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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.
They are slaves. No, they are men.
Seneca praises Lucilius for living on familiar terms with his slaves and answers every objection with the same reply. Paul says in Christ there is neither slave nor free.
Galatians 3:28, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: does Seneca's insistence that slaves are human beings say the same thing as Paul's line that in Christ there is no slave or free? The club lets the waiters eat at the members' table once a year. Everyone agrees they are people. Is that the same as saying the club has no members and no waiters?
"'Servi sunt.' Immo homines. 'Servi sunt ' Immo contubernales. 'Servi sunt.' Immo humiles amici. 'Servi sunt.' Immo conservi, si cogitaveris tantundem in utrosque licere fortunae." In Robin Campbell's translation: "Strictly speaking they're our fellow-slaves."
Seneca writes in Latin, so there is no shared Greek word. His last answer is conservi, fellow slaves, because fortune has as much power over master as over slave. In 47.10 he adds that the man you call your slave sprang from the same seeds, breathes the same air, lives and dies as you do. Paul's word in Galatians 3:28 is δοῦλος (doulos), slave, set against ἐλεύθερος (eleutheros), free.
Both refuse to let the line between slave and free define a person. Both appeal to a shared origin: Seneca to the same seeds, Paul to being children of God through faith (3:26). The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, on 1 Timothy 6:2, says that Paul, like the philosopher Seneca, might depict slaves as persons free in God's sight.
Seneca's equality is a reflection a wise master makes about fortune; the household stays as it is, only kinder. Paul's is a fact about a new body: all of you are one in Christ Jesus (3:28), clothed with Christ (3:27). Seneca makes the slave a fellow slave of fortune. Paul makes the slave a fellow heir.
The comparison with Seneca on slaves is drawn by the study Bible's note on 1 Timothy 6:2, not here. It is a comparison, not a claim that Paul read Seneca. Fantham places the Letters in Seneca's retirement in the early 60s, and Wright thinks Galatians was the very first of all Christian writings, so this letter cannot be Paul's source. The point is that the two were saying related things in the same decades.
Not the same proposal. Seneca's letter is about how to treat slaves. Galatians 3:28 is about who belongs to Abraham's family.
- Seneca, Epistulae Morales 47.1 and 47.10, Latin text, The Latin Library, https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep5.shtml
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, trans. Robin Campbell (Penguin, 1969), Letter XLVII
- SBL Greek New Testament, Galatians 3:28, via MorphGNT
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2016), note on 1 Timothy 6:2
- Seneca, Selected Letters, trans. Elaine Fantham (Oxford World's Classics, 2010), front matter, on the Letters written in retirement in the early 60s
- N. T. Wright, Galatians (Eerdmans, 2021), on Galatians 4:1-7, calling the letter the very first of all Christian writings
