Stoicism in early Christianity: The Apostle Paul and the Evangelist John as Stoics

TY - CHAP

T1 - Stoicism in early Christianity

T2 - The Apostle Paul and the Evangelist John as Stoics

AU - Engberg-Pedersen, Troels

PY - 2016/1/1

Y1 - 2016/1/1

N2 - The question of the relationship between Stoicism and early Christianity is one of those that will not go away. The fact that a short, apocryphal and in itself not very interesting exchange of letters between Seneca and the apostle Paul has been preserved to us from antiquity suggests that there is some substance to the question. Even in antiquity some people apparently felt that there was an affinity here that was worth exploring. Luke, the evangelist, who also authored the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, must have felt the same when he composed a speech by Paul on the Athenian Areopagus (Acts 17:22-34) which very clearly draws on specifically Stoic ideas and even quotes the Stoic poet Aratus on Zeus: For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are of his offspring.”

AB - The question of the relationship between Stoicism and early Christianity is one of those that will not go away. The fact that a short, apocryphal and in itself not very interesting exchange of letters between Seneca and the apostle Paul has been preserved to us from antiquity suggests that there is some substance to the question. Even in antiquity some people apparently felt that there was an affinity here that was worth exploring. Luke, the evangelist, who also authored the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, must have felt the same when he composed a speech by Paul on the Athenian Areopagus (Acts 17:22-34) which very clearly draws on specifically Stoic ideas and even quotes the Stoic poet Aratus on Zeus: For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are of his offspring.”

KW - Faculty of Theology

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-0-415-66075-4

SP - 29

EP - 43

BT - The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition

A2 - Sellars, John

PB - Routledge

ER -