A Pseudepigraphon Inside a Pseudepigraphon? The Seneca–Paul Correspondence and the Letters Added Afterwards

Abstract

Within the pseudepigraphic correspondence between Seneca and Paul, handed down in Latin in many manuscripts of Seneca, a further pseudepigraphon can be singled out. Philological, linguistic, historical, and literary reasons indicate that two letters are to be detached from the original corpus as later forgeries. A systematic investigation into the allusions to the New Testament that are found in the whole of the correspondence further confirms that those two letters do not belong to the original collection, but are a subsequent addition, a kind of pseudepigraphon within the pseudepigraphic correspondence itself. Indeed, the two letters refer to later New Testament books, while the correspondence in its earlier redaction only echoes letters that modern critics recognize as written by Paul himself; moreover, among these, the letters that are explicitly referred to in the correspondence arguably belong to the earliest collection of Paul's epistles. Stylistic observations also reveal interesting subtleties.