Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

2 Timothy 2:18

ἀνάστασιν. τὴν�. is read by most authorities and is found in the rec. text; the article is omitted by אG 17, and by most recent editors. WH give it a place in their margin.

18. οἵτινες περὶ τὴν�, who concerning the truth have missed their aim. See 1 Timothy 1:6; 1 Timothy 6:21 and the notes there.

λέγοντες�, saying that the Resurrection is already past. These persons seem to have interpreted the doctrine of man’s Resurrection in an ethical or spiritual sense only. Difficulties about a resurrection of the body were early felt (see 1 Corinthians 15:12 ff.), and such teaching as that of St Paul (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12) about the analogy between the Lord’s Resurrection and the baptized believer’s ‘newness of life’ may have given occasion to heretical speculators to deny that the future bodily resurrection was an article of Christian faith. A like error is mentioned by Polycarp (§ 7) ὄς … λέγει μήτε�; there is a warning against it in [2 Clem.] § 9 μὴ λεγέτω τις ὑμῶν ὅτι αὕτη ἡ σὰρξ οὐ κρίνεται οὐδὲ�: and in the Acts of Paul and Thecla (§ 14) Demas and Hermogenes are introduced as saying ἡμεῖς σε διδάξομεν, ἥν λέγει οὖτος�, ὅτι ἤδη γέγονεν ἐφ ̓ οἶς ἔχομεν τέκνοις. It is probable, however, that this last passage is directly dependent on the verse before us (the reference to the Resurrection being already past is not found in the Syriac version), and therefore it does not furnish additional evidence for the prevalence of the form of error in question. By the time of Justin (Dial. 80) and of Irenaeus (Haer. II. 31. 2) an allegorising explanation of the Resurrection was a recognised Gnostic tenet; but at this early stage in the Church’s life, if we judge from the language here employed, we are not to think of the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus as the necessary outcome of a definite heretical system so much as a private blunder based on misinterpretations of the Apostolic doctrine. The mischievous results of such ‘vain babblings’ were already becoming apparent (2 Timothy 2:17).

καὶ�, and subvert the faith of some. ἀνατρέπειν only occurs again in the N.T. at Titus 1:11, in a somewhat similar context, but it is a common LXX. word.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

2 Timothy 2:18

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