StrongerBible

parathēkē

παραθήκη

GreekG3866“deposit, what has been entrusted”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Ti 6:202Ti 1:122Ti 1:14
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradepah-rah-THAY-kaynoun

What parathēkē means

a trust: something valuable handed over to another person for safekeeping, to be guarded undamaged and given back faithfully

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

In everyday Greek of the New Testament era this was a hard business term. A deposit was money, goods, or even a person placed into someone else's care under a binding agreement: the keeper had to preserve it untouched and return it intact on demand. To embezzle or damage a deposit was one of the most shameful betrayals imaginable, and ancient writers often spoke of it as an offense against the gods themselves.

The Pastoral Letters take this weighty word and apply it to spiritual realities. The keeper does not own what he holds; he is trusted with it, accountable to the one who handed it over, and bound to guard it without loss. That is why this word always travels with the command to guard.

In two of its three appearances the thing entrusted is plainly the gospel that Paul handed to Timothy to protect and pass on. The third (2 Timothy 1:12) is debated: the trust there may again be the gospel, kept safe by God, or it may be Paul's own life placed into God's keeping. Either way the word means the same thing, a trust that must be faithfully guarded; only what is being guarded is in question.

1Ti 6:202Ti 1:122Ti 1:14
2Ti 1:12

In 2 Timothy 1:12 the phrase translated "my deposit" is grammatically open: it can mean either "what God entrusted to me" (the gospel) or "what I entrusted to God" (Paul's own life or soul), and that choice decides what the guarded trust refers to here.

  • majorityThe trust is the gospel entrusted to Paul, which God is able to keep safe; the same trust as in the other two verses, read for consistency and from the surrounding gospel language.; M. Wolter, Die Pastoralbriefe als Paulustradition (FRLANT 146; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 116-118; I. H. Marshall (with P. H. Towner), The Pastoral Epistles (ICC; T&T Clark, 1999), 712-714; P. H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (NICNT; Eerdmans, 2006), 470-473
  • minorityThe trust is Paul's own life or soul, which he has placed into God's keeping to be preserved until the final Day; supported by the unusual "my", the change of guardian to God, the end-time horizon, and the echo of "into your hands I commit my spirit" (Psalm 31:5).; J. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (ET W. Pringle; Calvin Translation Society, 1856), ad 2 Tim 1:12; W. D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles (WBC 46; Nelson, 2000), 487-490; N. J. D. White, The Expositor's Greek Testament (Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), 4:159

What scholars say about parathēkē

παραθήκη (the Koine form of the older Attic παρακαταθήκη) is a technical term of Greco-Roman commercial law: a depositum, property entrusted by a depositor to a trustee under binding obligations of inviolable preservation and full restitution, attested in Herodotus 6.86, the orators, and first-century deposit contracts in the papyri (Spicq, Revue Biblique 1931; TLNT 3:24; Maurer, TDNT 8:162-164). The LXX deposit laws (Lev 6:2-4; Exod 22:7-12) and Hellenistic Jewish moralists (Philo, Josephus) had already extended it metaphorically to the soul and to sacred speech, supplying the bridge the Pastor exploits. BDAG and Louw-Nida (35.47) fix the sense as property entrusted to another's care; in the NT it occurs only in the Pastorals, always with φυλάσσω, of the spiritual heritage entrusted to the orthodox. For 1 Tim 6:20 and 2 Tim 1:14 the referent (the apostolic gospel and pattern of sound teaching, against the "knowledge falsely so-called") is uncontested across Knight, Mounce, Towner, Marshall, Johnson, Collins, and Quinn-Wacker. 2 Tim 1:12 turns on whether μου is subjective (Paul's life entrusted to God: Calvin, Bengel, Mounce, Expositor's Greek Testament) or objective (the gospel entrusted to Paul, kept by God: Wolter, Marshall, Towner, Knight, Johnson, with Chrysostom as the patristic anchor and the modern consensus); the patristic reception (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Vincent of Lerins) developed the term into the depositum fidei.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG (3rd ed., 2000), s.v. παραθήκηlexicon
  • C. Maurer, 'τίθημι κτλ.,' TDNT 8:162-164theological-dictionary
  • C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (ET J. D. Ernest; Hendrickson, 1994), 3:24, s.v. παραθήκηlexicon
  • C. Spicq, 'Saint Paul et la loi des dépôts,' Revue Biblique 40 (1931) 481-502article
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (UBS, 1988), §35.47lexicon
  • M. Wolter, Die Pastoralbriefe als Paulustradition (FRLANT 146; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 116-118monograph
  • I. H. Marshall (with P. H. Towner), The Pastoral Epistles (ICC; T&T Clark, 1999), 678-679, 712-714commentary
  • P. H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (NICNT; Eerdmans, 2006), 432-434, 470-473commentary
  • W. D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles (WBC 46; Nelson, 2000), 487-490, 494commentary
  • John Chrysostom, Homiliae in 2 Timotheum 2 (PG 62:606)primary-source

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of παραθήκη

accusative f s

παραθήκην

1Ti 6:20, 2Ti 1:12, 2Ti 1:14