“The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”
1 Timothy 6:10
IdiomSettledPaul
For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. (1 Timothy 6:10 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Universally misquoted as 'money is the root of all evil.'
The cultural key
Three corrections hide in the exact wording: it is the love of money (philargyria, a recognized vice with its own name in Greek ethics), it is a root (not the root), and it produces all kinds of evils (not every evil). The sentence has cousins in the moralists (a Greek proverb already called love of money 'the mother-city of all evils'), but Paul's version is careful where the proverb was sweeping, and his case study is specific: cravings that walked people out of the faith and onto their own spears.
Recovered meaning
Money is not the villain; the appetite for it is one taproot among evils, and a proven faith-killer. The famous misquote flattens exactly the distinctions the verse was built on.
Parallels: Matthew 6:24; Hebrews 13:5; 1 Timothy 6:6–9