A DEPOSIT — something placed alongside for safe-keeping, from paratithēmi, 'to set beside, to entrust'. In Greek law it named property left with a trustee, which the holder was bound in honour and by oath to return intact and unused. ⚠ The PASTORAL letters make it their image for the gospel: a trust received and to be handed on undamaged. Paul is sure God 'is able to guard my deposit until that day' (2 Timothy 1:12), and in the next breath tells Timothy to 'guard the good deposit' entrusted to him (1:14; also 1 Timothy 6:20) — the word turning both ways, what Paul commits to God and what God commits to Paul. It is one of the earliest pictures of tradition as something transmitted intact past the death of the apostles. → first discussed at 2 Timothy 1:12