6. It is true that in one unique passage, 2 P 3'^ (on the meaning of which see Bigg, in loc. ), al ypa<pal does occur with a plural signilication. But the units of which tiiis plural is made up, as the grammatical construction suggests, ajipear to be not 'treatises' (Huther, Kiihl), but 'passages' (de Wette). Peter seems to say that the unlearned and unstable of course wrested the hard sayings of Paul's letters as they were accustomed to wrest rds XotTras ypa<pds, i.e. the other Scripture state- ments (cf. Eurip. Hipp. 1311 ; Philo, de Prccm. ct Poen. § 11 near end) — the implication being that no part of Scripture was safe in their hands. This is a sufficiently remarkable use of the plural, no other example of which occurs in the NT ; but it is an entirely legitimate one for the NT, and in its context a perfectly natural one. In the Church Fathers the plural al ypacpai is formed freely upon 7] ypa<t>r) both in the sense of ' book ' of Scripture and in the sen.se of ' passage ' of Scripture. But
5S6
SCKIPTURE
SCRIPTUEE
in the NT, apart from the present passage, there is in no instance of the use of at ypacpai the slightest hint of a series whether of ' treatises ' or of ' pass- ages ' underlying it. Even a passage like Lk 24-^ forms no exception ; for if ypa<pai is employed in a singular sense of a single document, then Traaai ai ypa(paL remains just the whole of that document, and is the exact equivalent of vdaa i] ypacp-q, or (if ypacp-q has acquired standing as a quasi-\n'o\>G.r name) as waffa ypacp-rj (2 Ti 3^^). Similarly oi ypa<pal tQv Trpo(f>r)Tu)v (Mt 26^^), ypatpal wpocprjTLKai (Ro 16-") appear to refer not to particular passages deemed prophetic, or to the special section of the OT called ' the Prophets,' but to the entire OT conceived as prophetic in character (cf. 2 P 1^", Ac 23», 2 P 3i«).
7. In 2 P 3^^, however, we have already been brought face to face with what is probably the most remarkable fact about the usage of ypa<p'ri in the NT. This is its occasional employment to refer not merely, as from its form and previous history was to be expected, to the Scripture as a whole, or even, as also would have been only a continuation of its profane usage, to the several treatises which make up that whole, but to the individual passages of Scripture. This employment finds little support from the classics, in which ypafx/xa rather than ypa.(pT) is the current form for the adduction of ' clauses ' or fragmentary portions of documents (cf. e.g. Plato, Parmen. 128 A-D, Ejj. 3 [317 B] ; Thucyd. v. 29 ; Philo, de Congr. Erud. Grat. 12, Quod Dcus immut. 2). It has been cus- tomary, accordingly, to represent it as a peculi- arity of NT and Patristic Greek. It seems to be found, however, though rarely, in Philo [Quis rerum div. hcer. 53, de Prcem. et Pcen. 11; cf. Euripides, Hipp. 1311), and is pi'obably an extreme outgrowth of the habit of looking upon the Scriptures as a unitary book of Divine oracles, every jjortion and passage of which is clothed with the Divine authority which belongs to the whole and is therefore mani- fested in all its parts. When the entirety of Scripture is ' Scripture ' to us, each passage may readily be adduced as 'Scripture,' because 'Scrip- ture ' is conceived as speaking through and in each passage. The transition is easy from saying, ' The Scripture says, namely, in this or that passage,' to saying, of this and that passage, severally, ' This Scripture says,' and ' Another Scripture says' ; and a step so inviting was sure sooner or later to be taken. The employment of ^ ypa.(pv in the NT to denote a particular passage of Scripture does not appear then to be a continuation of a classical usage, but a new development on Jewish or Judaeo-Christian ground from the pregnant use of ypa<l>ri for the Sacred Scriptures, every clause of which is conceived as clothed with the authority of the whole. So far from throwing in doubt the usage of ypa(f)y) pregnantly of Scripture as a whole, therefore, it rather presupposes this usage and is a result of it. So it will not surprise us to find the two usages standing side by side in the NT. _ s J
8. It has indeed been called in question whether both these usages do stand side by side in the NT. Possibly a desire to find some well-marked distinc- tion between the usage of the plural and singular forms has not been without influence here. At all events, it has every now and then been suggested that the singular -^ ypa(pri bears in the NT the uniform sense of 'passage of Scripture,' while it is the plural ai ypa(po.L alone which in the NT designates Scripture as a whole. The younger Schulthess, for example (Liicubr. pro divin. discip. ac pers. Jesii, 1828, p. 36 n.), having occasion to comment briefly (m the words iraaa. ypa^rj deowvev- aro^ of 2 Ti 3^^, among other assertions of equal dubiety makes this one : ' ypa<prj in the singular