1 Timothy 1:4

ἐκζητήσεις. So אA and some cursives; D2GHKLP have ζητήσεις. The compound form, as occurring nowhere again in N.T. or LXX., would readily be corrected into ζητήσεις. Cp. 1 Timothy 6:4; 2 Timothy 2:23; Titus 3:9.

οἰκονομίαν. So אAGHKLP the Bohairic and Armenian versions. The rec. text has οἰκοδομίαν with D2c; this is the source of the Western reading οἰκοδομήν, found in D2*; d f g m have aedificationem with which the Peshito agrees.

4. μηδὲ προσέχειν. Not to give heed, cp. especially Titus 1:14. The word is not used by St Paul outside the Pastorals, but is found in other N.T. writers and is common in the LXX.

μύθοις καὶ γενεαλογίαις�. To myths and endless genealogies. The reference of these words, and the nature of the heretical teaching which is deprecated, have already been discussed in the Introduction (chap. iv.). The myths and genealogies were of Jewish origin, and related to the heroes and patriarchs of early Hebrew history; such legendary matter was foreign to the Gospel, and study of it would distract from the essential doctrines of the Christian faith,

The word μῦθος (see 1 Timothy 4:7; 2 Timothy 4:4; Titus 1:14) only occurs once in the N.T. outside the Pastorals, viz. in 2 Peter 1:16, and once in the LXX. (Sir 20:19); γενεαλογία is only found in the Greek Bible here and at Titus 3:9, but we have γενεαλογεῖσθαι in 1 Chronicles 5:1; ἀπέραντος, interminable, occurs twice in the LXX., but only here in N.T. The connexion between μῦθοι and γενεαλογίαι is illustrated by the rule of interpretation laid down by Cornutus, one of the later Stoics: δεῖ δὲ μὴ συγχεῖν τοὺς μύθους … μηδʼ εἴ τι προσεπλάσθη ταῖς κατʼ αὐτοὺς παραδιδομέναις γενεαλογίαις ὑπὸ τῶν μὴ συνέντων κ.τ.λ. (see Zeller’s Stoics &c. p. 356).

ἀπέραντος means endless and so ‘tiresome.’ There is no limit (πέρας) to this sort of speculation, and nothing comes of it.

αἵτινες. Inasmuch as they = quippe quae; cp. Titus 1:11.

ἐκξητήσεις παρέχουσι. Minister questionings. In like manner in Titus 3:9 the γενεαλογίαι are preceded by μωρὰς ζητήσεις. These questionings, according to the view which has been taken above of the heresies in the thought of the writer, were not so much concerned with abstract speculations (like the Gnostic enquiries about the origin of evil) as with legend and casuistry. Dr Hort suggested[513] that as myths and genealogies would include the Haggadoth or legendary developments of Hebrew history, so the questionings would embrace the problems of the Halacha, the other great province of Jewish teaching. This may have been the case, but it seems more natural in this context to understand by the ἐκζητήσεις something like the Quaestiones in Genesin of Philo. The vanity and unprofitableness of such enquiries may well have been present to the mind of St Paul.

[513] Judaistic Christianity, p. 137.

μᾶλλον ἢ οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ τὴν ἐν πίστει. Rather than the dispensation of God which is in faith. οἰκονομία may mean either (a) the office of an οἰκονόμος, or (b), as here, the system by which he orders his household. Here the Church is the οἰκία, its members οἰκεῖοι, the plan on which God the great οἰκονόμος distributes His blessings, the οἰκονομία. So the word is often used by early writers of the Incarnation, as being the heart and kernel of the οἰκονομία. Cp. Aristides Apol. xv. καὶ τελέσας τὴν θαυμαστὴν αὐτοῦ οἰκονομίαν διὰ σταυροῦ θανάτου ἐγεύσατο ἑκουσίᾳ βουλῇ κατʼ οἰκονομίαν μεγάλην. The heretical myths would do far more to encourage idle enquiries about matters of no importance than to promote that Divine dispensation whose sphere is faith, and not antiquarian curiosity. See the critical note, and, for St Paul’s use of οἰκονομία, cp. Colossians 1:25; Ephesians 1:10; Ephesians 3:2; Ephesians 3:9. Lightfoot (Revision of N.T. p. 184) called attention to the curious fact that in the English Bible of 1611 the word θεοῦ was left untranslated by inadvertence, the rendering there found being “edifying (reading οἰκοδομίαν) which is in faith”; in 1638 the mistake was discovered, and ‘godly’ was inserted after the earlier English versions.