I am doing an inductive study of 2 Timothy(nasb95) and in
reading chapter one (for the nth time), I noticed an awkwardness in the transition
of thought from v12 to v13. In Verse 12 Paul appeared to be stating that he
wasn’t ashamed of the Gospel, because God was able to protect him (Good Deposit
being his eternal life). Then he starts verse 13 with the admonition to “retain
the standard of sound words”, which just seemed to break the flow of the thought.
(Sorry for being so vague about this, but it is one of the reasons an inductive
study suggests many, many readings of the passage under study).
So if I am having difficulty with the way a verse reads,
my first stop is to my text comparison tool.
Where I noticed that HCSB and NET had a whole different
wording/meaning (Good deposit = Ministry entrusted to him) for v. 12, and what
is more, when I used their translation the passage flowed again. So, the
question then was why?
My first thought was a variation of manuscripts between the
translations. So I popped open the interlinear on my Nasb95 and discovered no indication of that and that
the grammar was over my head, so I bailed and hit the commentaries finding
this:
What
does Paul mean by “my deposit” (τὴν παραθήκην μου)?
Essentially two answers are proposed: The first is that the deposit is what God
has entrusted to Paul, usually understood as the gospel although sometimes of
his ministry: “what has been entrusted to me” (RS cf. TE The second is that the
deposit is what Paul has entrusted to God, usually regarded as his life or
himself: “what I have entrusted to him” (NAS and the marginal alternatives in RS
Conclusion: By following a specific bible study discipline I
was able to discover what I felt was a problem/awkwardness with the English
translation I was reading. Then using the text comparison tool I was able to
pinpoint what the issue was, as I saw it translated differently by different
groups. Consulting a good commentary validated these findings. And this was all
done without resorting to the original language tools.
Knight, G. W. (1992). The Pastoral
Epistles : A commentary on the Greek text (379). Grand Rapids, Mich.;
Carlisle, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press.
