choose to specify them. To do so, in this case, would have had a tendency to harden them in their heresy, ‘‘ render them more shameless”’ (Chrys.). The introduction of the personal element into controversy has a curiously irritating effect. For this use of τινες see 1 Cor. vets.) 2 σου πι αν κ. ο, Gale η tiene, © Lim. 1. 6,19, ve τς, νι. το, στ, 2 Tim. ii. 18.
μὴ ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν : This compound occurs again in 1 Tim. vi. 3, and means to teach a gospel or doctrine different from that which I have taught. ἕτερος certainly seems to connote difference in kind. Gal. i. 6, ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο, and 2 Cor. xi. 4, illus- trate St. Paul’s language here. The heresy may have been of recent origin, and not yet completely systematised— heresy of course does not aim at finality —but St. Paul does not mean to deal gently with it. It was to him false and accursed (cf. Gal. i. 8, 9). His forebod- ings for the church in Ephesus (Acts xx. 29, 30) were being fulfilled now. Hort (¥udaistic Christianity, p. 134) compares the διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις of Heb. xiii. 9.
St. Paul elsewhere uses compounds with ἕτερο, ¢.g., 2 Cor. vi. 14, ἑτεροζν- γεῖν; and more remarkably still, when quoting Isa. xxviii. rr in 1 Cor. xiv. 21, he substitutes ἐν ἑτερογλώσσοις for διὰ γλώσσης ἑτέρας of the LXX. The word is found in Ignat. ad Polyc. 3, οἱ δοκοῦντες ἀξιόπιστοι εἶναι Kal ἑτερο- διδασκαλοῦντες.
Ver. 4. μηδὲ προσέχειν: nor to pay attention to. This perhaps refers primarily to the hearers of the érepo- διδάσκαλοι rather than to the false teachers themselves. See reff.
μύθοις καὶ γενεαλογίαις ἀπεράντοις: “ Polybius uses both terms in similarly close connection, Hist. ix. 2, r’’ (Ell.). Two aspects of, or elements in, the one aberration from sound doctrine.
Some light is thrown upon this clause by other passages in this group of letters
(x Tim. 1.6, 7, iv. 7, vi. 4,20; 2 Tim, 11. τὴν τὸν 23. ἵν. αν πε πα. απο τὰ, tee) The myths are expressly called Jewish (Tit. i. 14), and this affords a good argument that νομοδιδάσκαλοι and vopos, in 1 Tim. i. 7, 8 and Tit. iii. 9, refer to the Mosaic Law, not restricting the term Law to the Pentateuch. Now a con- siderable and important part of the Mosaic legislation has relation only to Palestine and Jerusalem;:it had no practical significance for the devotional life of the Jews of the Dispersion, with the exception of the community that worshipped at Hierapolis in Egypt. There is a strong temptation to mystics to justify to themselves the continued use of an antiquated sacred book by a mystical interpretation of whatever in it has ceased to apply to daily life. Thus Philo (De Vit. Contempl. § 3) says of the Therapeutae, ‘‘ They read the holy Scriptures, and explain the philosophy of their fathers in an allegorical manner, regarding the written words as symbols of hidden truth which is communicated in obscure figures”. Those with whom St. Paul deals in the Pastoral Epistles were not the old-fashioned conservative Judaisers whom we meet in the Acts and in the earlier Epistles; but rather the promoters of an eclectic synthesis of the then fashionable Gentile philosophy and of the forms of the Mosaic Law. μῦθοι, then, here and elsewhere in the Pas- torals (see reff.), would refer, not to the stories and narrative of the O.T. taken in their plain straightforward meaning, but to the arbitrary allegorical treatment of them.
γενεαλογίαι may similarly refer to the genealogical matter in the O.T. which is usually skipped by the modern reader; but which by a mystical explanation of the derivations of the nomenclature could be made to justify their inclusion in a sacred book, every syllable of which might be supposed antecedently to contain edification. This general inter- pretation, which is that of Weiss, is