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)
