The Seneca-Paul Correspondence

The Seneca-Paul Correspondence Synopsis

This volume brings together the results of nearly thirty years of scholarly engagement with the pseudepigraphic Seneca-Paul correspondence. Ilaria Ramelli begins with methodological reflections on the concept of pseudepigraphy and the implications for understanding this epistolary exchange. By comparing the Seneca-Paul letters with non-literary Greek and Latin correspondence from the first to third centuries?CE, she challenges their previously assumed uniqueness and reframes them within a broader epistolary culture.

The author presents Seneca and Paul first as historical figures and then as they emerge from the correspondence itself, also with attention to what Christian readers found and could appreciate in the epistolary exchange. Ramelli delves into questions of philology, intertextuality, religion and philosophy. Intertextual analysis reveals significant allusions to the New Testament - some of which, along with other clues, suggest that two letters in the extant correspondence were probably added afterwards, with different agendas.

Close examination is given to syntactic Graecisms, thematic correspondences with early Christian and Stoic thought (e.g. universal culpability), and the political and theological implications of Seneca's purported reading of Pauline letters before Nero. The author critically engages with questions of dating, notably by referencing consules suffecti, and discusses the development of the legend of Seneca's "conversion" to Christianity.

Furthermore, she explores the early transmission of Paul's letters, the reception of the question of Paul's education in antiquity and modern scholarship, and Seneca's complex relation to Judaism and "Paganism". Finally, Ramelli considers the relevance of Marcionite debates, the Muratorian Fragment, and Tertullian's Stoicizing Christianity. She concludes with a critical reassessment of the correspondence's value within early Christian literary, theological, and philosophical discourse.