2 Timothy 3:16

[Renarax]

All scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness

What scripture is he referring to here? The Hebrew bible? the latin bible didn’t exist

 

[Cachonga]

The verse itself tells you - All Scripture! From Genesis to Revelation. I doubt the OT is more “God-breathed” than the NT. Just because this was not the last Scripture written does not mean that Scripture written after it was not God-Breathed. Ultimately, God is the author of Scripture, and so (as He says), “All Scripture is God-breathed”. I don’t know of any Scripture that isn’t God-breathed (I know some “alleged” Scripture that isn’t, but that’s another topic).

 

[Scottgun]

The passage is more properly rendered "Every Scripture" Jimmy Akin talks about this here: jimmyakin.com/library/2-timothy-316-17-and-sola-scriptura

Pertinent quote:

To begin with, in the opening clause of the passage, the phrase “All Scripture” is normally taken by Evangelicals to mean “All of Scripture” — in other words, a reference to the whole of the canon of Scripture, which coextensive with what a Protestant wishes to make normative for theology. This is natural for a Protestant since he things of the term “scripture” in the singular as a reference to the entire Bible and nothing but the Bible. But that is not the way the term is used in the Bible itself.

The ability to refer to the Bible as a unified work is an invention of the age of moveable type. Prior to the existence of the printing press, Scripture was at best a set of individual, bound volumes. In the first century, when Paul was writing, it was a collection of several dozen scrolls. There was no way it was conceived of as a unified literary work, as it is today.

 

[catholictiger]

All scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness

What scripture is he referring to here? The Hebrew bible? the latin bible didn’t exist

When the Church fathers teach scripture they mean the Old Testament. Of course we as Catholics believe the entirety of the scriptures can be used in this way, but at the time of this letter. There is no set canon so it is possibly that it is believed that certain things we call as scripture was not scripture in the mind of this author.

but the simple fact is that for the early Fathers scripture was the Old Testament, so he is referring to the Old Testament, or more specifically the Hebrew scriptures or the septuagint.

 

[Ignatius]

All scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness

What scripture is he referring to here? The Hebrew bible? the latin bible didn’t exist

That’s right, the only Scripture in existence at the time was the Hebrew Bible.

 

[Nelka]

All scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness

What scripture is he referring to here? The Hebrew bible? the latin bible didn’t exist

All.

 

[Mintaka]

The literal meaning (what the original writer meant) was “the Jewish Bible, including all the Septuagint books that everybody Jewish and Christian uses.” So Baruch, Maccabees, and everything that later Jews and Protestants stopped using, plus the stuff that today’s Jews and Protestants think of as the Jewish Bible/Old Testament.

The prophetic meaning was “every Scripture that will eventually be recognized as a Scripture by the Church, including books that don’t exist yet and this epistle you’re reading right now.”

 

[Erich]

The verse itself tells you

Actually, in the previous two verses, St. Paul writes, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Now, which Holy Scriptures would Timothy have known from infancy? None of the New Testament, certainly!

 

[Cachonga]

Erich:

Now, which Holy Scriptures would Timothy have known from infancy? None of the New Testament, certainly!

Are you saying that the NT isn’t God-breathed Scripture? To be sure, Timothy grew up with the OT Scriptures, but since Paul was writing Scripture (as Peter testifies to in 2 Peter 3:15-16), and Timothy had certainly been exposed to Paul’s writings (I doubt anyone would argue that he hadn’t read the 2 letters Paul wrote to him), I see no reason to limit “all Scripture” to just the OT Scriptures.

Just curious (since we’ve both expressed our own, fallible opinion), but what is the “official” teaching of the church (and could you please include documentation for it)?

 

[thistle]

All scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness

What scripture is he referring to here? The Hebrew bible? the latin bible didn’t exist

D-R Bible, Haydock Commentary:

Ver. 16. All scripture divinely inspired is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, or admonish, to instruct others in justice, and in the ways of virtue, that thus he who is a man of God, a minister of the gospel, may be perfect and instructed unto every good work. But when our adversaries of the pretended reformation, undertake from these four verses to shew, first, that every ignorant man or woman is hereby warranted to read and put what construction his or her private spirit, or private judgment, suggests upon all places of the holy Scriptures; and secondly, that the Scriptures alone contain all truths which a Christian is bound to believe; or at least, that the Scriptures teach him all things necessary to salvation, without regard to the interpretation and authority of the Catholic Church: I may at least say (without examining at present any other pretended grounds of these assertions) that these consequences are very remote from the text and sense of St. Paul in this place. As to the first, does this follow; the Scriptures must be read by Timothy, a priest, a bishop, a man of God, a minister of the gospel, whose office it is to instruct and convert others, therefore they are proper to be read and expounded by every ignorant man or woman? Does not St. Paul say elsewhere, (2 Corinthians ii. 17.) that many adulterate and corrupt the word of God? does not St. Peter tell us also, (2 Peter iii. 16.) that in St. Paul’s epistles are some things…which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other scriptures, to their own perdition? See the preface to the Gospel of St. John, where reasons are brought for which it was requisite that the Church should put some restraint to the abuse which the ignorant made of reading the Scriptures in vulgar tongues. As to the second consequence, does it follow: every Scripture divinely inspired is profitable for St. Timothy, for a priest, a bishop, a man of God, a minister and preacher of the gospel, to teach and instruct, and conduce to bring both him and others to salvation; therefore they contain all things that a Christian need to believe? &c. Is not every Christian bound to believe that the books in the canon of the New and Old Testament are of divine authority, as in particular these two epistles of St. Paul to Timothy? Where does the Scripture assure us of this? But of this elsewhere. (Witham) — Every part of divine Scripture is certainly profitable for all these ends. But if we would have the whole rule of Christian faith and practice, we must not be content with those Scriptures which Timothy knew from his infancy, (that is, with the Old Testament alone) nor yet with the New Testament, without taking along with it the traditions of the apostles and the interpretation of the Church, to which the apostles delivered both the book and the true meaning of it. (Challoner)