2 Timothy

The ASV reads 'Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching' (3:16). Most English Bibles read that all Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable. This is a translation question rather than a manuscript one, and the Greek text is the same in both. The sentence has no verb, so a translator has to decide whether the word breathed out by God describes the noun or asserts something about it. Read one way, inspired scripture is profitable. Read the other, scripture is inspired and it is profitable. The doctrine is untouched by the choice for two reasons. The noun Paul uses always means Scripture in his letters and never means writing in general, and he has just called the same collection 'the sacred writings' (3:15), so the sentence has no room for a class of uninspired scriptures. The ASV rendering supplies a verb in one place and the common rendering supplies it in another.

All Scripture, God-Breathed→

'I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee through the laying on of my hands' (1:6). Three things are stated in the verse and all three are ordinary in this letter. A gift was given, it was given at an occasion, and hands were laid on. The first letter describes the same event from another angle, where the gift came 'by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery' (1 Timothy 4:14), so prophecy identified the man and a body of elders joined the apostle in the act. This site teaches all of it as present practice. The Spirit gives gifts, prophecy still speaks, hands are still laid on those the church sets apart, and the warning in the verse is the one worth hearing: a gift can be neglected. The same letter that reports the gift also reports that the man holding it was afraid (1:7), which is why the instruction is to work at it.

Spiritual Gifts→

'their word will eat as doth a gangrene: of whom is Hymenæus and Philetus' (2:17), 'men who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some' (2:18). The error is named exactly. They taught that the resurrection had already occurred, which means they had turned a future bodily event into something already possessed, most likely a spiritual awakening at conversion or at baptism. Paul had answered the same instinct at Corinth by insisting on a body raised, and the whole apostolic hope depends on it. A Hymenaeus appears in the first letter as well, delivered to Satan 'that they might be taught not to blaspheme' (1 Timothy 1:20), and most readers take the two notices as the same man. The damage Paul names is pastoral: people whose faith was overthrown, which is what happens when the future is quietly cancelled.

The Resurrection Chapter→

The four lines are a unit and have to be read as one: 'For if we died with him, we shall also live with him' (2:11), 'if we endure, we shall also reign with him: if we shall deny him, he also will deny us' (2:12), 'if we are faithless, he abideth faithful; for he cannot deny himself' (2:13). The third line uses the same verb the Lord used in the Gospels of denying him before men, and the fourth line answers a different word, faithlessness rather than denial, and answers it with what Christ is. This site's tradition holds that the believer is in the Father's hand and the Son holds him there, resting on the words 'they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand' (John 10:28) and 'no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand' (John 10:29). The readings of 2:12 are named here with their holders and left to stand, and the perseverance tradition is honored, since much of this site's own heritage stands in it.

Eternal Security→

'And even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth' (3:8). Neither name appears in Exodus. There the opponents are unnamed: Pharaoh 'called for the wise men and the sorcerers' (Exodus 7:11), and they are 'the magicians of Egypt' (Exodus 7:11) who copy the first signs and then fail at the third, telling Pharaoh 'This is the finger of God' (Exodus 8:19). The names come from Jewish tradition, and it can be dated and placed. The Damascus Document from the Dead Sea Scrolls, in a passage numbered CD 5:17-19, speaks of Belial raising up Jannes and his brother against Moses and Aaron, which gives one name and a brother by the second century BC or soon after. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 7:11 names both men, in a work whose final form is centuries later than Paul though it carries older material. Numenius of Apamea, a pagan philosopher of the second century AD quoted by Eusebius, names them as Egyptian scribes who opposed Moses. Origen knew an apocryphal book under their names, and fragments of such a book survive on Greek papyrus. Paul is using a tradition his readers knew, and what he does with it is to name a pattern: opposition that imitates the real thing for a while and then runs out.

'The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, bring when thou comest, and the books, especially the parchments' (4:13). The cloak was a heavy traveling garment, and the request goes with 'Give diligence to come before winter' (4:21), so a man in a cold cell is asking for his coat. The books were most likely papyrus rolls. The parchments were the more valuable material, and readers have proposed three things they might have been: copies of Old Testament Scripture, Paul's own notebooks, or his legal papers, which for a Roman citizen facing trial would include proof of citizenship. Nothing in the verse decides between them. The line is worth keeping in view for its own sake. It is the last practical request of a man who expects to die, and he asks for something to wear and something to read.