from the same meaning in 2 Timothy 1:3. How could Paul say that he served God

`from' his parents, or even `from' his forefathers, with a pure conscience?  On

the contrary, his conversion made the most severe and decisive rupture with his

upbringing and former manner of life.  In 1 Timothy 1:13 he recounts that he

had been a blasphemer, a persecutor and injurious, acting in ignorance and

unbelief.  In Galatians 1:13,14 he says:

`For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion,

how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:

and profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own

nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers'.

Did Paul continue in this `Jews' religion'? Was he still an exceeding

zealot for the `tradition of his fathers'?  We know he was not.  Philippians

3:1 -9 provides a most complete refutation of such an idea.  Before Agrippa,

the apostle in answering for himself the charges laid against him, said:

`My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own

nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; which knew me from the beginning,

if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion

I lived a Pharisee' (Acts 26:4,5).

A little earlier, before Felix, he had said:

`But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy,

so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are

written in the law and in the prophets' (Acts 24:14).

Lastly, in Acts 23:1 Paul opened his defence with the words:

`Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until

this day'.

It is evident that Paul's point of view was not that of the Pharisee or

of the traditionalists of his nation.  He had most certainly left the religion

of his parents, but his contention was that he had not left the God of his

fathers; that he still believed all that the law and prophets taught, and that

though it was now in a way that his contemporaries called `heresy' it was `so'

that he worshipped the God of his fathers.

We must look more closely therefore at 2 Timothy 1:3 for, on the surface,

this fact does not appear.  We note that the apostle uses the word apo, `from',

when he says `from my forefathers'.  This preposition which is usually

translated `from' carries with it the idea of (a) source or (b) severance, that

is, either `from' or `away from'.  In 2 Timothy 1:1 we have the word in

composition, `apostle' meaning one sent from another and combining the idea of

`source' with `severance', the apostolic commission having been derived

entirely from the Lord, though exercised during the period of the Lord's

absence from the earth.  In the second verse apo is used in the benediction,

`Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father'.  Here `source' is most evidently

the meaning of the preposition.

We find apo in combination in 2 Timothy 1:15, where severance is

uppermost; `All in Asia be turned away from me'.  So also in 2:19 and 21,

`depart from' and `purge from'.  In 3:15 the expression `from a child' uses the

idea of `distance', transferred to time, as we would say `ever since you were a