2 Timothy 4:13

The cloke Vulg. -penulam." The oldest use of the word is traced back beyond the Latins nearly to the time of Alexander the Great, in a fragment of a Doric poet, Rhinthon (Julius Pollux Onomast. vii. 60). Hence the Latin must have adopted it from the Greek, not vice versa. The Roman paenulawas a travelling cloak, long, and thick, and sleeveless, made generally of wool, sometimes of leather. Cf. Mart. xiv. 145 paenula gausapina, xiv. 13 paenula scortea. Dr Farrar suggests that -perhaps St Paul had woven it himself of that cilicium, the black goats" hair of his native province, which it was his trade to make into tents. Doubtless the cloke was an old companion. It may have been wetted many a time with the water-torrents of Pamphylia, and whitened with the dust of the long roads, and stained with the brine of shipwreck. Now, shivering in some gloomy cell under the Palace, or it may be on the rocky floor of the Tullianum, with the wintry nights coming on, he bethinks him of the old cloke and asks Timothy to bring it with him." He quotes also the letter of Tyndale, the translator of the English Bible, from his prison in the damp cells of the Vilvoorde: -I entreat your Lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that, if I must remain here for the winter, you would beg the Commissary to be so kind as to send me, from the things of mine which he has, a warmer cap … I feel the cold painfully in my head.… Also a warmer cloke, for the one I have is very thin.… He has a woollen shirt of mine, if he will send it. But most of all … my Hebrew Bible, Grammar and Vocabulary, that I may spend my time in that pursuit. William Tyndale." There is some foundation for the interpretation -a book-case" or -portfolio," which the Syriac versions support: none for the meaning -a chasuble," the passages of Tertullian and Chrysostom, quoted in favour, being really conclusive for the meaning -travelling cloak." There is no certain case of the use of the term in this technical sense before the time of Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople in the 8th century. See Dr Sinker's Article, Dict. Christ. Antiq.

at Troas We do not know when this was; Farrar suggests that -he left them behind, with Carpus, to take care of them, in his hasty arrest at Troas." But see Introduction, p. 43.

and the books The papyrus books; -perhaps poems of Aratus, a Cilician like himself, or pamphlets of Philo or the Wisdom of Solomon." See Bp Bull, Sermon x. p. 242.

the parchments Writings on vellum; membrana, the Latin word, of which the Greek is a transcript, is properly a feminine adjective with which cutisis supplied, -the skin covering the limbs (membra)." Hence membrana Pergamenawas the thin sheep or calf skin sheet invented by Eumenes of Pergamus; of which membranasupplies the Greek word, and Pergamenahas been corrupted into -parchment." Our -vellum" is said to be from the French vélin, calf-skin. Bp Bull, Sermon x. p. 245, takes these -parchments" (after Estius) to be St Paul's adversariaor commonplace books -wherein he had noted what he thought might be of use to him out of the many books he had read." Farrar suggests -a document to prove his rights as a Roman citizen" or -any precious rolls of Isaiah or the Psalms or the lesser Prophets."