The following is from:
John C. Poirier, The Invention
of the Inspired Text: Philological Windows on the Theopneustia of Scripture (Library
of New Testament Studies 640; London: T&T Clark, 2021)
Thesis: θεόπνευστος in 2 Tim 3:16 should be understood, not in the inspirationist sense (“inspired”) but instead vivifacationist (“life-giving”).
Clearly, a better approach would be one that associates God’s
breathing with the same range of creative activity with which we find it
associated in Scripture—that of giving life.
In other words, whereas Warfield continually spoke of the
“breath of God” as “creative,” he should have spoken of it as “life-giving.”
(p. 15)
The evidence that θεόπνευστος
means “divinely inspired”:
simply is not there: the use of θεόπνευστος in a passage of
Plutarch (De placit. Phil. 5.2 [Mor. 904.2]), for example, almost
certainly comes from the hand of a copyist, covering over an earlier appearance
of θεοεπμπτους. (p. 20)
And Cyme, the foolish, with her
streams inspired (θεοπνευστος) of God. (Sibylline Oracle 5:308)
The background of Aeolian Cyme might illuminate two aspects of
the sibyl’s choice of words. First, addressing Cyme as “the fool” recalls the
fact that the city was regularly the butt of jokes: Strabo invokes the Cymeans’
legendary stupidity, manifest in their long-standing failure to impose harbor
dues (Geography 13.3.6; cf. Herodotus, Hist. 8.130), while the Philogelos
preserves more than twenty jokes aimed at the Cymeans’ dim-wittedness.
Second, it is possible that the sibyl’s reference to Cyme’s failure to be a
“life-giving” (θεόπνευστος) city is intended to recall Herodotus’ well-known
account of the Cymeans’ failure to provide refuge for Paktyes against his
Persian assailants (Hist. 1.154-57), in clear violation of accepted
principles regarding the treatment of refugees. The judgment of death which the
sibyl serves against Cyme fits with the hardships the Cymeans purportedly
endured for failing to fulfil their obligation to a refugee. This, of
course, comports with my suggested rendering of θεόπνευστος as “life-giving: as
Cyme withheld its life-giving protection from Paktyes, so also death is dealt
in its own ναματα. (p. 30 [ναματα = stream/running water])
But God, the great Father of all
within whom is the breath of God (θεοπνευστος) (Sibylline Oracle 5:406)
Sib. Or. 5.397-407
The desired temple has been long extinguished by you,
when I saw the second temple thrown down,
soaked in fire by an unclean hand,
the ever-budding house, the watchful temple of God
made by holy ones and hoped
by their soul and body to be ever imperishable.
For no one unburied praises a god of obscure clay,
nor did a clever sculptor make one from stone,
nor worship an accoutrement of gold, a deception of souls.
But they honored the great God, begetter of all that is
theopneustic,
with majestic sacrifices and holy hectatombs. (Author’s
translation)
Warfield’s attempt to flatten θεόπνευστος into a designation
of divine origination simpliciter fails to grasp the true sense in which
the word is used. His emphasis on creatureliness speaks to his desire to tie
the word’s normal meaning to the idea of origination. (This was in
keeping with the general approach to θεόπνευστος, beginning about 1900, or
slightly earlier.) Bate and Collins, on the other hand, correctly understood
the use of θεόπνευστος in the passage: the oracle basically calls God the
“God of the living” (cf. Mt. 22:32//Mk 12:27//Lk. 20:38) in a way that
highlights the fact that he is the source of life. (p. 37)