Personalized Commentary

I Timothy 5:23 is one of the passages H. L. Mencken liked to quote to irritate fundamentalist Christians:

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.
(KJV)

A recent commentary offers an interesting analysis:

. . . it must be noted that the text proposes no doctrinaire or theological grounds for its directive but simply notes that this course of action will be "for your bad stomach and your frequent bouts with illness". The concern here is very Hellenistic (see notes above), though of course the ailment the "nervous stomach", the queasy acidity that tense perfectionists are always prone to and that administrative pressures have been known to cause even in the most stolid and placid, is by no means a monopoly of Greeks or Sumerians.
(Jerome D. Quinn and William C. Wacker, The First and Second Letters of Timothy, Eerdmans Critical Commentary series, Grand Rapids, 2000)

This sounds heartfelt, all the more so when we observe that Quinn completed only the first draft of his commentary: it was completed after his death by his student Wacker. I wonder which one wrote this note.

Posted by Michael Hendry at March 31, 2003 01:02 AM