Volume 1 - Discourses - Books I - II - College of Stoic Philosophers

INTRODUCTIONis friendly and akin to you, to the physical elements"(III. 13, 14).Bat at the same time there is nothingto hope for. 1That Epictetus was influenced by the writings ofthe New Testament has often heen suggested.There were those in late antiquitywho asserted2 it, and it was natural enough in an age whenTertullian and Jerome believed that Seneca hadconversed with Paul,, and in Musomus Rufus, theteacher of Epictetus, Justin (II. 8) recognizesakindred spirit.But despite the recrudescence ofthe idea from time to time, and the existence of afew scholars in our own generation who seem yetto believe this it, question can be regarded asdefinitely settled by the elaborate researches ofBonhofFer (1911).Of course Epictetus knew aboutthe existence of Christians, to whom he twice refers,calling them once Jews (II. 9, 19 ff.),and a secondtime Galilaeans (IV. 7, 6), for there was an earlycommunityat Nicopolis (Paul's Epistle to Titus, iii.12), but he shared clearly in the vulgar prejudicesagainst them, and his general intolerance of variantopinion, even when for conscience' sake, makes itcertain that he would never have bothered to readtheir literature. The linguistic resemblances, whichare occasionally striking, like u "Lord, have mercy !Kvpi, cXerjo-ov, are only accidental, because Epictetuswas speaking the common language of ethicalexhortation in which the evangelists and apostleswrote; while the few specious similarities arecounterbalanced by as many striking differencesIn the field of doctrine, the one notable point ofxxvi1 See More, p, JGSff.3 A Byzantine scholiast in Schenkl 2 xv.