given by inspiration of God?" No, Paul does not say that. Look again at
your Revised Version (2 Tim. iii. 16): "Every Scripture inspired of God
is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction, which is in righteousness." Every writing inspired of God
is profitable reading. That is the whole statement.

But Paul says in the verses preceding, that Timothy had known from a
child the Sacred Writings which were able to make him wise unto
salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Was there not, then, in his
hands, a volume or collection of books, known as the Sacred Writings,
with a definite table of contents; and did not Paul refer to this
collection, and imply that all these writings were inspired of God and
profitable for the uses specified?

No, this is not the precise state of the case. These Sacred Writings had
not at this time been gathered into a volume by themselves, with a fixed
table of contents. What is called the Canon of the Old Testament had not
yet been finally determined.[Footnote: See chapter xi] There were,
indeed, as we saw in the last chapter, two collections of sacred
writings, one in Hebrew and the other in Greek. The Hebrew collection
was not at this time definitely closed; there was still a dispute among
the Palestinian Jews as to whether two or three of the books which it
now contains should go into it; that dispute was not concluded until
half a century after the death of our Lord. The other collection, as I
have said, was in the Greek language, and it included, not only our Old
Testament books, but the books now known as the Old Testament Apocrypha.
This was the collection, remember, most used by our Lord and his
apostles. Which of these collections was in the hands of Timothy we do
not certainly know. But the father of Timothy was a Greek, though his
mother was a Jewess; and it is altogether probable that he had studied