[Cronos]

Cronos: “you do, of course, realise that the “scripture” St. Paul was referring to was the Septuagint?”

Belte Did Paul tell you that? I do not find that in the text of 2 Timothy.

1. You do agree that this was not the Christian NT referred to as scriptures, right? -- just getting that out of the way
2. Paul most likely did read Hebrew, however, he was definitely a Greek speaker as that was the international language of that time, Hebrew being relegated to ceremonial religious langauge and Aramaic being the language of the peopel
3. Even if the language differs, I meant to say that he was referring to Judaic scriptures
4. I didn't say it excludes any already existent NT, I only pointed out that much of the NT was NOT written at the time +Paul wrote the Epistle -- and that, is a fact -- hence Paul was not referring to Revelation as scripture for the simple reason that it was not written yet, neither was the Gospel of John.

[Belteshazzar]

1. Primarily, yes, Paul was referring to the OT Scriptures.

2. Paul didn’t “most likely” read Hebrew. He for sure did. His teacher was Gamaliel, and the language of his instruction would have been Hebrew. His referring to himself as “a Hebrew of the Hebrews,” (Philippians 3:5) almost certainly means this, since he had already identified himself ethnically in the immediately preceding words. I wouldn’t be so quick also to assume that, although the common language of the people was Aramaic, Hebrew was little known and not understood. Among “church goin’ folk” I would assume it was quite well understood. As an aside, I also wouldn’t be so quick, as some are, to assert that Jesus’ disciples didn’t know Greek, and thus had to have written their gospels in Aramaic. Multilingualism in a given population is a very old and very common phenomenon ... except, it would seem, in the USA.

3. That is not how it came across.

4. On this we are in basic agreement. However, it should be noted that there is already pretty clear recognition of NT Scriptures in certain places in other, later NT Scriptures, which I take to be far more authoritative indication of what is canonical Scripture than any earthly one.