Thursday, December 16, 2021

Notes from John C. Poirier, The Invention of the Inspired Text: Philological Windows on the Theopneustia of Scripture

The following notes are based on 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)

 

 

And they tended the body of the just Abraham with divine (θεοπνευστος) ointments and perfumes until the third day after his death, and buried him in the land of promise, the oak of Mamre. (Testament of Abraham A 20:11)

 

20.10 And immediately Michael the archangel stood beside him with multitudes of angels, and they bore his honorable soul in their hands in divinely woven line,

20.11 And they tended the body of the righteous one with theopneustic ointments and perfumes until the third day after his death. (Author's translation)

 

Nearly everyone who has looked into the matter notes that translation θεόπνευστος as “inspired” does not fit the context and we are met with an array of guesses as to how the author used the term. (p. 40)

 

Theopneustic Ointments

 

In spite of the primary witnesses he gives for illustrating the suggested “hagiographical motif,” there are problems with Allison’s claim for “something close” to the “usual sense” of θεόπνευστος as “divinely inspired.” Among other things, this reference leaves an important contextual clue out of its account: the reference in the text to “three days,” and the connection between that three-day period and the “theopneustic ointments and perfumes.” While the pairing of θεόπνευστος with θεοφαντος is indeed notable, the function of the former term in this context more likely has to do with the well-known motif of a three-day waiting period after the soul’s release from the body. If the soul is allotted three days in which it might return, then Abraham’s body obviously must be preserved for three days against the effects of death. What better preservative than heavenly “life-giving” ointments? The key detail is not that the ointments are administered by angels, but rather that they are administered for three days, and three days only. The ointments evidently are not regular burial ointments, nor are they unguentaria. They are something no longer required after “the third day,” when there is no more need to preserve the body from decay.

 

A well-known example of the body being preserved from decay so that its spirit might return to it appears at the beginning of Plato’s presentation of the myth of Er in book 10 of the Republic (613-621d). Plato relates that Er’s corpse was preserved for twelve days, while his spirit was visiting the heavenly realm. Although the other slain bodies from the battlefield were all in a state of decay then days after the battle, Er’s body showed no signs of decay, and indeed his spirit return to his body as it lay on his funeral pyre:

 

Er, the son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian . . . once upon a time was slain in battle, and when the corpses were taken up on the tenth day already decayed, was found intact (αναιρεθεντων δεκαταιων των νεκρων ηδη διεφαρμενων, υγιης μεν ανηρεθη, and having been brought home, at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day as he lay upon the pyre, revived, and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in the world beyond. (Plato, Republic 614b [trans. Paul Shorey, LCL 272, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980:491-3])

 

 

The idea that the spirit cannot return to its body unless that body had been preserved from corruption also parallels what we find in Jewish sources: the body's lack of decay is what makes it possible for the spirit to return. The advantage of this point of comparison, of course, lies in three three-day period of nondecay . . .That the body must remain in reanimable condition for a three-day period is implied in a number of Jewish and Christian sources . . .(1) in the Testament of Job, Job’s body remains unburied for three days (52.1-2; 53.7), (2) in the Apoc. Zeph. 4.7, it takes the angels three days to escort the ungodly to their final abode, (3) in Dormition of the Blessed Mary 48, the angels sing for three days after the death of Mary, 94) in David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos 9, the titular David says he will depart “after the third day,” (5) Demachot 8.1 recommends a three-day period of examining a grave to insure that the interred body was really dead, (6) according to Gen. Rab. 100.7, the soul tries, for three days, to reenter the body (cf. y. Mo’ed Qatan 3.5; Lev. Rab. 18.1), and (7) in 4 Bar. 9.12-14 a (heavenly) voice of warning held off burial, predicting the soul’s reanimation of the body, which happened as promised “after three days” . . . Thus the “theopneustic” ointments that the angels administer “until the third day” appear to function as “life-giving” preservatives to keep Abraham’s body in good repair, in case his soul should return to it. Θεοπνευστος therefore bears a vivificationist sense . . . The Testament of Abraham clearly does not use θεοπνευστος to denote the idea of verbal or epistemic inspiration. A meaning having to do with the special life-giving properties of the ointments and herbs—properties like those associated with ambrosia—make far better sense. (pp. 41-42, 43, 44)

 

But the speech of the divinely inspired (θεοπνευστος) wisdom is best. (Pseudo-Phocylides 1:129)

 

Considered in isolation from the verse’s context, both the inspirationist and vivifacationist renderings are plausible, as it is easy to envision wisdom as something imparted by divine inspiration, and is equally easy to view it as life-giving in its effects. Contextual considerations, however, weight in favor of the latter rendering. Several passages make it clear that wisdom, for Pseudo-Phocylides, is a matter of rational reflection on the created order. It is not acquired by means of inspiration—esoteric or otherwise—a notion that might have been at home in a more mystical writing. The notion what wisdom is life-giving, moreover, is very much a traditional Jewish thought, recalling Prov. 3:18’s reference to wisdom as a “tree of life” (cf. Prov. 8:35; 9:6; 13:14; Eccl. 7:12; 4Q185 2.11-13). IT can be found throughout Jewish and Christian wisdom writings and fits particularly well with the understanding of wisdom promoted by Pseudo-Phoclyides. A close parallel with the imagery of Sentences 129, in fact, can be found in the Latin version of Sir. 4:12 (=Greek Sir. 4:11 numerically), rendered in the Douay-Rheims version as “Wisdom inspireth life unto her children, and protecteth them that seek after her, and will go before them in the way of justice” (sapiential filiis suis vitam inspiravit et suscipit exquirentes se et praeibit in viam iustitiae). It is not unlikely, in fact, that Pseudo-Phocylides knew this verse in the form of its presumed Greek Vorlage (GrII). Nor is it unlikely that Sentences 129 is directly dependent on the expression preserved in Lat Sir. 4:12. (pp. 58-59)

 

Salvation as Vivification in 2 Tim. 3:14-17

 

v. 15b: “. . . sacred writings that are able to instruct you unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

v. 16a: “All scripture is life-giving [= salvific] and is useful for instruction.” (p. 102)

 

Verse 16a effectively repeats the thought of v. 15b, but in an abbreviated way, as the point of v. 16 is to expound on the several ways in which this salvific is “useful” (ωφελιμος)—that is, “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The idea of scripture being theopneustic is not the intruding thought that the traditional rendering takes it to be but rather a restatement of the previous verse’s point. As such, a vivificationist understanding of θεοπνευστος fits more snugly within the passage than the traditional rendering does.

 

By viewing salvation in terms of life, the understanding argued here invokes a soteriological conceptuality more characteristic of the Pastoral Epistles than of any other portion of the New Testament, except perhaps the Fourth Gospel Scholars often refer to salvation as a key theme in the Pastorals, and they typically characterize that salvation as the giving of life . . . This vivificationist soteriology comes to clearest expression in 2 Tim. 1:10, where grace is said to have been “revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” . . . 1 Tim. 1:16 speaks of those who will gain “eternal life” (ζωην αιωνιον), and 4:10 similarly speaks of the “promise of life” (επαγγελια ζωης). Tit. 3:7 speaks of the Spirit’s power to make us heirs of “eternal life” (ζωης αιωνιου). (p. 103)