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The Stoic Reader
Stoic texts read beside the New Testament passages that share their words or their argument, and where the New Testament turns.
Gallio, Seneca's brother
The proconsul who threw the case against Paul out of court in Corinth was Gallio, Seneca's older brother. A later set of letters claims Paul and Seneca wrote to each other.
Acts 18:12, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: since Paul once stood before Seneca's brother, did Paul and Seneca know each other? Your colleague once met the brother of a famous author at a conference. It is a real connection. Does it mean your colleague and the author were pen friends?
"Illud mihi in ore erat domini mei Gallionis, qui cum in Achaia febrem habere coepisset, protinus navem escendit clamitans non corporis esse sed loci morbum." In Robin Campbell's translation, Seneca recalls "my mentor Gallio when he started sickening for a fever in Achaea."
Gallio is the shared name. Acts 18:12: Γαλλίωνος δὲ ἀνθυπάτου ὄντος τῆς Ἀχαΐας, when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia. Seneca's Latin speaks of domini mei Gallionis in Achaia; dominus is a respectful title, which Campbell renders mentor.
The two texts agree on the man and the province. The introductions to several Seneca translations identify Gallio as Seneca's elder brother Novatus, who took the name Gallio by adoption and as proconsul of Achaea appears in Acts 18. Wright and Bird say Seneca's letter 104.1 mentions Gallio falling ill in Achaia, which may have cut his term short, and use the inscription from Delphi to place Paul in Corinth in AD 51/2.
In Acts Gallio refuses to judge the case: it is a matter of words and names and their own law (18:15). He gives the Jesus-followers nothing and takes nothing from them. Wright's Galatians commentary reads his judgment as treating the dispute as inner-Jewish. The meeting is real; it is between Paul and Gallio, and Seneca is not in the room.
The claim that Paul and Seneca were friends or correspondents rests on the Letters of Paul and Seneca. Wright and Bird list those letters with other pseudepigraphal writings, and report Brevard Childs's view that they are obviously far removed from Paul's words and world. The brother is history; the friendship is not supported by any source in hand.
Not proof that Seneca ever heard of Paul. No source in hand shows that he did.
- Seneca, Epistulae Morales 104.1, Latin text, The Latin Library, https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep17-18.shtml
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, trans. Robin Campbell (Penguin, 1969), introduction and Letter CIV
- Seneca, Moral and Political Essays (Cambridge, 1995), introduction to On Anger
- Seneca, Dialogues and Essays, trans. John Davie (Oxford World's Classics, 2007), introduction
- SBL Greek New Testament, Acts 18:12, via MorphGNT
- Wright and Bird, The New Testament in Its World (2019), ch. 15, Gallio as proconsul of Corinth, and ch. 23, on the Letters of Paul and Seneca
- N. T. Wright, Galatians (Eerdmans, 2021), The Situation in Galatia
