popularity for such a long time may have been his influence on early Christian writing--and the letters he supposedly exchanged with the Apostle Paul.
Scholars today believe that the Seneca/Paul correspondence is a sham, an attempt to rope such a popular writer into the Christian camp, but there are certain tantalizing facts that hint that perhaps the two men did exchange ideas. For one, parts of Paul's cannonical epistles clearly borrowed from Seneca (this is not too surprising; Paul was highly educated, and Seneca was a man widely read in the Roman world, even in his own lifetime). Also, Paul and Seneca may have been influenced by the same philosopher, a man from nearby Paul's hometown of Tarsus. (Tarsus, by the way, was a hotbed of Stoical thought, and Seneca was the leading Stoic of his day.) Even more alarming, Seneca's brother Gallio may have presided over a brouhaha in Corinth involving Paul's run-ins with the Jewish community there.
Whatever their relationship, if there was one, the Seneca/Paul story is an interesting window on the ferment of ideas circulating in the first century that led to such things as Rome's imperial zenith and the spread of Christianity.
Turn now to Paul's Letter to the Californians, third chapter, second verse.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, aka Seneca the Younger, is a unique Roman figure for a number of reasons. Unlike other classical authors, he wasn't lost and then re-discovered--people kept reading him from the early Middle Ages right on through to the Renaissance (they just stopped last week). The reason for Seneca's popularity for such a long time may have been his influence on early Christian writing--and the letters he supposedly exchanged with the Apostle Paul.
Scholars today believe that the Seneca/Paul correspondence is a sham, an attempt to rope such a popular writer into the Christian camp, but there are certain tantalizing facts that hint that perhaps the two men did exchange ideas. For one, parts of Paul's cannonical epistles clearly borrowed from Seneca (this is not too surprising; Paul was highly educated, and Seneca was a man widely read in the Roman world, even in his own lifetime). Also, Paul and Seneca may have been influenced by the same philosopher, a man from nearby Paul's hometown of Tarsus. (Tarsus, by the way, was a hotbed of Stoical thought, and Seneca was the leading Stoic of his day.) Even more alarming, Seneca's brother Gallio may have presided over a brouhaha in Corinth involving Paul's run-ins with the Jewish community there.
Whatever their relationship, if there was one, the Seneca/Paul story is an interesting window on the ferment of ideas circulating in the first century that led to such things as Rome's imperial zenith and the spread of Christianity.
# posted by toner_low @ 10:51 PM 
