Tool Alpha
The Stoic Reader
Stoic texts read beside the New Testament passages that share their words or their argument, and where the New Testament turns.
God needs nothing from us
Seneca would forbid lamps on the Sabbath and offerings to Jupiter, because God seeks no servants. Paul tells the Athenians God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything.
Acts 17:25, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: when Seneca and Paul both say God needs nothing from worshippers, do they mean the same God, and the same thing by worship? The grandmother tells the children she does not need presents. She may mean she has everything already, or that she wants something presents cannot give. Which is each writer saying about God?
"Let us forbid lamps to be lighted on the Sabbath, since the gods do not need light, neither do men take pleasure in soot. … Let us forbid bringing towels and flesh-scrapers to Jupiter, and proffering mirrors to Juno; for God seeks no servants. Of course not; he himself does service to mankind, everywhere and to all he is at hand to help."
Seneca's Latin is not in hand for this letter, so no Latin term is given here. Acts 17:25 has οὐδὲ ὑπὸ χειρῶν ἀνθρωπίνων θεραπεύεται προσδεόμενός τινος, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything. The verb θεραπεύω (therapeuō) is the ordinary word for serving or tending; Gummere's "servants" stands in Seneca's sentence at the same point in the thought.
Both say worship that supplies God's needs misunderstands him, and both say he is the one who gives: Seneca's God does service to mankind, Paul's gives everyone life and breath and all things (17:25). The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says that God needs nothing was a basic premise of Stoic philosophers and was commonly affirmed in Hellenistic Jewish works, and points to Psalm 50:9-13.
Seneca's next step is that a man will make no progress until he has a right idea of God, and that whoever imitates the gods worships them enough: be a good man. Paul's next step is that God made all nations from one man, set their times and boundaries so they would seek him, and now commands repentance before a coming judgment (17:26-31). Seneca ends with imitation. Paul ends with a summons.
The study note says the idea was a Stoic premise and a Jewish one. It does not say Paul knew Seneca's letter, which Fantham places in Seneca's retirement in the early 60s. The note's pointer to Psalm 50 means the conviction was open to Paul from Scripture as well as from the schools; that is an inference from the note, not its claim. Seneca's own example of bad worship is the Jewish Sabbath lamp.
Not a rejection of worship. Seneca keeps worship, redefined as believing in the gods and imitating them. Paul keeps it, redirected to the God who raised Jesus.
- Seneca, Moral Epistles, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1917-25), vol. III, Letter XCV, https://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_3.html
- Seneca, Selected Letters, trans. Elaine Fantham (Oxford World's Classics, 2010), Letter 95, note on lamps on the Sabbath, and front matter
- SBL Greek New Testament, Acts 17:24-25, via MorphGNT
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2016), notes on Acts 17:24 and 17:25
