Old wives’ fables really are the words that the Apostle wrote. I thought perhaps this was some colourful turn of phrase courtesy of the translators. But no, this is an accurate translation of the Greek.
Why do we associate old women and questionable stories? I have a theory. Older women tend to think of themselves as custodians of the established standards of what is right and proper in their communities. When they hear of some happening that appears to be in contravention of those standards, they want to make sure that others know what is happening so they can do something to set things to right. It seems like a quasi-noble intention.
Too often, though, they don’t get the facts quite right, and then they begin to embroider a bit on the story they thought they heard. And the embroidery becomes more elaborate with each retelling. In the end, their noble intentions often do more harm than good.
We do well to heed the Apostle’s admonition. For sure, we should never repeat such a story without doing a little independent research to find the source of the story and verify the information.
That goes for stuff that comes floating into our inbox via the internet. I recently received prayer requests for persecuted Christians in India where a Buddhist mob had torched ten churches and had intentions of torching many more. Another prayer request came on behalf of 22 missionaries awaiting execution in Afghanistan.
It turns out that the first story has been circulating since 2010 and was not true at that time, or any time since. India is a predominantly Hindu nation, it is dubious whether there are enough Buddhists in India to form a mob big enough to burn ten churches. In addition, the location named in the message does not exist.
The second story is even older, having been around since 2007. It is also fictitious. One would begin to think that there is a conspiracy afoot to get well-meaning Christians excited about things that aren’t happening, in order to make them look like fools. If that is the intention, it appears to be working.
Someone once said: “Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see.” That is a little extreme, but a little skepticism can be a healthy thing. If you ever have a question about some startling news that has been forwarded to you via email, Snopes.com can probably tell you the history of the story and whether it is true or false.
Flatlander Faith 
I tend to be a little more charitable. In the Bible, women are told to teach other women. They teach them everything their mothers taught them and their mothers taught them before that as gender segregation was the norm for them and men and women didn’t interact as they do today. Invariably, the teachings gets mixed in with home remedies and old stories explaining why things are the way they are. Their education was quite limited when it came to day-to-day things – reading and writing was only somewhat useful. Perhaps it would be better to say: “take them in with a grain of salt” because they can’t just give them up anymore than they can give up keeping track of family trees / ancestry. But they can know to put it in it’s proper place and demote from “very important” to “less important” in the grand scheme of things.