No, if you accept that “all scripture is inspired by God,” then—since scripture (graphe in Koine Greek) simply means documents or writing—then everything written is inspired by God.
I don’t think that is the case, do you?
It makes more sense to endorse “every inspired writing” rather than “every writing is inspired.”
Do you think there would have been uninspired writings for the author of the epistle?
Sure, don’t you?
Shopping lists are documents, writings, scripture.
So are legal contracts for the sale of property.
So were “Ephesian scripts,” magic spells.
I doubt the author of the epistle would have considered those inspired by God.
Maybe the author was using the word in a different sense.
I didn’t realize shopping lists would be called ‘scripture’, if Wallace is correct then the word must have more than one sense.
Either it is a question of what’s (capital S) Scripture or what is inspired scripture
Interesting article. I wish he’d mentioned the fact that “and” is missing in some manuscripts and how that impacts the matter. I read all the footnotes to see if he addressed it but it was barely mentioned.
Nice resource – I love the easy zoom feature.
That’s just silly – the prior verse tells us what writings are meant – the sacred ones.
I agree. It is silly. The passage is about the sacred scriptures that Timothy had known from his youth.
In secular use anything written counted; in fact an artist’s sketch of something could be called “scripture”. Legal documents, inventory lists, plays, decrees, and yes, shopping lists qualified.
The more specialized meaning arises from the fact that in Old Testament times just about the only things written down meant for long-term use were the sacred writings. Technically a message written on a piece of broken pottery (a common practice; we have military dispatches done that way [that confirm some of the campaigns reported in the OT] and supply lists) was a “scripture”, but “the scriptures” meant the sacred scrolls.
And that’s what we find in the New Testament; I can’t think of a use of " ἡ γραφὴ" that doesn’t mean “the scripture”.
[Interestingly in this context, the term can refer to individual passages including sentences and paragraphs, so “the scripture” does not necessarily indicate books.]
Then why did you say it would mean “then everything written is inspired by God”?
The previous verses are not often quoted with 2 Timothy 3:16.
As a child, as was common in the churches that I attended in my youth and much of my adulthood, I was encouraged to memorize “all scripture is inspired by God…”
And then we were taught the Bible we had was the scripture it was talking about,
Decades later I learned:
So to say “every writing is inspired by God” or “all writings are inspired by God” is not sensible, and people are misled both by the inserted “is” and by the wrong assumption that “scripture” in 2 Timothy 3:16 refers exclusively to one of the canons set hundreds of years after 2 Timothy was written.
Did you see the “if” that appeared early in my post?
The question of the canon is no trivial subject and sensible people can see it different ways
I agree understanding the canonization process is nontrivial, but inspiration was not a criterion for canonicity.
Obviously, and no one makes the argument that the author was referring to the canon. But this is a sense and reference issue and most people don’t understand how sense and reference work. All words have a sense and some words have referrents in utterances. Scripture is a label for a concept with the sense of sacred writings. In a given utterance, that label can refer or not. If it refers, it labels a specific referent, specific sacred writings. If it doesn’t refer, the label simply accesses the concept for people.
Example: A guy walks into to a bar and says “I’m looking for a woman.” In this case, woman, might refer or it might not. If the guy has a specific woman in mind whom he anticipated meeting up with at the bar, then woman refers to her. If the guy is just saying he is looking for female companionship in general and any woman’s company will do, then woman does not refer in this utterance. He’s just accessing the concept of woman, the sense of the word.
Does graphe refer in 2 Timothy 3:16. Maybe? You can’t know for sure. If it doesn’t, the utterance is a proposition about the concept of Scripture, not the Scripture Timothy knew. It’s completely normal use of language for Christians to say that the canon falls into the construct that is labeled by the sense of the word “Scripture,” and so the author’s proposition about Scripture is applicable to the canon. So this is an interpretive issue all the way down, and pointing out that the author wasn’t referring to the canon doesn’t resolve anything.
Although graphe did indeed mean scroll, it was a conventional label in the church for sacred writings, just as bible is a conventional label in English for the canonical scriptures, even though bible just means authorititative compilation and you can have bibles of perennial gardening or French cooking. In this context and many others graphe meant sacred writings and nobody would have been confused and thought 2 Timothy 3:16 was talking about all documents. Insisting people would have not been able to interpret the meaning “sacred writing” unless there was an attributive “God-breathed” with it (which never occurs elsewhere when Scripture is discussed) or that if the author asserted that all graphe was God-breathed the only possible takeaway is that he was asserting all documents were God-breathed is just being obtuse and condescending toward the original audience, who were perfectly capable of using words with semantic ranges and understanding graphe as sacred writings in contexts where it’s obvious that was the topic.
I have seen many make that argument. They assert under divine inspiration the author foresaw the canon.
And graphe is a label for a concept with the sense of any writing, sacred or not.
In this context, graphe refers to the sacred writings that Timothy had known from his youth. Unfortunately, that is rarely the way 2 Timothy 3:16 is applied. And the inserted “is” goes a long way to that making that misapplication happen; it enables an unsupportable view.
I understand it means writing, and refers to writings other than those in a scroll.
St. Raymond noted that earlier, even writing on pottery shards.
In the New Testament usage that is not true.
Did you read the paper by Wallace?
Yes, in the New Testament usage, the scripture referred to is what we call the Old Testament. That does not change the meaning of the word in Koine Greek to scroll, as I understood Christy to be saying.
I have known of Dr. Wallace’s work on the passage for years. I have not read it. I may get to it, but I am traveling now with family.
I have read a document (graphe) by or interview with Dr. Wallace discussing the difficulty he had in coming to a conclusion, and I noted in my mind how difficult it is to leave long-held beliefs.
However, his document on the subject does not justify the application of 2 Timothy 3:16 to the New Testament canon, as the previous verses make clear the writings described were the sacred/holy scriptures that Timothy knew from his youth.
One other point: the Koine Greek speakers who were the original recipients of the letter we call 2 Timothy would have used graphe as referring to all writings. (After all, this text may have been written for us, in part, but it was not written to us.) Saying “all writings are god-breathed” would have been nonsense to them. “Every god-breathed writing” would make sense.
The translation that I put in the opening post to this thread would have made sense.
But abide thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them. And that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus: every scripture inspired of God, also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness.
This version does not require added words that would not have made sense to people nearly 2000 years ago who saw the word graphe and recognized it as documents or writings.
That’s a claim I’m skeptical of. While I can’t find anything on the use of γραφὴ in second temple or first century Judaism, I do know that its ‘cousin’, γέγραπται (GEH-grap-tai), “it is/stands written” was already the standard way of introducing a citation from the Torah or Tanakh and thus was a technical term or “term of art” in common use by the time Paul was writing. I also know that the plural form, γραφαὶ (grah-PHAI), was in common use among rabbis by the end of the first century B.C. to refer to the Torah or Tanakh. It stands to reason, then, that the singular form would refer to portions of the Tanakh among Jews and “God-fearers” – and since it was the Jewish Christians initially who expounded the Tanakh for the church then this use should have been the one understood by anyone reading II Timothy especially given the 3:15 reference to “sacred writings”.
[The paucity of material I can find on this makes me think there’s room for a master’s thesis on the topic. If I had access to a university library with its ability to acquire texts from all over I might even try writing one (though the cost of a degree program could be prohibitive these days)].
Except “them” is not the right context: the pastoral epistles were not written to churches or even a church, they were written to individuals who had already been appointed to pastoral office and thus would have been familiar with the use of the term among first-century Jews. Given that the passage reminds Timothy that he had known the “sacred writings”, the ἱερὰ γράμματα (hee-err-AH GRAH-ma-ta)†, the context in 3:16 is already that of the religious, Jewish use.
Reducing this – I’d diagram it if I had a way to show that here – makes it “the sacred writings: every scripture inspired of God, also…” effectively turns it into a definition of “sacred writings”, i.e. “sacred writings” = “inspired by God, also…”. Ignoring the clause introduced with “also” the result is what to us is essentially a tautology since we equate canonicity with inspiration, but this would not have been the case back then: every sacred writing would have been considered inspired, but the holy writings were not seen as holding everything that was inspired‡ – nor could they as that would have meant that the Spirit of Yahweh had gone silent. It’s worth noting here that the line in the Nicene Creed concerning the Holy Spirit, "He spoke through the prophets, is a very Jewish statement (to the point that to second Temple Jews anyone to whom God had spoken was considered a prophet, including Abraham and David).
That’s an interesting view both in how it changes the accepted meaning and in the grammar; as to the latter, I don’t know if that’s a common (or even uncommon) structure in Koine Greek (a little whisper in the back of my mind is telling me I need to revisit first century ‘high’ Alexandrian Koine), which would of course be important in deciding whether it’s a reasonable reading.
† it should be noted that both γράμμα and γραφὴ go back to the same verb root, γράφω (GRA-phoe), “I write”
‡ for that matter, not everything in the Tanakh was considered equally inspired
On your first point, I have read that graphe was used for secular documents. There were many examples cited in what I read, such as court documents and other things. I can’t put my hands on the source at the moment.
On your second point, that the pastoral epistles were written to individuals, I would say that they were addressed to individuals but I think that was a mechanism for a distribution of ideas. It is very doubtful that Paul wrote the pastorals and it is doubtful that they were delivered to Timothy and Titus.
Wallace addressed some of the concerns here:
I agree with your last block of text, and I point out that our understanding that inspiration is not unique to the canon is minority opinion in many settings.
But not when used in the religious first-century Jewish sense. That II Timothy is religious literature automatically puts it into that context.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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