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See Cuimes and Punishments, vol 816 STOICS STOICS STOICS (SrwiVoO.— When St. Paul at Athens encDuntered the Stoics (Ac 17'*), they regarded liis teaching as an interesting novelty : and so in some respects it was. Jesus and the liesurrection were indeed ' strange gods,' but, for all that, there was more in common between St. Paul and his liearers than either party was perhaps aware of. To begin with, the Jews had a natural aftinity with Stoicism.

What nation indeed could stand more in need of the philosophy of endurance than that whose whole history was one long record of perse- cution ? The ' courage never to submit or yield,' which animated Stoicism, was the moral also of the story of the ' seven brethren with their mother' (2 Mac 7). The Jews claimed kindred with the Spart.ans, who were the ideal of Stoicism, and admired the Konians, of whom Stoicism was the ideal (1 Mac 12). But, in the next place.

Stoicism, as has been shown by Sir Alexander Grant, was not a genuine product of Hellenic thought, but an importation from the East. ' Its essence,' he says, ' consists in the introduction of the Semitic temperament and a Semitic spirit into Gr. philosophy' (Ethics of Arist. vi.) Not one of the famous Stoic teachers was a native of Greece proper. Zeno, the founder of the school, who nourished about B.C.

278, was a native of Citium in Cyprus, a Greek town in which there was a large infusion of Phoenician settlers (Diog. Laert. vii. § 1). Hence Zeno is sometimes called 'the Pliojnician ' {ib. ii. § 1 14), and his master Crates, the Cynic, used jocularly to address him as ^oivi- kLSiov. His successor, Cleantlies (about B.C. 2(J3), was a native of Assos. The third head of the school, Chrysippus (B.C. 280-207 ; ib. vii.

§ 184), whose intellectual ability caused him to be re- garded as its second founder, came from Cilicia, either from Soli or from St. Paul's native city. Tarsus. Tarsus, indeed, was a very stronghold of Stoicism. To it belonged Zeno, a disciple of Cliiysippus, who seems himself at one time to have been head of the school (ib. vii. §§ 35, 41, 84). Though Strabo in his account of Tarsus (xiv. p.

674) says nothing of this person, he mentions among the Stoic teachers who had adorned that city, ' Antipater, Arcliedemus, and Nestor, and further, the two Athenodori.' Of tliese Antipater was a disciple of Diogenes of Babylon (Cic. de Off. iii. § 51), one of the three philosophers who were sent on the famous embassy to Rome in B.C. 155 (Aul. Gell. Nort. Att. VI. xiv. 9). He was himself the instructor of Pana'tius of Rhodes (Cic. de Div. i.

§ 6), who was the friend of the younger Africanus, and the teadier of Posidonius (of Apaniea in Syria), who in his turn numbered Cicero among his hearers. Arcliedemus is men- tioned by Diogenes Laertius (vii. §§ 40, 68, 84) in away that would lead us to think that he followed Chrysippus. Of Nestor the Stoic nothing more is known.

Of the two Atlienodori, the earlier, known as Cordylion, died in the liouse of Cato Uticensis ; the later, who was also known as ' the Kananite,' from a village (Kanna) in Cilicia, was the friend and adviser of Augustus. In his old age he was given power to restore civil order in his native city. St. Paul then, coming from Tarsus, the home of BO many of the Stoics, was not likely to have been a stranger to their way of thinking.

In his speech on the Areopagus he seems to have addressed himself more directly to the Stoic part of his audience. He deftly quoted part of a line with which they were familiar, ' His offspring, too, are we,' probably thinking of the Hymn of Cle.anthes, though the precise form in which he quotes it comes from the contemporary poet Aratus.

* Another point in which the apostle's language • It mmy be remarked that the language of He 4^' is etronj^ly •uggeetlve of the Hymn o» Cleanthes (lines 9-13), which might is coloured by the presence of Stoic auditors, is in the appeal he makes to their senti-rent of cosmo- politanism— 'and he made of onf ■ very nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,' while the words which follow, ' having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of theil habitation,' express a conception of fate and pro- vidence, which was common ground to the apostle and his hearers.

The constructive era of Greek thought had already passed away before the Stoics aiipeared upon the scene. Neither they nor the Epicuream extended the bounds of thought, but only empha- sized certain aspects in the philosophy of tneir predecessors. Both schools were intensely prac- tical, and endeavoured to make philosophy a 'life,' as Christianity afterwards announced itself to be. Both also were systems of materialism, and agreed in discarding the abstractions of earlier thought.

The Stoics adopted the physical theory of Hera- clitus, the Epicureans that of Democritus. With both, however, physics were a mere scaffolding for ethics ; but the Stoics paid great attention to logic, while the Epicureans neglected this department of philoso]iliy. What was special to the Stoics was the exalted tone of their morality, their grim earnestness, and their devout submission to the Divine will.

Of the Stoic physics we seem to have a trace in the doctrine of the destruction of the world by fire (2 P ?,'"''■ '""'S). Tlie idea of the soul going up to heaven at death is not alien to their philosophy. For death with them was the resolution of man's compound nature into its elements, and the soul, w hose natui-e was tire (cf. Verg. ^n. vi. 730, ' igneus est ollis vigor et cajlestis origo'), struggled upward to its native home in the empyrean.

Witliout dogmatizing on disputed ground, it is at least interesting to com- pare Ec 12' ' And the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it,' with what Velleius Paterculus (ii. 123), echoing the Stoic doctrine, says of the death of Augustus : ' in sua resolutus initia . . animam cselestem c;e1o reddidit.' The doctrine of the Logos may not have come exclusively from Greek sources ; but at all events Lactantius (Div. Inst. iv.

9) admits that Zeno had anticipated the Christian teaching: ' Hunc ser- inonem divinum ne philosophi quidem ignorave- runt : siquidem Zenon reruiii naturae dispositorem atque opificem universitatis Xoyoi/ prsedicat, quern et fatum et necessitatem rerum et deum et animum Jovis nuncupat.' The words 5i' Sx rd Trdr-To, ap- plied to God in He 2'", are suggestive of the Stoic explanation of the name of the Supreme Being : ' Aia fiiv yap (paai, Bl dv to. TrdvTa,' while the words m St.

Paul's sermon, ' in him we live,' recall the explanation otlered of the other form of the name : ' Zrjva d^ KaXoOffif Trap' 6(Xov tov ^riv atTibs iffTtv.^ The problem of fate and freewill, which was hardly rai.sed by the Socratic philosophers, was much discussed by the Stoics. In this also they display an atlinity with Semitic speculation. For this was the philosophical problem which divided the Jewish schools, as it has since divided the Christian Churches.

The Pharisees leaned strongly to predestination, as we can see from the senti- ments of Gamaliel (Ac 5'") and from those of St. Paul himself. Josephus, himself a Pharisee, says that that sect was very like the sect of the Stoics among the Greeks (Vila, ch. ii.) Another point of resemblance, which justifies this remark of Joseplius, is the Stoic belief in a future life. It is true they did not regard the souls even of pood men as being absolutely in* mortal. But Uiey held that the.

se were dcstinea be used aa an argument, so far as it goes, in favour of th4 Pauline authorship of that Kpistle. STOMACH STONE en lO last until the next re-alisorjition of all things into the Divine nature. Goii was delineil by the Stoics OS ' an individual made up of all being, incorruptible and ungenerated, the fashioner of the ordered frame of the universe, who at certain periods of time absorbs all being into hinisel/, and a"ain generates it from himself ' (Diog. Laert. vii. § 137).

Instead of drawing out further, as might be done, the parallelism between Stoicism and Chris- tianity, we will liere close with a caution. It does not follow that, because we find a Stoic notion in the Uible, it has got into it from the Stoics. It may originally have come to the Stoics from the Jews, or both may have borrowed from the same source. LiTSRATCRB.— The chief ancient authorities for a knowledfre of the Stoics are Cicero's philosophical works, especially de l'\nibua, Book iii.

; I>iogeDe8 Laertius, Book vii.; Stobajus, Ect, Kth. pp. Ifi6-184 : PlutArch, de R^iujnantiU StoicU, and de Ptaeitts Fhiiotophwum ; Se.\tu8 Einpiricus, adversus ilathe- maticos. Among modern works may be mentioned Zuller, Stoicn and Kyicureaiis ; Sir Alexander Grant, The Hlhica of AriMotlt, Essay vL; Lightfoot, i'Ai^tjJpiaii-K, Kxcursns on 'St. Paul p.nd Seneca.' ST. (jEOKOE STOCK.