A common misuse of the Bible
is to pluck out a verse to prove a point. Where the Bible itself is the subject
of the discussion the verse most commonly used is 2 Timothy 3:16 – ‘All
scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness.’ There, they say with a flourish,
this proves that the Bible as a whole is the word of God. I’d like to take the
next two or three posts to have a closer look at this text.
All scripture
Let’s deal with the phrase ‘all
scripture’ today. What was Paul referring to – the whole of the Bible – both Old
and New Testaments? Or only part? The vast number of scholars agree that the
date Paul wrote this letter was in the mid-60s C.E. This would place it around
book 16 in terms of the chronology of the NT – leaving another 11 books still
unwritten. Even if Paul had the 15 books that had been written in mind when he
wrote the phrase ‘all scripture’ he certainly was not referring the whole of
the NT.
Sacred writings
But then there is another
phrase that we need to consider. In the previous verse (15) Paul says, ‘From
childhood you have known the sacred writings.’ We can safe presuming that Paul
was referring to the same scriptures in both verses 15 and 16. Now we know that
Timothy’s mother was Jewish and ‘a believer’ (Acts 16:1) and so must have
brought her son up in the sound of scripture. Apart from tradition – which may
or may not be accurate – we have no way of knowing how old Timothy was when
Paul wrote to him though we do know that he was young. Tradition would suggest
that he was in his 40s and so the reference to his childhood must be some 30
years previously – taking us way beyond any NT book was written. Even if Timothy
were only in his twenties we would still need to go at least ten years back –
and again this would take us to a point before many books were written.
It is, therefore, quite safe
to say that when Paul was using the phrase ‘all scripture’ he was referring to
what we call the Old Testament and that this verse cannot be a reference to the
New and should not be used as such.
