a fiction destitute of truth. St. Paul exhorts Timothy and Titus
to shun profane and Jewish fables, 1 Tim. iv, 7; Titus i, 14; as having
a tendency to seduce men from the truth. By these fables some understand
the reveries of the Gnostics; but the fathers generally, and after them
most of the modern commentators, interpret them of the vain traditions
of the Jews; especially concerning meats, and other things, to be
abstained from as unclean, which our Lord also styles “the doctrines of
men,” Matt. xv, 9. This sense of the passages is confirmed by their
contexts. In another sense, the word is taken to signify an apologue, or
instructive tale, intended to convey truth under the concealment of
fiction; as Jotham’s fable of the trees, Judges ix, 7–15, no doubt by
far the oldest fable extant.
to shun profane and Jewish fables, 1 Tim. iv, 7; Titus i, 14; as having
a tendency to seduce men from the truth. By these fables some understand
the reveries of the Gnostics; but the fathers generally, and after them
most of the modern commentators, interpret them of the vain traditions
of the Jews; especially concerning meats, and other things, to be
abstained from as unclean, which our Lord also styles “the doctrines of
men,” Matt. xv, 9. This sense of the passages is confirmed by their
contexts. In another sense, the word is taken to signify an apologue, or
instructive tale, intended to convey truth under the concealment of
fiction; as Jotham’s fable of the trees, Judges ix, 7–15, no doubt by
far the oldest fable extant.