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.
Members of one great body
Seneca gives Lucilius one rule for human duty: everything you see is one, and we are parts of one great body. Paul tells the Romans that the many are one body in Christ.
Romans 12:5, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: when Seneca and Paul both say we are members of one body, are they describing the same body? Everyone on the street says the neighborhood is one big family. That might mean all humans are related, or that this street has a particular bond. Which body does each writer mean?
"all that you behold, that which comprises both god and man, is one … we are the parts of one great body. Nature produced us related to one another, since she created us from the same source and to the same end. She engendered in us mutual affection, and made us prone to friendships."
Seneca writes Latin, so the entry is filed as argument. Elaine Fantham's translation of the same sentence reads "we are members of a great body." Romans 12:4-5 uses μέλος (melos), member, three times: many members in one body, one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.
Both make the body the ground of duty to others. Seneca goes on to say our relations are like a stone arch that would fall if the stones did not support each other. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, on Romans 12:4-5, says earlier Greek and Roman thinkers had compared the state and even the universe to a body of interdependent members.
Seneca's body includes god and man and everything you see; it is the universe. Paul's is one body in Christ (12:5), and its members have different gifts according to the grace given (12:6). The study note adds that writers often used the image to support hierarchy, while Paul uses it to value diverse functions. Seneca's body is nature. Paul's is a congregation.
The comparison of community to a body is attested as a commonplace by the study note. Fantham places the Letters in Seneca's retirement in the early 60s, and no source in hand says Paul knew this one. A shared argument, in two languages.
Not a claim that Paul's church is the cosmos. Seneca's body has no edges. Paul's has a head and a baptism.
- 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 and front matter
- SBL Greek New Testament, Romans 12:4-5, via MorphGNT
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2016), note on Romans 12:4-5
