PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

Lucretius, 3.830
Death, therefore, is nothing to us – of no concern at all, if we understand that the soul
has a mortal nature.
Stoicism similarly appears to have held to the non-eternality of the soul, although at the time
of Paul, this did not necessarily mean immediate extinction upon the death of the body. Like
the Epicureans, Stoics held that the soul could not be usefully thought of as independently
incorporeal, given that it was inextricably linked to sensation and activity – characteristics of
the corporeal. Sextus Empiricus reports:
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 8.263
For according to them [the Stoics] the incorporeal is not such that it can either act or
suffer.
Plutarch states (as a critic):
Plutarch, On Stoic Self-Contradictions 1053d
And the proof he [the Stoic Chrysippus] uses that the soul is generated – and
generated after the body – is mainly that the manner and character of the children
bears a resemblance to their parents.
Eusebius elucidates a (middle/late) Stoic conception of the afterlife, 78 indicating that some
souls might be expected to endure without the body for quite a time, while others would be
destroyed:
78 The position Eusebius describes would seem to be true of the Stoics of Paul’s time, although
earlier Stoicism denied any personal afterlife.
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