seneca and paul 329
common greek construct might be underlying, such as εἴ ποτε ἀπολείψει.
The meaning of permittit [.. .] se non laedi, sed admoneri is likewise
obscure, especially in relation to the context. as a result, the manuscript
tradition also is divided, and partially has permittes [.. .] te non laedi, sed
admoneri. 31
another unclear expression is found toward the end of the same Let-
ter Viii, and therefore falls again within Paul’s letters: cuius [dominae]
quidem offensa neque oberit, si perseveraverit, neque, si non sit, proderit.
Fürst defines this passage “sinnlos”;32 James described it as “nonsense”;33
some scholars even supposed that it indicates Poppaea’s conversion to
christianity.34 This also hints at a person who does not think in Latin and
therefore writes obscure sentences.
another case that has been often adduced as an example of the “bad
style” and clumsiness of the correspondence is the famous lex Romana
honori senatus mentioned in Letter X—another letter by Paul. There
existed no formal law such as that mentioned here, but in this passage lex
surely means “custom, tradition, norm, convention.” now, this is certainly
a possible meaning of Latin lex, but it is above all the primary meaning of
greek νόμος. This use would be typical of a person who thinks in greek, in
which the main meaning of νόμος is precisely “custom, tradition, conven-
tion, norm.”35
on the contrary, in the letters of the correspondence that are ascribed
to seneca there appear neither clear borrowings from greek, syntactical
or lexical, nor obscure and involute expressions. rather, some misun-
derstandings of Paul’s thought as expressed in his new Testament let-
ters would seem to surface in seneca’s letters. For instance, in Letter Vii,
seneca, referring to Paul’s letters to the galatians and the corinthians,
says: profiteor bene me acceptum lectione litterarum tuarum quas Galatis
Corinthiis Achaeis misisti, et ita invicem vivamus, ut etiam cum horrore
divino eas exhibes. Paul, in his letters to the corinthians, which seneca
declares to have read, speaks of divine fear as φόβος θεοῦ οr τοῦ Κυρίου, for
31 reading favoured by Palagi, Il carteggio apocrifo, 145.
32 Fürst, Der apokryphe Briefwechsel, 49 n.104.
33 m. r. James, “The correspondence of Paul and seneca,” in James (ed.), The Apocry-
phal New Testament (oxford: clarendon, 1924), 482.
34 Vouaux, Kreyher, and westerburg formulated this hypothesis.
35 This obscure expression by Paul was adduced by momigliano (“note sulla leggenda,”
13–32) as a proof against the authenticity of the correspondence, in that no law in honour
of the senate is documented that prescribed putting the name of the sender at the end of
the letter and the name of the senator at the beginning. however, as i explain in the text,
lex here means custom.