Bible Study Seattle

“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing. Make every effort to come to me soon; for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service. But Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. When you come bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments.  Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.  Be on guard against him yourself, for he vigorously opposed our teaching.” 2 Timothy 4:1-15

Evidently, this was written close to the end of Paul’s life. His apparent preaching against the details of Moses angered many Jewish Christians, and caused them to reject Paul. But after it became apparent that Jesus was not to return in the apostles lifetimes, Peter hurried to consult Paul on a canonization of Christian writings to fight the apostasy that was already begun.

Verse 13 above is evidently mistranslated. The Greek word for Cloak has multiple meanings which can only be determined by context.  Couldn’t Paul have gotten a cloak locally from Luke?  Why send a cloak so far?  The word should be translated ‘bookcase’ or similar.  Paul is in prison in Rome.  Peter has come to confer with him on which of their writings should be canonized before they die.  He urges John Mark (Peter’s assistant) to come to help, but also to take back their writtings to John.  Paul wants his bookcase of writings  so he can edit them to be in a codex.  Paul is martyred first.  Then Peter writes 2 Peter which confirms that Jesus will be a long time before he comes back and quotes Psalm 90 written by Moses.  Many say that the codex was basically invented for the creation of the New Testament.  Before, writtings were kept in long scrolls.  The Jews had the priests to keep the sacred scrolls at the temple.  But Christians had no preists or temple to keep official documents.  The codex (or book as we think of it) provided a way to keep many scrolls in one small volume.