Are there direct references to stoicism in the Bible, as stoicism originated in ~300 B.C.? Does the Bible refute or directly argue stoicism in any way, or does its teachings intersect stoicism? In what ways?

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What you’re asking about here without realizing it is the difference between philosophy and theology. Stoicism is a philosophy, and you need to look carefully at Greek history and their mindsets to understand what made that different. After all, the Greeks were extremely mystical and they also had a theological magisteria just like everyone else, their actually-rather-conventional pagan pantheon that grew up out of tribal cults just like everybody else’s pantheon.

What made philosophy different? Well, it’s right there in the name, philos, or wisdom. The Greeks were polyglot traders, they didn’t have a great national resource like the Nile to build civilization off of. So they were exposed to lots of spiritual ideas, including many, many of those from their big brother, Egypt.

The Greeks managed to become extremely successful traders and artisans, and so they were able to build for themselves something else that was quite rare, societies with extremely large aristocracies. When you bring together a large number of people who don’t have to work and who can spend all their time doing, well, whatever they want, they invariably end up creating something magical, and the Greeks were no different.

They sat around and did something that nobody else at the time thought to do. Separate philos from theos. What was it about theology that made the people that did it wise? Greek schools of thought interwove with theology, this allowed it to coexist with religion in a way that the modern world forgot how to do. So you could be a Platonist while still subscribing to the mandatory tribal religion. It was even necessary, it was that same religious authority that demanded Socrates take his life, kicking off a two thousand year process of gradual separation of religion and rationality.

With that history out of the way, let’s examine your question. How does the Bible relate to Stoicism? Well, it didn’t. Philosophy attempts to answer a smaller question than theology, simply the question of how to live. It restrains itself, by its very nature, from trying to answer the larger question that theology wants to solve, which is what is life.

They’re going to come to somewhat similar conclusions about the questions Hellenistic philosophy tried to answer, how to live, because those ideas are somewhat universal. You can’t call the Golden Rule, treat others as you would yourself, exclusive to theos or philos. Individual religions or philosophies may take the Golden Rule with more or less seriousness, but it’s not like any one of them own the concept.

And well, as a book of theology, the Hebrew Bible aimed higher than the more restrained Greek philosophers. Where stoicism and the wisdom of the Bible intersected, the Hebrews would obviously choose their own mystical understandings over a foreign one. Theos causes you to turn inward, because it answers more questions, whereas philos leaves room for other routes to other kinds of truth. Such as science.

It’s an idea that’s bound to conflict with theological magisteria on many, many, many things.