θεόπνευστος

From the study of 2 Timothy 3:16

Range of meaning

From θεός (God) + πνέω (to breathe, blow). Greek adjectives ending in -τος are usually passive ('made/done by'), so the most natural sense is 'breathed by God': the result of God's breathing. In Greek, πνεῦμα (pneuma) means breath, wind and spirit all at once. So the word links scripture to God's Spirit and to God's spoken word, since speech is breath shaped into words.

Against the English

KJV 'given by inspiration of God' and NASB 'inspired by God' come from Latin inspirare, 'to breathe into'. NIV/BSB/WEB/YLT 'God-breathed' and ESV 'breathed out by God' stay closer to the Greek. The Greek does not say God breathed into writers or texts. It describes the writings as coming from God's breath.

How it drifted

The Vulgate's divinitus inspirata gave English the word 'inspiration'. Since roughly the 18th century, 'inspired' has mainly meant creatively brilliant or emotionally uplifting ('an inspired performance'). That pushes readers toward 'the writers were at their best' or 'the Bible is inspiring', and neither is what the Greek compound says.

Used elsewhere in the period

This is the first or one of the first surviving uses. Other early uses: Pseudo-Phocylides 129 ('God-breathed wisdom'); Sibylline Oracles 5.308 (the 'God-breathed streams' of Cumae, home of an oracle); Pseudo-Plutarch, Opinions of the Philosophers 5.2 (dreams that are 'God-breathed', that is, sent by the gods). Greeks knew divine pneuma from the Delphic oracle (Plutarch, On the Obsolescence of Oracles). Jews linked God's breath with his creating word: 'by the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath (LXX pneumati) of his mouth all their host' (Ps 33:6). Josephus says the prophets wrote 'by the inspiration (epipnoia) that comes from God' (Against Apion 1.37).