The Invention of the Inspired Text: A Response from John C. Poirier

Note: This is a guest post by John C. Poirier, written in response to my review of his book The Invention of the Inspired Text (T&T Clark, 2021).

I wish to thank Kyle Dillon for allowing me to answer his review and response. Among my book’s detractors, Dillon sticks out for the honesty of his effort to understand my argument. Having said that, of course, I take issue with a number of elements in his response.

Perhaps I should begin with Dillon’s belief that I too quickly dismiss the etymological approach to discerning the meaning of θεόπνευστος, in favor of a philological approach. It would be “mistaken to ignore [etymology] altogether,” he tells us, as a “more fruitful approach” would seek an “interface” of etymology and philology. But as Analytic philosophy has told us over and over, the meaning of a word lies in its use. Having said that, I should add that Dillon exaggerates the degree to which I ignore etymology: the principal difference between the traditional rendering of θεόπνευστος (“divinely inspired” [from “God-breathed”]) and my revisionist rendering (“life-giving” [from “God-breathing”]) is simply one of exchanging the passive voice (presupposed by the majority throughout history) for the grammatically compossible active voice. In fact, I arrived at the possibility that θεόπνευστος means “life-giving” by expanding on the image of God’s breath—an image suggested by the word’s roots. My philological investigation, in fact, was in essence a test-fitting of the passive- and active-voice renderings of that image, to determine which one represents the way the word was used. That seems to me to be the right way to start from an etymological datum and to bring it to perfection through philology.

To illustrate the inherent dangers of etymology, I invite the reader to imagine what such an approach would have us believe that the word “plumber” means. A plumber, on these grounds, is “one who works with plumbum (= lead).” It is true that that was once a faithful understanding of the word—which is why it lines up with the first definition given by Merriam-Webster (“a dealer or worker in lead”)—but the plumbing profession today has nothing to do with lead, and it is only when we turn to philology that we discover the reigning truth of Merriam-Webster’s second definition: “one who installs, repairs, and maintains piping, fittings, and fixtures involved in the distribution and use of water in a building.” Given that meaning is use, why would anyone seek a word’s meaning by any other means than that of simply reading the history of its use?

It is not out of place, of course, for Dillon to point out how widespread the inspirationist view of the biblical text was at the time the New Testament was written. “For Poirier’s argument to succeed,” he tells us, “he would need to explain how the New Testament authors could hold a view of Scripture so contrary to that of their Jewish and Christian contemporaries.” This is a matter that I had discussed in the original draft of my book, but that I was forced to drop in view of the 120,000-word limit imposed on me. Here I can note only that Second Temple Judaism’s frequent appeals to an inspirationist bibliology represent a transparent adoption of Greco-Roman views, based on the role of the Muses in the inspiration of Homer and other culturally foundational texts. (John Van Seters writes: “[F]rom the rise of Hellenism onward, there is every reason to believe that Homer provided both a rival and a model for the way in which Jews viewed Moses and the rest of their own inspired classics” [The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor” in Biblical Criticism (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 27; cf. Maren R. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)].) I would also note that the inspirationist paradigm did not hold a monopoly on Jewish views of Scripture. Ian W. Scott persuasively argues, for example, that the Book of Aristeas views Scripture as a purely human composition, with not “even a whiff of divine revelation” (“Revelation and Human Artefact: The Inspiration of the Pentateuch in the Book of Aristeas,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 [2020] 1-28, esp. 18). It is worth noting that second-century Christians disagreed with one another on this matter as well—which would be odd if they thought the New Testament enunciated an inspirationist view. (See esp. Kenneth Laing, Irenaeus, the Scriptures, and the Apostolic Writings: Reevaluating the Status of the New Testament Writings at the End of the Second Century [LNTS 659; London: T & T Clark, 2022]. Just to remind the reader: I do not deny that formally prophetic texts are inspired in the sense attending to their nature. I deny only that that sense extends to Scripture qua scripture.)

Dillon believes my “doctrine of Scripture” is problematic, partly because I limit the label “word of God” to prophetic utterances. Such a view, he believes, is contradicted by Matt 19:4-5,  in which Jesus quotes Gen 2:24 (“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”) and refers to that saying as something that the Creator “said”—even though the remark appears in our Bibles in the voice of the narrator. Here I would only point out that Theophilus of Antioch felt the force of this same problem, and solved it, rabbinic-style, by making Gen 2:24 into a prophecy spoken by Adam (see his Ad Autol. 2.28). The fact that he thought he needed to do so would seem to indicate that he did not think that bibliology alone was sufficient to explain how Jesus could say such a thing. As the author of a book attempting to disprove inspirationism, of course, I claim the freedom to say that this odd element in Matthew’s text does not defy anything that Scripture claims about itself.

According to Dillon, “limiting the authority of Scripture to its ‘keygmatic center’” is problematic because, “without plenary verbal inspiration, it is no longer possible to define precisely what that center is.” I should say two things in response. First, displacing inspirationism by no means makes it difficult (much less “no longer possible”) to define the kerygma. No reader of 1 Corinthians 15 or the early speeches in Acts can be at a loss to discern the exact shape of the kerygma. Second, the implication that I believe Scripture has no “authority” apart from those elements we are required to accept as givens (viz. the kerygma) is not something that a sympathetic reader would ever attribute to me. Surely Dillon understands the notion of authority based on other grounds than inspiration.

The weakest part of Dillon’s response to my book lies in his responses to my exegesis of the various second-century uses of θεόπνευστος, beginning with 2 Tim 3:16 itself. Dillon pleads for the traditional rendering of 2 Tim 3:16 on the grounds that Scripture’s “divine origin” can explain why it is said to be “profitable.” The problem with this is that the word rendered “profitable” (ὠφέλιμος) was an overworked technical term in Greek discussions of texts, and that that term in no sense was under the thumb of an inspirationist view of texts. In fact, any attempt to find a hint of inspirationism in ὠφέλιμος is likely to backfire, as the judgment that a text was ὠφέλιμος was often made as an attempt to find value in a factually-errant narrative. A text was often said to be ὠφέλιμος if it built character, even if it did so by relating falsehoods.

In the case of Sib. Or. 5.308, Dillon argues that the passage makes sense on the terms of Warfield’s extension of “God-breathed” to instances, not only of inspiration per se, but also of divine origination. Yet he does not appear to recognize any problematic aspect in Warfield’s special pleading for this extended sense. If “inspiration” should be allowed to bleed into the production of non-intellectual notions, we have, in effect, made the full circuit to the creation narrative. Why then should we not align θεόπνευστος with that aspect of creation that explicitly involves the divine inbreathing—viz. the giving of life?

Regarding the Sibylline Oracles’ second use of θεόπνευστος (5.406-7), Dillon writes that “[t]he creatures described as theopneustic here clearly receive life from God, but there is an implication that they give life.” I am not so sure, as any mention of animals within the context of Temple operations carries the presumption that the animals in question were sacrificial—and therein, dear friend, lies their “life-giving” effect. In fact, the reference to their being theopneustic introduces the fact that they are “holy sacrifices and hecatombs”! (I regret that I did not spell this out more clearly in my book.) Couple this consideration with the fact that Dillon, once again, appeals to Warfield’s extension of inspirationism into the realm of all sorts of divine origination, and I think the case for a vivificationist rendering of θεόπνευστος will appear much stronger.

Dillon also questions my interpretation of Test. Abr. 20.10-11. I had tied that text’s description of ointments as θεόπνευστος to the widely attested belief that, upon death, the soul remained near the body for three days, while the body itself was preserved from decay. Following most scholars, I took it as obvious, from the correlation of these two beliefs, that the body remained in a ready state to allow the soul to return. This is the point at which Dillon challenges my claim: according to him, “no ancient sources suggest belief that a corpse may reanimate within three days if preserved from decay.” Although I maintain the majority view that numerous sources suggest that sort of thing—as that is the only obvious reason for combining the body’s preservation with the soul’s hanging around (not to mention that Plato’s myth of Er spells out this connection in plain language)—it is worth noting that the inference itself is not the point at issue in my interpretation of the Testament of Abraham. All that is necessary is a belief that the body is preserved from decay for three days, and the numerous sources that I cited in my book all attest to that. (For a more detailed argument regarding these sources, see John C. Poirier, “Psalm 16:10 and the Resurrection of Jesus ‘on the Third Day’ (1 Cor 15:4),” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 4 [2014] 45-64.)

In similar fashion, Dillon tells us that “[t]he soul’s theopneustic property,” as discussed by Vettius Valens, is “something that it receives, not gives.” But, as I argued in my book, Valens viewed the soul in parallel fashion to Manilius, for whom “the entire universe is alive in the mutual concord of its elements and is driven by the pulse of reason, since a single spirit dwells in all its parts and, speeding through all things, nourishes like the world and shapes it like a living creature” (from Astronomica 2 [trans. Goold]). Even without the use of Manilius as a lens, it is easy to see that Valens viewed the soul as life-giving in the sense that it enlivens the body.

Dillon spends more time on Pseudo-Plutarch’s use of θεόπνευστος. He questions my claim that the type of dream that Pseudo-Plutarch describes as theopneustic were diagnostic—that is, that they provided insight into bodily disorders (specifically humor imbalances). He charges that this fails to explain how the third category of dreams—which Pseudo-Plutarch describes as “mixed”—could partake of this theopneustic property, since these dreams are not diagnostic but erotic. But I didn’t mean to imply that the third category is “theopneustic” (as implied in the label “mixed”) for the same reason as the second category. Rather, the third category of dreams is life-giving because the ancients believed that erotic dreams allowed the body to release old, pent-up fluids. Dillon further charges that my understanding of diagnostic dreams as life-giving fails to account for the “divine” attribute signified by the first three letters in θεόπνευστος. In this, he simply is failing to understand how word meanings work: the word θεόπνευστος was coined with the literal componential meaning of “God-breathing” in order to signify persons and things that are “life-giving”—as divine breath gives life. Those who applied that word did so with a view toward its intended meaning of “life-giving” rather than toward its component parts. The θεο- component is buried within, and as such remains generative of the very notion of being “life-giving.”

Lastly, there is Pseudo-Phocylides, which Dillon claims “was likely written too early to be based upon Latin Sirach 4:12.” Here I will only note that my understanding of how Pseudo-Phocylides was written was not based on such a source. My interpretation of θεόπνευστος in the Sentences had a broader contact with early sources: it was based on the much more venerable tradition of referring to wisdom as “life-giving” (Cf. Prov 3:13-18, 21-24.)

I should not end without responding to the claim that my “theological commitments force me into some highly tenuous interpretations and conclusions.” I cannot help but wonder what my “theological commitments” supposedly are. I am a theological conservative, and I have always made it my business to spurn the manmade traditions that have gotten in the way of Scripture—just as Jesus counseled us—and to strive to be thoroughgoingly apostolic in my beliefs. (The nineteenth-century scholar F. W. C. Meyer summarized the difference between the approach Dillon represents and the one that I represent: “[T]he venerable theologians of the Reformed creed chose rather, in the minds of some, to brood over the eternal mysteries of the Godhead than approach the Jordan with Bible in hand; or they were more desirous to pry into the election chamber than enter with open eyes a primitive meeting of the Church at Corinth or Antioch” [“The Formal Principle of the Reformation,” The Old and New Testament Student 15/1 (July-August 1892) 31-39, esp. 34].) To my mind, this primitivist stance is really the only theological commitment worth holding. If that means dispensing with the mistaken notion that Scripture claims to be inspired, I can only count that a good thing.