seneca and paul 323
authors who have dealt with religious or moral themes and were sup-
posed to have some relation to christianity. These would include seneca
himself,14 or Philo, a Jew, but who was believed to have witnessed the
first christian community in alexandria in De vita contemplativa,15 and
Josephus, also a Jew, who witnessed to Jesus in his Testimonium Flavianum
and includes information about James, “the brother of Jesus called christ.”
seneca is the third non-christian in Jerome’s De viris illustribus (the cata-
logue of sancti), and the only “pagan,” but he criticized traditional cults
and beliefs, and for this reason, in addition to convergences between his
thought and christianity, was already called by Tertullian saepe noster (De
an. 20). Jerome included him in catalogo sanctorum mainly on account
of his correspondence with Paul, since this, according to him, attested
to a historical contact with christianity at its very beginning, like that of
Josephus and—supposedly—Philo. Jerome knew seneca’s moral works
and letters, including his letters to Paul in their original collection, and
on this basis he included him in his catalogue. To this end there is no need
to suppose that he read a different redaction of the correspondence from
that which is known to us.
another argument adduced by Pascal is the question of Letters X and
Xii (Xi barlow), which are consequential, but separated by the later inser-
tion of Letter Xi (Xii barlow), which is clearly false and concerns the fire
of rome in 64 ce.16 in Letter X, Paul affirms that he is wrong to place his
own name immediately after that of seneca in his letters. seneca replies
(Xii) that he is rather happy to see his own name close to that of Paul,
and invites Paul not to provoke him, since he knows that Paul is a roman
14 For Patristic testimonies on seneca, see w. Trillitsch, Seneca im literarischen Urteil
der Antike: Darstellung und Sammlung der Zeugnisse (vols. 1–2; amsterdam: hakkert,
1971), praes. 143–71, on Jerome; ilaria ramelli, “seneca in Plinio, dione, s. agostino,” in
Jean michel croisille and Yves Perrin (eds.), Neronia VI. Rome à l’époque néronienne: Actes
du VIème Colloque International de la Société Internationale des Études Néroniennes (SIEN),
Rome 19–23 mai 1999 (brussels: Latomus, 2002), 503–13, especially on augustine; alfons
Fürst, Der apokryphe Briefwechsel zwischen Seneca und Paulus: Zusammen mit dem Brief
des Mordechai an Alexander und dem Brief des Annaeus Seneca über Hochmut und Götter-
bilder (eingeleitet, übersetzt, und mit interpretierenden essays versehen von a. Fürst, Th.
Fuhrer, F. siegert, and P. walter; saPere 11; Tübingen: mohr siebeck, 2006); James Ker,
The Deaths of Seneca (oxford: oxford university Press, 2009).
15 see ilaria ramelli, “The birth of the rome-alexandria connection: The early sources
on mark and Philo, and the Petrine Tradition,” The Studia Philonica Annual 23 (2011):
69–95.
16 a full argument (philological, linguistic, and historical) for the expunction of this
letter is in ilaria ramelli, “L’epistolario apocrifo seneca-san Paolo: alcune osservazioni,”
VetChr 34 (1997): 1–12. i have noted barlow’s edition of the correspondence (c. w. bar-
low, Epistolae Senecae ad Paulum et Pauli ad Senecam
academy, 1938]).