Paul and Pseudepigraphy (Pauline Studies, Book 8)

336 ilaria l. e. ramelli

collection, but this may be chronologically close to the original corpus of

our pseudepigraphon.

in the second century, the absence of the Pastorals from the Pauline

letters referred to in the seneca-Paul correspondence might have some

relation to marcionism, given that marcion excluded these letters from

his canon. however, he seems to have received both colossians and eph-

esians, the so-called deutero-Paulines, which, in the original seneca-Paul

correspondence, are not referred to. it is unclear whether this detail may

point to a date even earlier than marcion, or earlier than the composition

of the deutero-Paulines and pseudo-Paulines, or earlier than their transla-

tion into Latin. if Paul’s authentic letters—those referred to in the original

seneca-Paul correspondence—were not yet translated into Latin by the

time of the composition of the correspondence, its author, far from being

a clumsy “mediaeval barbarian,” was very well acquainted with greek, all

the more so given the lexical and syntactical graecisms which reveal a

habit of “thinking in greek.” This striking mimetic subtlety points to the

same conclusion even in case the original corpus was composed in a time

when—as in the case of the scillitan martyrs’ Pauline collection—Paul’s

letters were available in an old Latin translation.

what would be interesting to know is whether the Pauline corpus avail-

able to the author of our pseudepigraphon included the disputed Pau-

lines, the pseudo-Paulines, and even Paul’s own but more recent letters. if

it included them, why did the author of the seneca-Paul correspondence

exclude them? how could he or she know the paternity and chronology of

the Pauline letters (unless one should hypothesize that the original nugget

of our pseudepigraphon is not pseudepigraphic)? and in case the Pauline

corpus available to the author of our pseudepigraphon did not include

the disputed Paulines, the pseudo-Paulines, and Paul’s recent letters, this

corpus would simply be one of the earliest collections of Paul’s letters that

circulated, arguably in the second half of the first century.