2 Timothy 4:11-13
Personal Remarks from Paul
11 Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. 12 I sent Tychicus to Ephesus. 13 When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.
St. Paul wanted his old scrolls and his parchments to read...His old scrolls and parchments contained writings he wanted to reread and learn from or review...Most of the time the Old Testament was written on parchments...
There are many old books that can be read, and we can learn from...The Bible is an old book...In fact, the Bible is a book of many books...It is a Book of Books put together other thousands of years, and long ago...And in this Old Book, we learn a lot about God, faith, the history of Israel, Jesus, and many other things -like Truth...
If we read only the new and the latest books, we miss things about our history...Man has a history, just like each one of us has a history...And this history is a part of us, and important to us...St. Paul would go on to write many of the older books of the New Testament...Much can be learned from St. Paul's old writings...
C. S. Lewis said this about old books..."We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it...None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books...Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already...Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill...The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books."...
And Lewis adds, “I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books...But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.”...