2 Timothy 3:15

[muminustrollus]

"and because from a babe the Holy Writings thou hast known, which are able to make thee wise -- to salvation, through faith that [is] in Christ Jesus"

My question is:

In Greek we have: ta dunamena se sophisai

Could ta dunamena be interpreted in a restrictive sense: "those able to make you wise" meaning: not all scripture makes wise, the precepts of the Torah are outdated, just keep the parts that are able to teach you real wisdom ???

Why didn't Paul use the relative pronoun (as in English)?

[Bert]

In Greek the article does get used as a relative pronoun too.
If Paul meant to say 'those parts of Holy Scriptures that make wise'
I think he probably would have used a genitive. I'm not sure exactly how, but maybe something like; [face=SPIonic]ta\ w(=n [/face] or maybe just [face=SPIonic]w(=n[/face]

[callee]

Well, as you surely know, Gk and Eng. do not exactly line up, and so one would not necessarily need to find a relative pronoun in the Gk in order for it to be fully justified in the english translation. In this particular case, the articular participle is acting as an adjectival phrase, and as such carries in Greek a sense that in English would manifest as a relative pronoun. I know this forum is labelled with the ichabod "mounce", but personally I learned with wenham and still prefer him, and so as wenham says on p151, "The adjectival participle is generally preceded by an article...the articular participle will usually be best translated by a clause introduced by a relative pronoun..."