\ ^-^K. V <'^ ( I THE XEW TESTAMENT FOE ENGLISH READERS. VOL. n. Pabt II.— the epistle TO THE HEBREWS, THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. AXD THE EEVELATIOX, TllK NEAV TESTAME]S;.Tv ENGLISH READERS4:^/*j^„7s,\t'>-^'' CONTAINING THE AUTHORIZED VERSION, WITH A REVISED ENGLISH TEXT; MARGINAL REFERENCES; CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY COMMENTARY; HENRY ALFORD, D.D. PKAN OF CANTERBrKT. rK TWO VOLLTMES. VOL. II. Part XL— THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES, AND THE REVELATION. NEW EDITION. RIYINGTONS, IContion, ©ifort, nntr ©amlivitjgc. DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO., CambriUgc. 1872. NOTICE. In consequence of some remarks made in critiques on the former part of this Volume, the reader is again reminded, that the differences between the rendering in the text, and that given in the notes, are not accidental, but intentional. The text is an English Version, conformed to English idiom : while the notes put the reader in possession, as well as our tongue will allow, of the original form of the expression. Thus frequently the render- ing in the notes will admit of several senses, of which the version is compelled to adopt only one. CONTENTS OF THE INTRODUCTION, PART II, CHAPTER XV. TUE KPISTLE TO THE HEBKEWS. SECTION PAGE I. Its Autlioisbip 135 II. For what Readers it was written 185 III. Time and Place of Writing 195 IV. Occasiun, Object of Writing, and Contents 196 V. Language and Style 198 VI. Cauouicity 200 CHAPTER XVI. THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES. I. Its Authorship 207 II. For what Headers the Epistle was written 218 III. The Place and Time of Writing 220 IV. Object, Contents, and Style 221 V. Its Genuineness, and Place in the Canon 227 CHAPTER XVII. THE FIRST EPISTLE GENERAL OF PETER. I. Its Genuineness II. Its Author III. For what Readers it was written IV. Time and Place of Writing V. Its Object and Contents VI. Character and Style . 230 234 239 243 247 250 I CHAPTER XVIII. THE SECOND EPISTLE GENERAL OF PETER I. Object, Contents, and Occasion of the Epistle II. For what Readers it was written III. On the Relation between this Epistle and that of .lude IV. Authenticity V. Time and Place of Writing .... 256 258 260 264 273 CONTENTS OF THE INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER XIX. 1 JOHN, SECTION I. Its Autliorsliip .... II. For what Readers it was written III. Its Kelution to the Gospel of St. John IV. Time and Place of Writing v. Contents and Arrangement VI. Language and Style . VII. Occasion and Object . PAGE 273 279 281 282 283 289 292 CHAPTER XX. 2 AND 3 JOHN. I. Authorship ....... II. For what Readers written . • . . III. Time and Place of Writing . . . . CHAPTER XXI. JUDE. I. Its Authorship 299 II. Authenticity 302 III. For what Readers and with what Object written 303 IV. Time and Place of Writing 304, V. On the Apocryphal Writings apparently referred to in this Epistle . . 305 CHAPTER XXII. REVELATION. I. Authorship and Canonicity 308 II. Place and Time of Writing 3.34 III. To whom addressed c .... 340 IV. Object and Contents c .... 344 V. Systems of Interpretation ....<.... 348 § I.] ITS AUTIIORSHn\ [introduction. CHAPTER XV. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SECTION I. ITS AUTHORSHIP. 1. Thk most proper motto to prefix to this section would be that saying of Origcn, " If then any church professes this Epistle as being Paul's, let it have credit for the circumstance : for not in vain have the ancients handed it down as Paul's ; but who wrote * the Epistle, God alone knows the truth." 2. For these latter words represent the state of our knowledge at this day. There is a certain amount of evidence, both external, from tradition, and internal, from approximation in some points to his acknowledged Epistles, which points to St. Paul as its author. But when we come to examine the former of these, it will be seen that the tradition gives Avay beneath us in regard of authenticity and trust- Avorthiness ; and as we search into the latter, the points of similarity are overborne by a far greater number of indications of divergence, and of incompatibility, both in style and matter, with the hypothesis of the Pauline authorship. 3. There is one circumstance which, though this is the most notable instance of it, is not unfamiliar to the unbiassed conductor of enquiries into the difficulties of Holy Scripture ; viz. that, in modern times at least, most has been taken for granted by those who knew least about the matter, and the strongest assertions always made by men who have never searched into, or have been unable to appreciate, the evidence. Genuine research has led, in almost every instance, to a modified holding, or to an entire rejection, of the Pauline hypothesis. 4. It will be my purpose, in the following paragraphs, to deal (follow- ing the steps of many who have gone before me, and more especially of Bleek) with the various hypotheses in order, as to both their external and internal evidence. It will be impossible in citing the external evidence, to keep these hypotheses entirely distinct : that which is cited as against one will frequently be for another which is not under treat- ment, and must oe referred back to on reaching that one. ' Oil the sense of the word wrote, see below, par. 21 and note. Vol. II. Part II.— 135 k iNTRODUCTiON.J THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [ch. xv. 5. As preliminary then to all such specific considerations, we will enquire first into the external and traditional ground, then into that which is internal, arising from the Epistle itself, of the supposition that St. Paul was the Author and Writer, or the Author without being the Writer, of the Epistle. 6. Some think that they see an allusion to our Epistle in 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16. But to this there are several objections ; among which the principal is, that no passages can be pointed out in our Epistle answering to the description there given. This point has not been much pressed, even by those who have raised it ; being doubtless felt to be too insecure to build any safe conclusion upon. 7. The same may be said of the idea that our Epistle is alluded to by St. James, ch. ii. 24, 25. Hug sujjposes that the citation of Rahab as justified by works is directly polemical, and aimed at Heb. xi. 31. But as Bleek well remarks, even were we to concede the polemical character of the citation, why need Heb. xi. 31 be fixed on as its especial point of attack ? Was it not more than probable, that the followers of St. Paul would have adduced this, among other examples, in their oral teaching ? 8. We come then to the first undoubted allusions to the Epistle ; which occur in the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, dating before the conclusion of the first century. Clement is well acquainted with the Epistles of St. Paul : he quotes by name 1 Cor. ; he closely imitates Rom. i. 29 — 32 : he frequently alludes to other passages. But of no Epistle does be make such large and constant use, as of this to the Hebrews : and this is testified by Eusebius, — " in which (i. e. his Epistle to the Corinthians) he brings forward many thoughts out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and even some passages out of it verbatim, thus shewing clearly that the work was no new one in his time." The same is testified by Jerome also. 9. Now some have argued from this that, as Clement thus reproduces passages of this as well as of other Epistles confessedly canonical, he must have held this to be canonical, and if he, then the Roman church, in whose name he writes ; and if canonical, then written by St. Paul. But Bleek well observes, that this whole argument is built on an imhistorical assumption respecting the Canon of the New Test., which was certainly not settled in Clement's time ; and that, in fact, his use of this Epistle proves no more than that it was well known and exceed- ingly valued by him. It is a weighty testimony for the Ejyistle, but says nothing as to its Author*. 10. The first notices in any way touching the question of the author- ship meet us after the middle of the second century. And it is rcmark- * See this, and the iufercnce from it, treated more fully below. Sect. vi. par. 2. 136 § 1.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. able cuoiigh, tliat from these uotices we must gather, that at that early date there were the same various vioAvs respecting it, in the main, which now prevail ; the same doubt whether St. Paul was the author, or some other Teacher of the apostolic age ; and if some other, then what part St. Paul had, or whether any, in influencing his argument or dictating his matter. 11. The earliest of these testimonies is that of Pantvenus, the chief of the catechetical school in Alexandria about the middle of the second century. There is a passage preserved to us by Eusebius from a lost Avork of Clement of Alexandria, in which the latter says that the blessed rreshijter said, that since our Lord was the real Apostle to the Hebrews, St. Paul, out of modesty, and as being himself sent to the Gentiles, did not attach his name to this Epistle ^ 12. There can be no doubt that by the blessed Presbyter here, Clement means Pautajnus. Eusebius tells us of Clement, that he in this lost Avork reported the sayings of his master Panta3nus. 13. Nor can there be any doubt, from these words, that Panttenus believed the Epistle to be the work of St. Paul. But as Bleek observes, we have no data to enable us to range this testimony in its right place as regards the controversy. Being totally unacquainted with the con- text in which it occurs, we cannot say whether it rej^resents an opinion of Pantajnus's own, or a general persuasion ; whether it is adduced polemically, or merely as solving the problem of the anonymousness of the Epistle for those who already believed St. Paul to be the Author. Nothing can well be more foolish, and beside the purpose, than the reason Avhich it renders for this anonymousness : are we to reckon the assumption of the Pauline authorship in it as a subjectivity of the same mind as devised the other ? For aught that this testimony itself says, it may have been so : we can only then estimate it rightly, when we regard it as one of a class, betokening something like consensus on the matter in question. 14. And such a consensus we certainly seem to be able to trace in the writers of the Alexandrian school. Clement himself, both in his works which have come down to us, and in the fragments of his lost works preserved by Eusebius, frequently and expressly cites the Epistle as the work of St. Paul. Nay, his testimony goes further than this. In a well-known passage of Eusebius, he cites from the same lost Avork of Clement as folloAA^s : " He says that the Epistle to the Hebrews is Paul's, and was WTitten to Hebrews in the HebrcAv tongue, and that Luke dili- gently translated it and published it for the Greeks. From Avhich circumstance it is, that its style has a similarity to that of the Acts, But that Paul very naturally did not prefix 'Paul the Apostle' to 3 See below, par. 71, a A'cry similar sentiment from Jerome. 137 k2 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [en. xv. it, as the Hebrews suspected and disliked him, and so he would not alienate them in the very beginning of his work." 15. Valuable as the above passage is, it fails to point out to us defi- nitively the ground and the extent of the opinion which it expresses. The citations from the Epistle throughout Clement's writings shew us, that his persuasion respecting its having been put into Greek by St. Luke, did not prevent him from every where citing the Greek as the words of St. Paul ; either expressly naming him, or indicating him under the words " the \_divrne'\ Apostle." But whether the opinion was derived from tradition, or from his own critical research, there is nothing here to inform us. The reference to the similarity of diction to that in the Acts seems rather to point to the latter source. Nor again can we say whether he is representing (1) a general opinion, prevalent as trans- mitted in the Alexandrian church, or (2) one confined to himself, or (3) one which had spread through the teaching of Pantfenus his master. This last is hardly probable, seeing that he gives for the anonymousness of the Epistle a far more sensible reason than that Avhich he imme- diately after quotes from Pantfenus. We can derive from the passage nothing but a surmise respecting the view prevalent in Alexandria at the time. And that surmise would lead us to beJieve that St. Paul was not there held to have been the writer of the Epistle in its present Greek form, however faithfully that present form may represent his original meaning. 16. We now come to the testimony of Oeigen ; from which, without being able to solve the above historical question, we gain considerably more light on the subject of the tradition respecting the Epistle. 17. In his own ordinary practice in his writings, Origen cites the Epistle as the work of St. Paul, using much the same terms as Clement in so doing : viz. either " Pmd" or "the Apostle." In the Homilies on Joshua, he distinctly ascribes fourteen Epistles to St. Paul. But in Avhat sense he makes these citations, we must ascertain by his own more accurately expressed opinion on the matter ; from which it will appear, how unfairly Origen has been claimed by superficial arguers for the Pauline aathorsliip, as on their side. 18. Before however coming to this, it may be well to adduce two or three passages in which he indicates the diversity of opinion which pre- vailed. In his Commentary on Matt, xxiii. 27, speaking of the slaying of the prophets, he cites, as from St. Paul, 1 Thess. i. 14, 15, and Heb. xi. 37, 38 ; and then adds, '* But suppose any one repudiates the Epistle to the ITebreivs as not being PavVs." And then after a caution against apocryphal works foisted in by the Jews (^ among which he clearly does not mean to include our Epistle), he adds, " Still, if any one receives that to the Ilchreios as an Epistle of Paid" &c. Again, in his Epistle to Africanus, in the course of removing the 138 § I.] ITS AUTlIOKSIIir. [ixTuoDucTiON. doubt of his friend as to the authenticity of the history of Susanna, ho mentions the traditional death of Isaiah, whicli ho says " is testiiicd to by the Epistle to the Hebrews, but is not written in any of the canonical books " (meaning, not that the Epistle was not one of these books, but that the account of Isaiah's martyrdom is not in any canonical book of the Old Test.). Then he adds, " But possibly some who are pressed by this argument may take refuge in the view of those who set aside the Epistle as not written by Paul : and to them we should have to use another argument to shew that the Epistle is Paul's." It Avould have been of some interest to know who those some were, and whether their setting aside of the Epistle arose from the absence of ancient tradition as to the Pauline authorship, or from critical con- clusions of their own, arrived at from study of the Epistle itself. But of this Origen says nothing. 19. The principal testimony of his own is qoutained in two frag- ments of his lost Homilies on this Epistle, preserved by Eusebius : " In these he observes, that the style of the Epistle is not that characteristic of the Apostle, who declared himself unskilful in style ; but is more Greek in its form of diction, as every one who knows how to discriminate styles must confess. On the other hand, any one who reads attentively the Apostolic writings must also confess, that the thoughts are mar- vellous, and no way inferior to the acknowledged writings of the Apostles. After this, he says that the thoughts appear to him to be those of the Apostle, but the diction and style those of some reporter or paraphraser of the things said by his master." Then follows the sentence cited by us in par. 1. And afterwards he adds, " The account which has come down to us is divided, some reporting that Clement, who became Bishop of Rome, wrote the Epistle, others that it was Luke, who wrote the Gospel and the Acts." • We learn from these remarkable fragments several interesting parti- culars : among which may be mentioned ; First, Origen's own opinion as to the Epistle, deduced from grounds which he regards as being clear to all who are on the one hand accustomed to judge of style, and, on the other, versed in the apostolic writings; viz. that its Author in its present form is not St. Paul, but some one who has embodied in his own style and form the thoughts of that Apostle. One thing however he leaves in uncertainty; whether Avc are to regard such disciple of St. Paul, or the Apostle himself, as speaking in the first person throughout the Epistle. 20. Secondly, the fact that some churches, or church, regarded the Epistle as the work of St. Paul. But here again the expression is some- what vague. The words, " if any church," may be an uncertain in- dication of several churches, or it may be a pointed allusion to one. If the latter, which from what follows, is the more probable, the church 139 iNTRODLCTioN.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. •would probably be the Alexandrian, by what we have already seen of the testimonies of Panta^nus and Clement. The words " let it have credit for the circumstance " must be taken as meaning, " I have no ■wish to deprive it of this its peculiar advantage:" and the ground, "for not in vain have the ancients handed it down as PauVs," must be his own conviction, that the thoughts of the Epistle proceeded originally from the Apostle. "Who " the ancients " were, it is impossible for us to say. Possibly, if we confine our view to one church, no more than Panttenus, and Clement, and their disciples. One thing is very plain; that they cannot have been men whose tradition satisfied Origen him- self, or he would not have spoken as he has. Be they who they might, one thing is plain ; that their tradition is spoken of by him as not in vain, not as resting on external matter of fact, but as finding justifica- tion in the internal character of the Epistle ; and that it did not extend to the fact of St. Paul having written the Epistle, but only to its being, in some sense, his. 21. Thirdly, that the authorship of the Epistle was regarded hy Origen as utterly unknoicn. Thus only can we interpret the words, " but ivho wrote the Epistle, God only knows the truth." For that it is in vain to attempt to understand the word wrote of the mere scribe, in the sense of Rom. xvi. 22, is she-WTi by its use in the same sentence, " Luke ivho wrote the Gospel and the Acts." 22. This passage further testifies respecting external tradition, as it had come down to Origen himself. He speaks of " the account which has come down to us :" clearly meaning these words of historical tradi- tion, and thereby by implication excluding from that category the tx'adition of the Pauline authorship. And this historical tradition gave two views : one, that Clement of Rome was the Writer ; the other, that • St. Luke was the Writer. 23. And this last circumstance is of importance, as being our only clue out of a diificulty which Bleek has felt, but has not attempted to remove. We find ourselves otherwise in this ambiguity with regard to the origin of one or the other hypothesis. If the Pauline authorship was the original historical tradition, the difiiculties presented by the Epistle itself were sure to have called it in doubt, and suggested the other: if on the other hand the name of any disciple of St. Paul was delivered down by historical tradition as the writer, the apostolicity and Pauline character of the thoughts, coupled with the desire to find a great name for an anonymous Epistle, was sure to have produced, and when produced would easily find acceptance for, the idea that St. Paul was the author. But the fact that Origen speaks of " the account which has come down to us," not as for, but as against the Pauline hypothesis, seems to shew that the former of these alternatives was really the case. 140 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. 24. As far then as we have at present advanced, -we seem to have gathered the following as the probable result, as to the practice and state of opinion in the Alexandrine church : (a) That it was customary to speak of and quote from the Epistle as the work of St. Paul. (b) That this was done by writers of discernment, and familiarity with the apostolic writings, not because they thought the style and actual writing to be St. Paul's, but as seeing that from the nature of the thoughts and matter, the Epistle was worthy of and characteristic of that Apostle ; thus feeling that it was not without reason that those before them had delivered the Epistle down to them as St. Paul's. (c) That we nowhere find trace of historical tradition asserting the Pauline authorship : but on the contrary, we find it expressly quoted on the other side *. 25. We now pass to other portions of the church : and next, to pro- considar Africa. Here we find, in the beginning of the third century, the testimony of Tertullian, expressly ascribing the Epistle to Bar- nabas. " There exists also a writing under the name of Barnabas, addressed to the Hebrews ; a man of sufiicient authority, considering that Paul ranked him with himself in the practice of abstinence (1 Cor. ix. 6)." And then he cites Heb. vi. 4 — 8, as an admonition of Barnabas. 2Q. From the way in which the Epistle is here simply cited as the work of Barnabas, we clearly see that this was no mere opinion of Ter- tullian's owti, but at all events the accepted view of that portion of the church. He does not hint at any doubt on the matter. But here again we are at a 'loss, from Avhat source to derive this view. Either, sup- posing Barnabas really the author, genuine historical tradition may have been its source, — or lacking such tradition, some in the African church may originally have inferred this from the nature of the contents of the Epistle ; and the view may subsequently have become general there. One thing however the testimony shews beyond all doubt : that the idea of a Pauline authorship was wholly unknown to Tertullian, and to those for whom he wrote. 27. If it were necessary further to confinn evidence so decisive, we might do so by citing his charge against Marcion, of falsifying the number of the Epistles of St. Paul : "Yet I am astonished, seeing that he received Epistles written to individuals, that he has rejected the two to Timothy, and one to Titus, on the state of the church. He has taken upon him, I fancy, also to falsify the number of the Epistles." Now seeing that 'Marcion held ten Epistles only of St. Paul, it would ■• On tlic pliseuomeuon of the ditersUy of traditions, see below, par. 3G ff. 141 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [en. xv. appear by combining this with the former testimony, that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not here reckoned among them. 28. Among the witnesses belonging to the end of the second and beginning of the third century, none is of more weight than Iren^eus, a Greek of Asia Minor by birth, and bishop of Lyons in Gaul, and thus representing the testimony of the church in both countries. In his great work against Heresies, he makes frequent use of the Epistles of St. Paul, expressly quoting twelve of them. There is no citation from the Epistle to Philemon, which may well be, from its brevity, and its personal character. But nowhere in this work has he cited or referred to the Epistle to the Hebrews at all, although it would have been exceedingly apposite for his purpose, as against the Gnostics of his time. Eusebius says " that a work of Irenaeus was extant in his time, called treatises concerning various matters, wherein he quoted passages from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Wisdom of Solomon." From this it would seem that Eusebius was unable to find any citations of the Epistle in other works of Irenaeus known to him. And he does not even here say that Ii'enoeus mentioned St. Paul as the author of the Epistle. 29. Indeed we have a testimony which goes to assert that this Father distinctly denied the Pauline authorship. Photius cites a passage from Stephen Gobar, a tritheist of the sixth century, in which he says, "that Hippolytus and IrensEus assert the Epistle to the Hebrews, commonly ascribed to Paul, not to be by him." The same is indeed asserted of Hippolytus by Photius himself : but it is strange, if Irenasus had asserted it, that Eusebius should have made no mention of the fact, adducing as he does the citation of the Epistle by him. At the 'same time, Gobar's language is far too precise to be referred to the mere fact that Irenffius does not cite the Epistle as St. Paul's, as some have endeavoured to refer it : and it is to be remembered, that Eusebius does not pretend to have read or seen all the works of Irenaeus then extant. Bleek puts the alternative well, according as we accept, or do not accept, the asser- tion of Gobar. If we accept it, it would shew that Ii-en£Eus had found somewhere prevalent the idea that St. Paul was the author ; otherwise he would not have taken the pains to contradict such an idea. If we do not accept it as any more than a negative report, meaning that Irenaeus nowhere cites the Epistle as St. Paul's, then at all events, considering that he constantly cites St. Paul's Epistles as his, we shall have the presumption, that he neither accepted, nor knew of, any such idea as the Pauline authorship. 30. If we now pass to the Church of Rome, we find, belonging to the period of which we have been treating, the testimony of the presbyter Caius. Of him Eusebius relates, " that in a dialogue pubUshed by him, he speaks of thirteen Epistles only written by Paul, not numbering 142 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [intuodlction. among them that to the Ilcbrewp, because it is even till now (Euse- bius's time) thought by pome at Rome not to be the Apostle's." These words can lead only to one of two inferences : that Caius, not numbering the Epistle among those of St, Paul, either placed it by itself, or did not mention it at all. In either case, he must be regarded as speaking, not his own private judgment merely, but that of the church to which he belonged, in which, as we further learn, the same judgment yet lingered more than a century after. 31. Another testimony is that of the fragment respecting the canon of tlie New Test., first published by Muratori, and known by his name, generally ascribed to the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. In this fragment it is stated that St. Paul wrote Epistles to seven churches ; and his thirteen Epistles are enumerated, in a peculiar order : but that to the Hebrews is not named, unless it be distantly hinted at, which is not probable. 32. As far then as we have advanced, the following seems to be our result. Noivhere, except in the Alexandrine church, does there seem to have existed any idea that the Epistle was St. PauVs. Throughout the Avhole Western Church, it is either left unenumerated among his Avritings, or expressly excluded from them. That it is wholly futile to attempt to refer this to any influence of the Montanist or Marcionitc disputes, has been w^U and simply shewn by Bleck. The idea of the catholic teachers of the w^hole Western Church disparaging and ex- cluding an apostolical book, because one passage of it (ch. vi. 4 — 6) seemed to favour the tenets of their adversaries, is too preposterous ever to have been suggested, except in the interests of a desperate cause : and the fact that TertuUian, himself a Montanist, cites Heb. vi. 4 — 6 on his side, but without ascribing it to St. Paul, is decisive against the notion that his adversaries so ascribed it at any time : for he would have been sure in that case to have charged them with their desertion of such an opinion. 33. And even in the Alexandrine Chui'ch itself, as we have seen, there is no reliable trace of a historical tradition of the Pauline author- ship. Every expression which seems to imply this, such e. g. as that much-adduced one of Origen, "/or not in vain have the ancients handed it doivn as being PauVs" when fairly examined, gives way under us. The traditional account, though inconsistent with itself, was entirely the other way. 34. The fair account then of opinion in the latter end of the second century seems to be this : that there was then, as now, great uncertainty regarding the authorship of our Epistle : that the general cast of the thoughts was recognized as Pauline, and that the ancients, whatever that may imply, had not unreasonably handed it down as St. Paul's : but on what grounds, we are totally unable to say : for ecclesiastical 143 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. tradition does not bear them out. In proconsular Africa it was ascribed to Barnabas : by the tradition Avbicb had come down to Origen and his fellows, to Luke or Clement ; while the Western Church, even when judged of by Irenogus, who was brought up in Asia, and even including the Church of Rome, the capital of the world, where all repoi'ts on such matters were sure to be ventilated, seems to have been altogether without any positive tradition or opinion on the matter. 35. Before advancing with the history, which has now become of secondary importance to us, I will state to what, in my own view, this result points, as regarding the formation of our own conclusion on the matter. 36. It simply leaves us, unfettered by any overpowering judgment of antiquity, to examine the Epistle for ourselves, and form our own opinion from its contents. Even were we to admit the opinion of a Pauline authorship to the rank of an early tradition, which it does not appear in the strict sense to have been, we should then have ancient ecclesiastical tradition broken into various lines, and inconsistent with itself: not requiring our assent to one or other of its numerous variations.- Those who are prepared to follow it, and it alone, will have to make up theu* minds whether they will attach themselves to the catechetical school of Alexandria, and if so, whether to that portion of it (if such portion existed, which is not proved) which regarded the Epistle as purely and simply the work of St. Paul, or to that which, with Clement, regarded the present Epistle as a Greek version by St. Luke of a Hebi-ew original by St. Paul, — or to the West African Church, which regarded it as written by Barnabas ; or to the ^^ story ^^ or ^^ account" mentioned by Origen, in its Clementine or its Lucan branch ; or to the negative view of the churches of Europe. 37. For to one or other of these courses, and on these grounds, would the intelligent follower of tradition be confined. It would be in vain for him to allege, as a motive for his opinion, the subsequent universal preva- lence of one or other of these views, unless he could at the same time shew that that prevalence was owing to the overpowering force of an authentic tradition, somewhere or other existing. That the whole church of Rome believed the Pauline authorship in subsequent centuries, would be no compensation for the total absence of such belief at that time when, if there were any such authentic tradition any where, it must have pre- vailed in that church. That the same was unifoi-mly asserted and acted on by the Avriters of the Alexandrine clnirch in later ages, does not tend to throw any light on the vague uncertainty which hangs over the first appearances of the opinion, wherever it is spoken of and its grounds alleged by such earlier teachers as Clement and Origen. 38. And these considerations are much strengthened, when we take into account what strong reasons there were why the opinion of the 144 § 1.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. Pauline authorship, when once advanced hy men of autliority in teach- ing, should gain general acceptance. Wo see this tendency already prevailing in the writings of Clement of Alexandria and Origen ; who, notwithstanding the sentences which have been quoted from them, yet throughout their writings acquiesce for the most part in a conventional habit of citing the Epistle as the work of St. Paul. And as time passed on, a belief, which so conveniently set at rest all doubts about an impor- tant anonymous canonical writing, spread (and all the more as the character of the times became less and less critical and enquiring) over the whole extent of the church. 39. It will be well to interpose two cautions, especially for young readers. It has been very much the practice with the maintainors of the Pauline authorship to deal largely in sweeping assertions regarding early ecclesiastical tradition. They have not unfrequently alleged on their side the habit of citation of Clement and Origen, as shewing their belief respecting the Epistle, uncorrected by those passages Avhich show what that belief really was. Let not readers then be borne away by these strong assertions, but let them carefully and intelligently examine for themselves. 40. Our second caution is one regarding the intelligent use of ancient testimony. Hitherto, we have been endeavouring to trace up to their first origin the beliefs respecting the Epistle. Whence did they first arise ? Where do we find them prevailing in the earliest times, and there, "why ? Now this is the only method of enquiry on the subject which is or can be decisive, as far as external evidence is concerned. In follow- ing down the stream of time, materials for this enquiry soon fail us. And it has been the practice of some of the upholders of the Pauline authorship, to amass long lists of names and testimonies, from later ages, of men who simply swelled the ranhs of conformity to the opinion when it once became prevalent. Let readers distrust all such accumulations as evidence. They are valuable as shewing the growth and prevalence of the opinion, but in no other light. No accretions to the river in its course can alter the situation and character of the fountain-head. 41. We proceed now with the history of opinion, which, as before remarked, is become very much the history of the spread of the belief of a Pauline authorship. At Alexandria, as we might have expected, the conventional habit of quoting the Epistle as St. Paul's gradually prevailed over critical suspicion and early tradition. 42. DiONYSius, president of the catechetical school, and afterwards bishop of Alexandria, in the middle of the third century, cites Heb. X. 34 expressly as the words of St. Pau'.. Petkr, bishop (about 300), ■who suffered under Diocletian, cites Heb. xi. 32 as the Apostle's. HiERAX or Hieracas, of Leontopolis, who lived about the same time, 145 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. and who, altliough the founder of a heresy, appears not to have severed himself from the church, is repeatedly adduced by Epiphanius as citing the Epistle as " the Apostle's :" and the same Epiphanius says of the Melchisedekites (see on ch. vii. 3), that they attempted to support their view by Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews. Alexander, bishoi> about 312, says in an Epistle to Alexander bishop of Constantinople, " Agreeably to this exclaims also the lofty speaker Paul, saying concerning Him, ' Whom He appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds :' " Pleb. i. 2. Antonius, the celebrated promoter of the monastic life in Egypt, in one of his seven epistles to various monasteries, says, " of whom Paul saith that they, on account of us, have not received the promises" (Heb. xi. 13, 39, 40). 43. But the most weighty witness for the view of the Alexandrine church at this time is Athanasius, in the middle of the fourth century. He enumerates the canonical books which have come down and are believed to be inspired, among which he names fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, and among them our Epistle, without alluding to any doubt on the subject. And in his other writings every where he cites the Epistle as St. Paul's. ' 44. Belonging to nearly the same time in the same church are three other writers — by all of whom the Epistle is either expressly or implicitly cited as the work of St. Paul. 45. It would be to little purpose to multiply names, in a church -which by this time had universally and undoubtingly received the Pauline authorship. Bleek has adduced, with copious citations, Didymus (the teacher of Jerome and Rufinus), — Marcus Eremita (about 400), — TiiEOPHiLus of Alexandria (about 400), — Isidore of Pelusium (died 450), — Ci'RiL of Alexandria (died 444) : concerning which last it is to be observed, that though Nestorius had adduced passages from the Epistle on his side, as being St. Paul's, Cyril, in refuting them, does not make the slightest reference to the formerly existing doubt as to the authorship. 46. And so it continued in this church in subsequent times : the only remarkable exception being found in Euthalius (about 460), who, though he regards the Epistle as of Pauline origin, and reckons fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, yet adduces the old doubts concerning it, and believes it to be a translation made by Clement of Rome from a Hebrew original by the Ajiostle. This view he supports by the considerations, 1. of its style ; 2. of its wanting an address from the writer ; 3. on account of what is said ch. ii. 3, 4. For the first, ho gives the reason that it Avas tiauslated from the Hebrew, some say, by Luke, but most, by Clement, whose style it resembles. Then he gives the usual reason for the want of 146 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. a superscription, viz. that St. Paul was not the Apostle of the Jews but of the Gcutiles, citing Gal. ii. 9, 10: and proceeds, hut the Ki)istlo is afterwards seen to be Paul's, by eh. x. 34, in which the (now exploded) reading with my bonds is his point : by ch. xiii. 18, 19 : by ch. xiii. 23, in wliich he interprets the word which we render, "set at liberty" "sent forth for the viinistry" which he says no one could do but St. Paul : and then expecting him soon, he promises, as is bis custom frequently, a visit from himself with him. This testimony is valuable, as shewing that in the midst of the pre- valence of the now accepted opinion, a spirit of inteHigcnt criticism still survived. 47. If we now turn to other jtarts of the Eastern Church, we find the came acceptation of the Pauline authorship from the middle of the third century onwards. Bleek gives citations from Methodius, Bishop of Olympus in Lycia, about 290: from Paul of Samosata, Bishop of An- tioch in 264 : from Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis, about 325 : from Ei'Iireji the Syrian (died 378). 48. A separate notice is required of the testimony of Eusebius of Ca^sarea, the well-known Church historian. In very many passages throughout his works, and more especially in his commentary on the Psalms, he cites the Epistle, and always as the work of St. Paul, or of " the Apostle," or " the holy Apostle," or " the divine Apostle." In his Ecclesiastical History also he reckons it among the Epistles of St. Paul. In the chapter which treats especially of the canon of the New Test., while there is no expi'ess mention of the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is evident, by comparing his words there and in another place, that he reckons it as confessedly one of the writings of St. Paul. For he enumerates among those New Test, books which are ' received by all,'' fourteen Epistles of St. Paul. Still it Avould appear from another passage, that Eusebius himself be- lieved the Epistle to have been written in Hebrew by St. Paul and trans- lated by Luke, or more probably by Clement, whose style it resembles. If such was his view, however, he was hardly consistent with himself: for elsewhere he seems to assume that the Epistle was Avritten in Greek by the Apostle himself; an inconsistency which betrays either careless- ness, or change of opinion. 49. Marks of the same inconsistency further appear in another place, where ho numbers our Epistle among the doubtful books, saying of Cle- ment of Alexandria, that he cites testimonies from doubtful books, such as that called the Wisdom of Solomon, Jesus the Son of Sirach, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and those of Barnabas and Clement and Jude. It has been suggested that the inconsistency may be removed by accept- ing this last as a mere matter of fact, meaning that these books are called in question by some. 147 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. 50. As we pass downwards, I shall mention but cursorily those wiiters who uniformly quote the Ejiistle as St. Paul's ; jiausing only to notice any trace of a different opinion, or any testimony worth express citation. The full testimonies will be found in Bleek, and most of them in Lardner, vol. ii. 51. Of the class first mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, are Cyril of Jei'usalem (died 386) ; Gregory of !Nazianzum (died 389) ; Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus (died 402) ; Basil the Great, Bishop of Caisarea in Cappadocia (died 379) ; his brother Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (died about 370); Titus of Bostra (died about 371); Chrysostom (died 407) ; Theodore of Mopsuestia (died about 428) ; Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus in Cilicia (died 457). 52. In the works of this latter Father we find it asserted that the Epistle was written from Rome. Also we find the Arians charged Avith setting it aside as spurious. The same accusation is found, — in the Dialogue on the Trinity, ascribed sometimes to Athanasius, sometimes to Theodoret : where the orthodox interlocutor makes the rather startling assertion, " that ever since the Gospel was first preached, the Epistle had been believed to be Paul's;" — and in Epiphanius, Ha3r. Ixix. 14, p. 738, where at the same time he charges them with misusing Heb. iii. 2, Him that made Him, for the purposes of their error. From this, and from the Epistle of Arius to Alexander, where he professes his faith, and cites Heb. i. 2, it is plain that the Arians did not reject the Epistle altogether. Nay, they hardly denied its Pauline authenticity ; for in that case we should liave Atha- nasius in his polemics against them, and Alexander, defending this authenticity, Avhereas they always take it for granted. Moreover in the disputation of Augustine with the Arian Gothic Bishop Maximinus, we find the latter twice quoting the Epistle as St. Paul's. So that whatever may have been done by individual Arians, it is clear that as a party they did not reject either the Epistle itself or its Pauline authorship. 53. Correspondent with the spread of the acceptance of the Epistle as St. Paul's was its reception, in the MSS., into the number of his Epistles. It Avas so receive'! in the character of a recent accession, variously ranked : either at the end of those addressed to churches, or at the end of all. 54. The motives for these differing ai-rangements were obvious. Some placed it last, as an addition to the Epistles of St. Paul ; others, to give it more its proper rank, put it before the Epistles to individuals. But had it been originally among St. Paul's Epistles, there can be no doubt that it Avould have taken its place according to its importance, which is the principle of arrangement of the undoubted Pauline Epistles in the canon. 55. A trace of a peculiai- anangoracnt is found in the Great Vatican 148 § I.J ITS AUTHORSHIP. [INTUODLCTIOX. ]Manu«ciipt. In that MS., all the fourteen Epistles of St. Paul form ono coiitiiuied whole, mmibercd Ihroughoiit by sections. But the Ei)istle to the Hebrews, which stands after 2 Tliess., docs not correspond, iu the numeration of its sections, with its present place iu the order. It evi- dently once followed the Epistle to the Galatians, that Epistle ending with the 59th section, — Heb. beginning with § 60, — and Eph. (the latter part of Heb. being deficient) with § 70. This would seem to shew that the MS. from which this was copied, or at all events which was at some previous time copied for its text, had Heb. after Gal.; which would indicate a still stronger persuasion that it was St. Paul's. In the Sahidic version only does it appear in that place which it would naturally hold according to its importance : i. e. between 2 Cor. and Gal. But from the fact of no existing Greek MS. having it in this place, we must ascribe the plitenomenon to the caprice of the framer of that version. 56. Returning to the Western church, we find that it was some time after the beginning of the third century before the Epistle was generally recognized as St. Paul's ; and that even when this became the case, it was not equally used and cited with the rest of his Epistles. About the middle of the third century flourished in the church of Rome NovATiAN, the author of the celebrated schism which went by his name. We have works of his full of Scripture citations, and on subjects which would have been admirably elucidated by this Epistle. Yet nowhere has he quoted or alluded to it. That he would not have had any feeling adverse to it is pretty clear ; for no passage in the New Test, could give such apparent countenance to his severer view concerning the non- readmission of the " lapsed," as Heb. vi. 4 — 6. Yet he never cited it for his purpose. 57. Coutemporaiy with Xovatian, we have, in the West African church, Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (died 258). In all his writings, he never cites, or even alludes to, our Epistle ; which he would certainly have done for the same reason as Novatian would have done it, had he recognized it as the work of St. Paul ; the whole of whose Epistles he cites, with the exception of that to Philemon. In all probability, TertuUian's view was also his, that it was written by Barnabas. 58. A little later we have a witness from another part of the Latin church ; ViCTORixus, Bishop of Pettau on the Drave, in Pannonia (died about 303). He asserts, in the most explicit manner, that St. Paul wrote only to seven churches ; and he enumei'ates the churches : viz. the Roman, Corinthian, Galatian, Ephesian, Philippian, Colossian, Thes- salonian. We may add to this, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is never quoted in his Commentary on the Apocalypse. 59. About the middle of the fourth century, we find the practice 149 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [en. xv. beginning in the Latin cliurcli, of quoting the Epistle as St. Paul's : but at first only here and there, and not as if the opinion were the prevailing one. Bleek traces the adoption of this view by the Latins to their closer intercourse with the Greeks about this time owing to the Arian controversy, which occasioned several of the Western theologians to spend some time in the East, where the Epistle was cited, at first by both parties, and always by the Catholics, as undoubtedly St. Paul's. Add to this the study of the Greek expository writers, and especially of Origen, and we shall have adduced enough reasons to account for the gradual spread of the idea of the Pauline authorship over the West. 60. A fitting example of both these influences is found in Hilary, Bp. of Poitiers (died 368), who seems to have been the first who thus regarded the Epistle. He quotes it indeed but seldom, in comparison Avith other parts of Scripture, and especially with St. Paul's Epistles ; but when he does, it is decisively and without doubt, as the work of the Apostle. 61. Lucifer of Cagliari (died 37n also cites the Epistle as St. Paul's, but once only, though he frequently cites Scripture, and especially St. Paul's Epistles. And it is observable of him, that he was exiled by the emperor Constantius, and spent some time in Palestine and the Thebaid. 62. Fabius Marius Victorinus belongs to these same times. He was born in Africa, and passed the greater part of his days as a rhetorician at Rome : being baptized as a Christian late in life. Most of his remain- ing works are against the Arians : and in them he cites our Epistle two or three times, and as St. Paul's ; still, it has been observed (by Bleek), not with such emphasis as the other books of Scripture, but more as a mere passing reference. He is said by Jerome to have written Commen- taries on the Apostle, i. e. on the Pauline Epistles : yet it would appear, from what Cassiodorus implies in the sixth century, that up to his time no Latin writer had commented on the Epistle, that he did not include it among them. 63. Other Latin writers there are of this time, who make no use of our Epistle, though it would have well served their purpose in their Avritings. Such are, — Ph^badius, Bp. of Agen, in S. W. Gaul (died aft. 392) ; — Zeno, Bp. of Verona (about 360) ; — Pacianus, Bp. of Barcelona (about 370) ; — Hilary the Deacon, generally supposed to be the author of the Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles found among the works of Ambrose (about 370) ^ ; — Optatus, Bp. of Milevi (about 364 — 375), who wrote on the Donatist schism. All these quote frequently from other parts of the New Test, and from St. Paul's Epistles. * The Epistle is once cited by him, but so tliat it is distinguished from the writings of St. Paul. 150 § 1.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. 64. On (he otlicr hand, Ambrose, Bp. of Mihin (died 397), combating strongly the Ariaus of his time, and making diligent use of the writings of Origen, Didymus, and Basil, often uses and quotes the E])istle, and always as the work of St. Paul. In one celebrated passage in liis ticatise on Penitence, where he is impugning the allegation by the Novatians of Heb. vi. 4 ff., he defends the passage from misunderstand- ing; confesses its apparent inconsistency with St. Paul's conduct to the sinner at Corinth ; does not think of questioning the apostolical autho- rity of the passage, but asks, " Could Paul preach against his own act ? " and gives two solutions of the apparent discrepancy. 65. We have an important testimony concerning our Epistle from PniLASTRius, Bp. of Brescia (died about 387), who while he cites the Ei)istle as unhesitatingly as his friend Ambrose, in his treatise on Heresies, says, " There is a heresy of some respecting the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. There are some who assert it not to be his, but say that it was written either by Barnabas the Apostle, or by Clement, Bishop of Rome. And others say it is an Epistle of the Evangelist Luke to the Laodiceans ^. And because some unbelievers have made additions in it, it is not read in the church; and, if it is read by some, yet it is not read to the people in the church, but only thirteen Epistles of his, and occasionally that to the Hebrews. Also, because it is written in plausible language after a fashion, they think it not to be the work of that Apostle. Also because in it the author says that Christ ivas made (ch. iii. 2), it is not read. And equally for another reason, its saying about penitence (cb. vi. 4 ff.), on account of the Novatians." Then he proceeds to give orthodox explanations of both places. He has also another remarkable passage, in which he enumerates thirteen Epistles of Paul as canonical, and calls the rest apocryphal, to be read for moral instruction by the perfect, but not by all, as having been tampered with (so he would seem to mean) by heretics. These testimonies of Philastrius are curious, and hardly consistent with one another, nor with his own usual practice of citing the Epistle as St. Paul's. They seem to lead us to an inference agreeing with that to which our previous enquiries led, viz. that though some con- troversial writers in the Latin church at the end of the fourth century were beginning to cito the Epistle as St. Paul's, it was not at that time , so recognized in that church generally, nor publicly read : or if read, but seldom. « This curious sentence can hardly mean, as Blcek, tliat tiny belioved the Epistle to the Hebrews to be St. Luke's, as also that apocryphal one which is written to the Laodiceans ; but that they believed the Epistle to the Hebrews to bo St. Luke's, and that it was also written to the Laodiceans, i.e. was the Epistle alluded to under that designation by St. Paul in Col. iv. 16. What follows is vei'y obscure, but does not seem to me to support this rendering of Block's. Vol. IL Part II.— 151 1 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. 66. This reluctance on the part of the Latin church to receive and recognize the Epistle Avas doubtless continued and increased by the use made of some passages in it by the Novatian schismatics. We have seen already, in par. 64, that Ambrose adduces this fact : and Bleek brings several instances of it from other writers. But as time advanced, the intrinsic value of the Epistle itself, and the example of writers of the Greek church, gained for it almost universal reception, and reputation of Pauline authorship in the West. Thus Gaudentius, successor of Philastrius in the see of Brescia in 387, to which he was summoned from travelling in Cajipadocia, — and Faustinus, who followed in this, as in other things, the practice of Lucifer of Cagliari, — cite the Epistle without hesitation as St. Paul's. So in general does Rufinus (died about 411), having spent a long time in Egypt, and being ftimiliar with the writings of Origen. He gives " fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul " among the writings " which the fathers had included in the canon :" and in his writings generally cites the Epistle as Pauline with- out hesitation. 67. I shall close this historical sketch with a fuller notice of the important testimonies of Jerome and Augustine, and a brief summary of those who followed them. 68. JEROME (died 420) spent a great portion of his life in Egypt, Palestine, and other parts of the East ; was well acquainted with the writings of Origen ; and personally knew such men as Gregory of Nazianzum, Didymus, Epiphanius, and the other Greek theologians of his time. It might therefore have been expected, that he Avould, as we have seen other Latin writers do, have adopted the Greek practice, and have unhesitatingly cited and spoken of this Epistle as the Avoi-k of St. Paul. This however is by no means the case. On the whole, his usual practice is, to cite the words of the Epistle, and ascribe them to St. Paul : and in his work on Hebrew names, where he interprets the Hebrew words which occur in Scripture, in the order of the books where they are found, he introduces the Epistle as St. Paul's, after 2 Thessalonians. 69. But the exceptions to this practice of unhesitating citation are many and important : and wherever he gives any account of the Epistle, ,he is far from concealing the doubts which prevailed respecting it. I shall give some of the most remarkable passages. In the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chap, o, under Paul, he says : " He wrote nine Epistles, to seven churches ; one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, one to the Ephesians, one to the Philippians, one to the Colossians, two to the Thessa- lonians ; and besides, to his disciples, two to Timotheus, one to Titus, one to Philemon. But the Epistle addressed to the Hebrews 152 §1.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. is not believed to be his, on account of the difference of style and diction, but is thought to be cither Barnabas's, according to Tertul- lian, or Luke the Evangelist's, according to some, or Clement's, afterwards bishop of the Roman church, who is reported to have arranged and adorned Paul's thoughts in words of his own ; or at any rate that Paul, in writing to the Hebrews, on account of his unpoimlarity amoug them, suppressed the mention of his name in the opening salutation. For he had written as a Hebrew to the Hebrews in Hebrew, i. e, in his own mother tongue, most eloquently, and those things which were written eloquently in Hebrew were still more eloquently turned into Greek : and this is the cause why it seems to differ from the rest of Paul's Epistles." 70. In this passage, while he relates the doubts and hypotheses, his own leaning seems to be, to believe that the fact of St. Paul having written in Hebrew, and having omitted a salutation owing to his unpopularity among the Jews, would be enough to account for the phnenomcna of the Epistle. 71. But in other places, he gives other reasons for the difficulties of the Epistle and for the doubts respecting it. Thus in his Commentary on Gal. i. 1 he says, that St. Paul does not in it call himself an Apostle, or mention his name, because it would be incongruous, where Christ was going to be called an Apostle (Heb. iii. 1, iv. 14), that Paul should have the same appellation. Again, on Isa. vi. 9, 10, he says that the Epistle is questioned, be- cause in it Paul, writing to Hebrews, uses testimonies which are not in the Hebrew books. 72. In the prologue to his Commentary on Titus, he severely blames the Marcionites and other heretics for excluding arbitrarily certain Epistles from the number of the Apostolic writings, instancing the Pastoral Epistles and this to the Hebrews. He then proceeds : " If they gave any reason why they think them not the Apostle's, we might try to make some answer satisfactory to the reader. But since now they pronounce with heretical authority, and say that Epistle is Paul's, this is not, let them take the same kind of authority as their refutation on behalf of the truth, by which they are not ashamed to invent falsehoods." Still that this strong language does not prove him to have been satisfied as to the Pauline authorship, is shewn by two passages in his commentary on this same Epistle to Titus : "Pay also particular attention to this, how speaking of the presby- ters of one city, he afterAvards calls them bishops. If any likes to acknowledge that Epistle which under the name of Paul is written 153 1 2 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. to the Hebrews, there also the care of the church is divided among many. For he Avrites to the people, ' Obey your chief men,' &c. (Heb. xiii. 17)." And, " Read again the Epistle to the Hebrews by Paul, or by whomsoever else you think it written ; go through that whole catalogue of faith, in which it is written, ^ By faith Abel offered to God a greater sacrifice than Cain,'' &c. (Heb. xi. 4 — 8)." And again in his Commentary on Ezek. xxviii., " And Paul the Apostle says {if one is to receive the Epistle to the Hebrews), ' Ye are come near to Mount Sionj' &c. (Heb. xii. 22)." In another place, he speaks in almost the same words. 73. The following expressions regarding the Epistle, testifying to the same doubt, occur in his writings : " The Epistle to the Hebrews, which all the Greeks receive, and some of the Latins." " Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews, though many of the Latins are doubtful about it." "But among the Romans to this day it is not accounted the work of Paul the Apostle :" — " which the Latin usage receives not:" — "although the Latin usage does not I'eceive it among the canonical Scriptures," &c. 74. A passage requiring more express notice is found in his Epistle to Dardanus, where after citing testimonies from Heb. xi. xii., he proceeds : " Nor does it escape me that the bad faith of the Jews does not receive these testimonies, confirmed as they are by the authority of the Old Testament. This reply we leave to our own people, that this Epistle, which is inscribed to the Hebrews, is received as the Apostle Paul's, not only by the churches of the East, but by all the old ecclesiastical Greek writers, — although most of them think it to be Barnabas's, or Clement's : and that it is of no import whose it is, since it is acknowledged to be the writing of an orthodox (lite- rally, ecclesiastical) author, and is daily read in the churches. And if the Latin use does not receive it among the canonical Scrip- tures, so neither do the Greek churches, using the same liberty of judgment, receive the Apocalyjise of St. John : and yet we receive both, in no way following the custom of this time, but the authority of ancient writers, who constantly cite testimonies from both of these books, not as they sometimes do from apocry- phal writings (and. but rarely, from Pagan authors also), but as canonical." 75. There are some points in this important testimony, which seem L54 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [intuoduction. to want elucidation. Jerome asserts, for example, that by all j^reccding Greek writers the Epistle had been received as St. PauVs : and yet imme- diately after, be says that most of them think it to be Barnabas's or Clement's ' : and think it to be of no consequence (whose it is), seeing that it is the production of an " ecclesiastical author" and is every day read in the churches. Now though these expressions are not very per- spicuous, it is not difficult to see Avhat is meant by them. A genei*al conventional reception of the Epistle as St. Paul's prevailed among the Greeks. To this their writers (without exception accoiding to Jerome : but that is a loose assertion, as the preceding pages will shew) con- formed, still in most cases entertaining their own views as to Barnabas or Clement haying written the Epistle, and thinking it of little moment, seeing that confessedly it was the work of an " ecclesiastical author," and was stamped with the authority of public reading in the churches. The expression ^^ ecclesiastical author" seems to be in contrast to an heretical one. 76. The evidence here however on one point is clear enough : and shews that in Jerome's day, i.e. in the beginning of the fifth century, the custom of the Latins did not receive the Epistle to the Hebrews among the canonical Scriptures. 77. Jerome's own view, as far as it can be gathered from this passage, is, that while he wishes to look on the Epistle as decidedly canonical, he does not venture to say who the author was, and believes the question to be immaterial : for we cannot but suppose him, from the very form of the clause ^^ and that it is of no import ^-c," to be giving to this view his own approbation. 78. And consistent with this are many citations of the Epistle scat- tered up and down among his works : as, e.g., where he speaks of " whoever wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews :" — of " Paul, or some one else who wrote the Epistle ;" and adduces the fact of Paul having written to seven churches, " the eighth, to the Hebrews, being by most excluded from the number." 79. And as Bleek has very satisfactorily shewn, no difference in time can be established between these testimonies of hib, which should prove that he once doubted the Pauline authorship and was afterwards con- vinced, or vice versa. For passages inconsistent with one another occur in one and the same work, e.g., in the Commentary on Isaiah, in which, notwithstanding that he speaks uncertainly as above, yet he repeatedly cites the Epistle as the work of St. Paul. And these Commentaries on the prophets were among his later works. ' By no possible ingenuity can those words be made to mean, as Dr. Davidson inter- prets them, that " the Greeks ascribed the style and language of it to Barnabas or Clement, though the ideas and sentiments were Paul's." 155 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [cii. xy. 80. We may safely then gather from that which has been said, what Jerome's view on the wliole really was. He commonly, and when not speaking with deliberation, followed the usual practice of citing the Epistle as St. Paul's. But he very frequently guards himself by an expression of uncertainty : and sometimes distinctly states the doubt which prevailed on the subject. That his own mind was not clear on it, is plain from many of the above-cited passages. In fact, though quoted on the side of the Pauline authorship, the testimony of Jerome is quite as much against as in favour of it. Even in his time, after so long a prevalence of the conventional habit of quoting it as St. Paul's, he feels himself constrained, in a great proportion of the cases where he cites it, to cast doubt on the opinion, that it was Avritten by the Apostle. 81. The testimony of AUGUSTINE (died 430) is, on the Avhole, of the same kind. It was his lot to take part in several synods in which the canon of the New Test, came into question. And it is observable, that while in two of these, one held at Hippo in 393, when he was yet a presbyter, the other the 3rd council of Carthage in 398, we read of " thirteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul : and one of the same to the Hehrews " — clearly shewing that it was not without some difficulty that the Epistle gained a place among the writings of the Apostle, — in the 5th council of Carthage, held in 419, where Augustine also took a part, we read ^^ Epistles of Paul the Ap)ostle, in number 14." So that during this interval of 25 years, men had become more accustomed to hear of the Epistle as St. Paul's, and at last admitted it into the number of his writings Avithout any distinction. 82. We might hence have supposed that Augustine, who was not only present at these councils, but took a leading part in framing their canons, would be found citing the Epistle every where without doubt as St. Paul's. But this is by no means the case. Bleek has diligently col- lected many passages in which the unsettled state of his own opinion on the question appears. In one remarkable passage, where he enjoins his reader, in judging of canonical writings, to put those first which are received by all Catholic churches, and among those which are not received by all, to prefer those which the principal churches, and those having the highest authority receive, to the others ; and having said this, he proceeds to enumerate the canonical books of the Old and New Test., saying how the whole canon of Scripture to which the foregoing consideration applies, is the following, &c. : giving fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, among which he places the Epistle to the Hebrews Z«5f; which, as wc have seen, was not its usual place at that time. 83. Plainer testimonies of the same uncertainty are found in other parts of his writings : e.g., " The Epistle to the Hebrews also, although in the opinion of some it is of doubtful authority, yet as I have read that 156 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. some .... \vi:?h to adduce it to support their opinions, and I bow to the authority of the Eastern churches which hold it to be canonical, — let us see how strong testimonies for our view it contains." In the beginning of his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (Avritten in a.d. 394), he says : " Except the Epistle which he wrote to the Hebrews, where he is said purjiosely to have omitted a salutation at the beginning, lest the Jews who never ceased to cry out against him should, by the mention of his name, be offended, or read Avith a preju- diced mind, or should not care to read at all what he had Avritten for their good. Whence some have been afraid to receive that Epistle into the canon of Scripture. But however that question is to be answered, ex- cept this Epistle, all those which are received without doubt by all the churches as St. Paul's, contain such a salutation," &c. In his treatise on the City of God : " in the Epistle which is in- scribed to the Hebrews, which most say is the Apostle Paul's, but some deny it." In that on Faith, Hope, and Charity (a.d. 421) : " in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which illustrious defenders of the Catholic faith have used as testimony." 84. Sometimes indeed he cites our Epistle simply with the formulae, — " you hear the Apostle's exhortation :" — " listen to what the Apostle says : " — sometimes with such words as these, " whom the Scripture blames, saying ;" "lastly, on account of what is said." But much more frequently he cites either merely " the Epistle to the Hebrews :" or "the Epistle which is written (or, ' which is,' or, * which is inscribed ') to the Hebrews." It is certainly a legitimate inference from these modes of quotation, that they arose from a feeling of uncertainty as to the authorship. It would be inconceivable, as Bleek remarks, that Augus- tine should have used the words "in the Epistle which is inscribed to the Romans, to the Galatians," &e. 85. It is of some interest to trace the change of view in the Romish church, which seems to have taken place about this time. In the synod of Hippo, before referred to (par. 81), and in the 3rd council of Carthage (ib.) it was determined to consult ^^ the church over the sea" for con- firmation of the canon of Scripture as then settled. And what was meant by this, is more fully explained by a similar resolution of the 5th council of Carthage (ib.) : viz., that St. Boniface, then Bishop of Rome, and other bishops of those parts were to be consulted. Whether these refe- rences were ever made, we have no means of knowing; but we possess a document of the same age, which seems to shew that, had they been made, they would have resulted in the confirmation of the canonical jilace of the E{)istle. Pope Innocent I. in his letter to Exsuperius, Bishop of Toulouse (a.d. 405 ff".), enumerates the books of the New Test, 157 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. thus, " Four books of Gospels, fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul three Epistles of John," &c. 86. Yet it seems not to have been the practice of the writers of the Roman church at this time to cite the Epistle frequently or authorita- tively. That there are no references to it in Innocent's own writings, and in those of his successors Zosimus (417 — 419) and Bonifacius (419 — 422), may be accidental : but it can hardly be so, that we have none in those of his predecessor Siricius, who often quotes Scripture : in those of Caelestine I. (422 — 432), some of whose Epistles are regard- ing the Nestorian controversy : in the genuine writings of Leo the Great (440—461). 87. Bleek adduces several contemporary Latin writers in other parts of the world, who make no mention of nor citation from our Epistle. Such are Orosius (about 415), Marius Mercator, Evagrius (about 430), Sedulius. Paulinus of Nola (died 431) cites it once, and as St. Paul's. After the middle of the fifth century, the practice became more usual and familiar. We find it in Salvianus (died aft. 495), Vigilius of Tapsus (about 484), Victor of Vite, Fulgentius of Ruspe (died 533), his scholar Fulgentius Ferrandus (died 550), Facundus of Hermiaue (about 548), &c. : and in the list of canonical books drawn up in 494 by a council of seventy bishops under Pope Gelasius, where we have " Epistles of the Apostle Paul, fourteen in number; — one to the Romans, &c. &c. . . one to Philemon, one to the Hebrews." 88. In the middle of the sixth century we find Pope Vigilius, who took a conspicuous part in the controversy on the three chapters, in his answer to Theodore of Mopsviestia, impugning the reading '^without God" instead of " by the grace of God" Heb. ii. 9 (see on this passage in the Com- mentary), without in any way calling in question the authority or authenticity of the Epistle, 89. To the same time (about 556) belongs a Avork of Cassiodorus, who, while he speaks of various Latin commentaries on the Pauline and Catholic Epistles, knew apparently of none on that to the Hebrews, and consequently got Mutianus to make the Latin version of Chrysostom's homilies on it, " lest the continuous order of the Epistles should suddenly be broken by an unfitting termination." 90. Gregory the Great (590 — 605) treats our Epistle simply as St. Paul's, and lays a stress on the circumstance that the Apostle wrote fourteen canonical Epistles only, though fifteen were reputed his : the fifteenth being the Epistle to the Laodiceans. 91. The testimonies of Isidore of Hispala (Seville : died 636) are remarkable. Citing the Epistle usually without further remark as St. Paul's, and stating the number of his Epistles as fourteen, he yet makes the number of churches to which the Apostle wrote, seven, and enume- 158 § i] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introductiox. rates tlicin, iiu-hiding (he Hebrews, not observing that he tlius makes them eight. In two other places, in enumerating the writings of St. Paul, he says, " Paul the Apostle wrote his fourteen Epistles, nine of which he addressed to seven churches, and the rest to his disciples Timotheus, Titus, and Philemon. But his Epistle to the Hebrews is considered doubtful by- most of the Latins on account of the dissonance of style, and some sus- pect that Barnabas compiled it, some that it was written by Clement." 92. After this time the assertors of an independent opinion, or even reporters of the former view of the Latin church, are no longer found, Doing overborne by the now prevalent view of the Pauline authorship. Thomas Aquinas indeed (died 1274) mentions the former doubts, with a view to answer them : and gives reasons for no superscription or address appearing in the Epistle. And thus matters remained in the church of Rome until the beginning of the sixteenth century: the view of the Pauline authorship universally obtaining: and indeed all enquiry into the criticism of the Scriptures being lulled to rest. 93. But before we enter on the remaining portion of our historical enquiry, it will be well to gather the evidence furnished by the Greek and Latin MSS., as wo have above (par. 53) that by the Greek MSS. The Claromoutane MS. (Cent. VI.) contains indeed the Epistle, but in a later hand : and after the Epistle to Philemon we have an enumeration of the lines in the Old and New Test., which does not contain the Epistle to the Hebrews : thus shewing, whatever account is to be given of it, that the Epistle did not originally form part of the MS. The Boeruerian MS. (Cent. IX.) does not contain our Epistle. The Augiensian MS. (Cent. IX.) does not contain the Epistle in Greek, but in Latin only. These evidences are the more remarkable, as they all belong to a period when the Pauline authorship had long become the generally received opinion in the Latin church, 94. We now pass on at once to the opening of the sixteenth century: at which time of the revival of independent thought, not only among those who became connected with the Reformation, but also among Roman Catholic writers themselves, we find the ancient doubts con- cerning the Pauline authorship revived, and new life and reality infused :>'^o them. 9o. Bleek mentions first among these Ludovicus Vives, the Spanish theologian, who in his Commentary on Augustine, on the words " in the Epistle which is inscribed to the Hebrews," says, " he signifies, that the author is uncertain:" and on the words, "in the Epistle Avhich is inscribed to the Hebrews which most say is the Apostle's, but some deny it," says, " Jerome, Origcu, Augustine, and other of the ancients doubt about this; 159 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. before the age of Jerome, this Epistle was not received by the Latins among the canonical ones." 96. A more remarkable testimony is that of Cardinal Cajetan, as cited by Erasmus, who says that the Cardinal, both in converstition when alive and in a work of his, cited the Epistle without its writer's name, designating him as "the author of the Epistle to flie Hebrews." Bellar- mine cites Cajetan as objecting to the idea that St. Paul Avrote the Epistle, ch. ix. 4, as inconsistent with 1 Kings viii. 9, and saying, " Therefore either Paul lies, or he did not write this Epistle." 97. Erasmus gives it as his decided opinion that the Epistle is not written by St. Paul : and alleges at length the principal arguments on which it is founded. The passage is a long one, but important, and will be found quoted entire in the corresponding paragraph of the Prolegomena to my Greek Testament : and other passages to the same effect are cited in Bleek. 98. Luther spoke still more plainly. In his introduction to his version of the Epistle, he maintains that it cannot be St. Paul's, nor indeed the writing of any apostle : appealing to such passages as ch, ii. 3; vi. 4 ff.; X. 26 if.; xii. 17. But Avhose it is he does not pretend to say, further than that it comes from some scholar of the Apostles, well versed in the Scriptures. And with this view his manner of citation is gene- rally consistent. His well-known conjecture, that the Writer of the Epistle was Apollos, is expressed in his Commentary on Genesis. 99. In one place he seems to imply that others had already conjectured Apollos to be the author. But this does not appear to be so ; and he may, as Bleek imagines, be merely referring to opinions of learned men of his own day, who had either suggested, or adopted his own view. 100. Calvin's opinion was equally unfavourable to the Pauline authorship. While in his Institutes he ordinarily cites the Epistle as the words of " the Apostle," and defends its apostolicity in the argument to his Commentary, yet he sometimes cites the "author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ;" and when he comes to the question itself, declares his view very plainly : " Who composed it, is hardly worth caring about. Some have thought him to be Paul, some Luke, Barnabas, or Clement. I know that in the time of Chrysostom, it was very generally received by the Greeks among St. Paul's ; but the Latins thought otherwise, especially those who were nearest to the times of the Apostles. Nothing will induce me to acknowledge St. Paul as its author. For those who say that his name was purposely suppressed becautc it was odious to the Jews, allege nothing to the point. For if it were so, why should he have made mention of Timothcus ? By this indication he betrayed himself. But the manner of teaching 160 § 1.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [intuoduction. aiul style betoken another than Paul : and the writer confesses himself to have been one of the disciples of the Apostles, ch. ii., which is repngnaut in the hist degree to the habit of Paul." And he speaks similarly in his Commentary on ch. ii. 3 itself. 101. Very similar are the comments of Beza, at least in his earlier editions : for all the passages quoted by Bleek, from his introduction, on ch. ii. 3, xiii. 26, as being in his own edition of Beza 1582, and from Spanheim, as not extant in that edition, are, in the edition of 1590, which I use, expunged, and other comments, favourable to the Pauline origin, substituted for them. 102. And this change of opinion in Beza only coincided with in- fluences which both in the Romish and in the Protestant churches soon repressed the progress of intelligent criticism and free expression of opinion. Cardinal Cajetan was severely handled by Ambrosius Catha- rinus, who accused him of the same doubts in relation to this Epistle as those entertained by Julian respecting the Gospel of St. Matthew : Erasmus was attacked by the theologians of the Sorbonne in a censure which concludes thus: *' Wonderful is the arrogance and the pertinacity of this writer, in that, when so many Catholic doctors, pontiffs, and councils declare that this Epistle is Paul's, and the universal use and consent of the Church approves the same, this writer still doubts it, as being wiser than the whole world." And finally the council of Trent, in 1546, closed up the question for Romanists by declaring, "Of the New Testament, .... fourteen Epistles of Paul the Apostle : to the Romans, &c to the Hebrews," So that the best divines of that Church have since then had only that way open to them of exjiressing an intelligent judgment, which holds the matter of the Epistle to be St. Paul's, but the style and arrangement that of some other person : so Bellarmine : so Estius, in his introduction to the Epistle, which is well worth reading, as a remarkable instance of his ability and candour. 103. In the Protestant churches we find, as might be expected, a longer prevalence of free judgment on the matter. It will be seen by the copious citations in Bleek, that Melanchthon remained ever con- sistent in quoting the Epistle simply as " the Epistle to the Hebrews : " that the Magdeburg Ccnturiators distinctly denied the Pauline origin : that Brenz, in the Wirtemburg Confession, distinguishes in his citations this Epistle from those of St. Paul. 104. At the same time we find inconsistency on the point in Brenz himself: in the Commentary on the Epistle written by his son, the Pauline authorship is maintained: also by Flacius Illyricus (1557) on a priori grounds. In the Coucordi«n-Formel, the Epistle is cited in the original German without any name, whereas in the Latin version wo have " the Apostle saith," and the like. And this latter view con- 161 iXTRODucTiox.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [cii. xv. I tinued to gain ground. It is maintained by Gerhard (1641) and Calovius (1676): and since the middle of the seventeenth century has been the prevailing view in the Lutheran Church. 105. In the Calvinistic or Reformed Church, the same view became prevalent even earlier. Of its various confessions, the Galilean, it is true, sets the Epistle at the end of those of St. Paul : but the Belgic, Helvetic, and Bohemian Confessions cite and treat it as St. Paul's. 106. The exceptions to this prevailing view were found in certain Arminian divines, who, without impugning the authority of the Epistle, did not bind themselves to a belief of its Pauline origin. Such were Grotius, who inclines to the belief that it was written by St. Luke: Le Clerc, who holds Apollos to have been the Author: Limborch, who holds it to have been written " by some one of Paul's companions with his privity, and taken from his teaching : " and among the Socinians, Schlichting, who says of it, " though it had not Paul himself for its author, yet it came forth, if I may so say, from his manufactory, i. e. was written by some one of his friends and companions, and that by Paul's instigation, and in his spirit." 107. There was also a growing disposition, both, in the Romish and in the reformed churches, to erect into an article of faith the Pauline origin, and to deal severely with those who presumed to doubt it. Many learned men, especially among Protestants, appeared as its defenders : among whom we may especially notice Spauheim (the younger, 1659), Braun and D'Ou train in Holland, our own Owen (1667), Mill (1707), Hallet (the younger, 1727), Carpzov (1750), Sykes (1755), J. C. Wolf (1734), and Andr. Cramer (1757), to whom Bleek adjudges the first place among the upholders of the Pauline authorship. 108. Since the middle of the last century, the ancient doubts have revived in Germany ; and in the progress of more extended and accurate critical enquiry, have now become almost universal. The first that care- fully treated the matter with this view was Semler (1763), in his edition of Baumgarten's Commentary on the Epistle. Then followed Michaelis, in the later editions of his Introduction : in the earlier, he had assumed the Pauline authorship. The same doubts were repeated and enforced by Ziegler, J. E. C Schmidt (1804), Eichhorn (1812), Bertholdt (1819), David Schulz (who carried the contrast which he endeavours to establish between the Writer of this Epistle and St. Paul to an unreasonable length, and thereby rather hindered than helped that side of the argument), SeyflTcrth (avIio sets himself to demonstrate from the Epistle itself, that it cannot have been written by St. Paul, but has no hypothesis respecting the Writer), Bohme (who holds Silvanus to have been the Writer, fiom similarities which he ti'aces between our Epistle and 1 Peter, the Greek of which he holds also to have proceeded from him), De Wetto 162 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [intuoduction. (who inclines to ApoUos as the author, but sees an improbability in his ever having been in so close a relation to the Jewish Christians of Palestine), Tholuck (whose very valuable and candid enquiry in his last edition results in a leaning towards Apollos as the Writer), Bleek (whose view is mainly the same), Wieseler (who supports Barnabas as the probable "Writer), Liincmann (who strongly upholds Apollos), Ebrard (who holds St. Paul to have been the Author, St. Luke the Writer), Delitzsch (who holds St. Luke to have been the Writer). 109. The principal modern upholders of the purely Pauline author- ship in Germany have been Bengel (died 1752), Storr (1789), and recently Hofmann. 110. In our own country, the belief of the direct Pauline origin, though much shaken at the Reformation*, has recovered its ground far more extensively. The unwillingness to disturb settled opinion on the one baud, and it may be the disposition of our countrymen to take up opinions in furtherance of strong party bias, and their consequent inapti- tude for candid critical research on the other, have mainly contributed to this result. Most of our recent Theologians and Commentatoi-s are to be foimd on this side. Among these may be mentioned Whitby, INIack- night, Doddridge, Lardner, Stuart (American), Forstcr (Apostolical Authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews), Couybeare and Howson (Life of St. Paul), Davidson (Introd. to New Test.), and Dr. Wordsworth, in the recently published third vol. of his Greek Testament. 111. I am obliged, before passing to the internal grounds on which the question is to be treated, to lay down again the position in which we are left by the preceding sketch of the history of opinion. 112. It is manifest that with testimony so divided, antiquity cannot claim to close vp the enquiry: nor can either side allege its voice as decisive. In the very earliest times, we find the Epistle received by some as St. Paul's : in the same times, we find it ascribed by others, and those men of full as much weight, to various other authors. 113. I briefly thus restate what has already been insisted on in para- graphs 35 — 40, because the time has not yet entirely passed by, when writers on the subject regard our speculations concerning the probable author of the Epistle as limited by these broken fragments of the rumours of antiquity : Avhen a zealous and diligent writer among ourselves allows himself to ti'eat with levity and contempt the opinion that Apollos wrote it, simply on the ground that he is a claimant " altogether un- noticed by Christian antiquity 2." What we require is this : that we of this age should be allowed to do just that Avhich the "ancient men" did * See the opinions of several of the Reformers helow, § vi. par. 17 ff". - See Forster's Apostolical Authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Dedication, p. ix. 163 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. x7. in their age, — examine the Epistle simply and freely for and by itself, and form our conclusion accordingly, as to its Author, readers, and date : having respect indeed to ancient tradition, where we can find it, but not, where it is so broken, and inconsistent with itself, bound by any one of its assertions, or limited in our conclusions by its extent. 114, I now proceed to the latter and more important portion of our enquiry : whether the internal phsenomena of the Epistle itself point to St. Paul as its Author and Writer, — or Author without being the Writer, — and if they do not either of these, whom, as an Author, their general chai'acter may be regarded as indicating. 115, But as this portion is most important, so has it been most diligently and ingeniously followed out by disputants on both sides. And it is not my intention to enter here on the often-fought battle of com- parisons of terms once occurring, and tabular statements of words and phrases. The reader will find these given at great length and with much fairness in Davidson, who holds the balance evenly between pre- vious disputants. And if he wishes to go still further into so wide a field of discussion, he may consult Mr. Forster's large volume, which is equally fertile in materials for both conclusions, often without the writer being conscious that it is so^ 116, The various items of evidence on this head can hardly be pre- sented, in their fulness, to the mere English reader. He must in great measure take for granted the results, as presented to the student of the original Greek in the references throughout the Epistle in my Greek Test. It there appears, as indeed in the tables in any of the writers on the subject, — how like, and yet how unlike, the style of our Epistle is to that of the great Apostle : how completely the researches of such books as Mr. Forster's have succeeded in proving the likeness, how completely at the same time they have failed to remove one iota of the unlikeness ; so that the more we read and are borne along with their reasonings, the closer the connexion becomes, in faith and in feeling, of the writer of the Epistle with St, Paul, but the more absolutely incompatible the personal identity : the more we perceive all that region, of style and diction to have been in common between them, which men living together, talking together, praying together, teaching together, would naturally range in ; but all that region wherein individual peculiarity is wont to put itself forth, to have-been entirely distinct, 117, I need only mention the different tinge given to the same or similar thoughts ; the wholly differing rhythm of sentences wherein perhaps many words occur in common ; the differing spirit of cita- 3 As e. g. when he alleges, which he often does, the same thought expressed by different words, or different cognate forms of the same root, in Hebrews and the Pauline Epistles, as indicating identiti/ of authorship. The conclusion of most examiners of evidence would be in the opposite direction, 164 §1.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [JNTRODUCTION. tiou (to say nothing of the varying mode of citing) ; the to(:illy distinct mode of arguing; the rhetorical accumulation; the equili- brium, even in the midst of fervid declamation, of periods and clauses ; the use of diiferent inferential and connecting particles. All of these great and undeniable variations may be easily indeed frittered down by an appearance of exceptions ranged in tables ; but still are indelibly impressed on the mind of every intelligent student of the Epistle, and as has been observed, are unanswerable, just in proportion as the points of similarity are detailed and insisted on^ 118. It is again of course easy enough to meet such considerations iu cither of two ways ; the former of which recommends itself to the mind which fears to enquire from motives of reverence, the latter to the superficial and indolent. 119. It may be said, that the Holy Spirit of God, by whose inspi- ration holy men have written these books of the New Testament, may bring it about, that the same person may write variously at diiferent times, even be that variety out of the limits of human experience : that the same man, for instance, should have written the Epistle to the Romans and the First Epistle of St. John. In answer to which we may safely say, that what the Holy Spirit may or can do, is not for us to speculate upon : iu this His proceeding of inspiration. He has given us abundant and undeniable examples of what He has done : and by such examples are we to be guided, in all questions as to the analogy of His proceedings in more doubtful cases. As matter of fact, the style and diction of St. Paul differ as much from those of St. John as can well be conceived. When therefore we find in the sacred writings phajuomena of difference apparently incompatible with personal identity in their authors, we are not to be precluded from reasoning from them to the non-identity of such authors, by any vague assertions of the omnipotence of the Almighty Spirit. 120. Again it may be strongly urged, that the same person, writing at different times, and to different persons, may employ very various modes of diction and argument. Nothing can be truer than this : but the application of it to the question of identity of authorship is matter of penetration and appreciation. Details of diversity, which may be convincing to one man, may be wholly inappreciable, from various reasons, by another. As regards the matter befoi'e us, it may suffice to say, that the incompatibility of styles was felt in the earliest days by Greeks themselves, as the preceding testimonies from Clement of Alexandria and Origeu may serve to shew. Further than this we can say nothing, which will be allowed as of any weight by those who unfortunately fail to appreciate the difference. We can only repeat * See this carried out further below, § v. parr. 9, 10. 165 IXTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [en. xv. our assurance, that the more acumen and scholarship are brought to bear on the enquiry, aided by a fairly judging and unbiassed mind, the more such incompatibility will be felt: and say, in the words of Origen cited above, par. 19, "That the character of the style has not the individual peculiarity of that of the Apostle, every one who knows how to judge of the difFereace of phrases will acknowledge." 121. I now proceed to consider the principal notices in the Epistle itself, which have been either justly or unjustly adduced, as making for or against the Pauline authorship. 122. In ch. xiii. 23, we read, "Know ye (or, ye know) that our brother Timotheus is set at liberty: with whom, if he come soon, I will see you." This notice has been cited with equal confidence on both sides. The natural inference from it, apart altogether from the controversy, would be, that the Writer of the Epistle was in some other place than Timotheus, who had been recently set free from an imprison- ment (for this and no other is the moaning of the participle), and that he AA'as awaiting Timotheus's arrival : on which, if it took place soon, be hoped to visit the Hebrews in his company. 123. It is manifest, that such a situation would fit very well some point of time after St. Paul's liberation from his first Roman imprison- ment. Supposing that he was dismissed before Timotheus, and, having left Rome, expecting him to follow, had just received the news of his liberation, the words in the text would very well and naturally express this. It is true, we read of no such imprisonment of Timotheus : and this fact seems to remove the date of the occurrence out of the limits of the chronology of the Pauline Epistles. But if the command of the Apostle in 2 Tim. iv. 9 was obeyed, and Timotheus, on arriving, shared his imprisonment, the situation here alluded to may have occurred not long after. 124. On the other hand, the notice would equally well fit some com- panion of St. Paul, either St. Luke, or Silvanus, or Apollos, writing after the Apostle's death. All these would speak of Timotheus as our brother. 125. On the whole then, this passage carries no Aveight on either side. I own that the expression, " / will see you," has a tinge of authority about it, which hardly seems to fit either of the above- mentioned persons. But this impression may be fallacious : and it is only one of those cases where, in a matter so doubtful as the author- ship of this Epistle, we are swayed hither and thither by words and expressions, Avhich perhaps after all have no right to be so seriously taken. 126. Similar remarks might be made on the notice of ch. xiii. 25, " They from Italy salute you," as carrying no weight either way. As regards its meaning, it is indeed surprising that Bleek should main- 166 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [INTUODUCTION. tiiin, that it excludes the supposition of the writer being in Italy, in the face of the classical and New Test, usage of the prepositions of origin. The preposition may doubtless be taken as used with reference to those who were to receive the salutation : it may be the salutation, not the persons, which the preposition brings away from Italy. It may be as if I were to write to a friend, " I have the best wishes for you from Canterbury:" which, although it would not be the most usual way of expressing my meaning, and might be said if I were elsewhere, yet would be far from excluding the supposition that I was myself writing from that city *. 127. If the words then do not forbid the idea that the Writer was in Italy, I do not see how they can be used for or against the Pauline authorship. As observed before, the Apostle may have been somewhere in that country waiting for Timotheus, when liberated, to join him. And we may say the same with equal probability of any of St. Paul's companions to whom the Epistle has been ascribed. The only evidence which can be gathered from the words, as being exceedingly unlike any thing occurring in the manifold formulae of salutation in St. Paul's Epistles, is of a slighter, but to my mind of a more decisive kind. 128. The evidence supposed to be derivable from ch. x. 34 in the received text, ^^for ye had compassion on my bonds," vanishes with the adoption of the reading ye had compassion on prisoners, in which almost all the critical editors concur. 129. The notice ch. xiii. 7, Eemember them that have the rule over you, &c., will more properly come under consideration when we are treating of the probable readers, and of the date of the Epistle *. I may say thus much in anticipation, that it can hardly be fairly interpreted consistently with the known traditions of the death of St. Paul, and at the same time with the hypothesis of his Authorship. 130. The well-known passage, ch. ii. 3, requires more consideration. It stands thus : How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by them that heard [Him] ? The difficulty, that St. Paul should thus include himself among those who had received the Gospel only at second hand, whereas in Gal. i. 12 he says of it, "For I received it not from man, neither was taught it, but by revelation of Jesus Christ," has been felt both in ancient and modern times. Euthalius, Qi^cumenius, and Theophylact, Luther, Calvin, and all the moderns, have alleged it, either to press or to explain the difficulty. * That New Test, usage renders the other moaning more probable, does not belong to the argument here in the text, but is maintained below, in § ii. par. 28. 6 See below § ii. par. 2t), 30; § iii. par. 2. Vol. II. Paut II.— 167 m INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [en. xv. I must own that, in spite of all which has been so ingeniously said by way of explanation by the advocates of the Pauline authorship, the words appear to me quite irrecoucileable with that hypothesis. 131. To pass by the ancient explanations, which will hardly be adopted in our own day ', — the most prevalent modern one has been, that the Apostle here adopts the figure called condescension, by which a writer or speaker identifies himself with his readers or hearers, even though, as a matter of actual fact, that identification is not borne out strictly. Such " condescension " is most commonly found in hortatory passages, but is not confined to them. A writer may, for the purpose of his argument, and to carry persuasion, place himself on a level with his readers in respect of matters of history, just as well as of moral con- siderations. The real question for us is, whether this is a case in which such a figure would be likely to be employed. 132. And to this the answer must be, it seems to me, unhesitatingly in the negative. That an Apostle, who ever claimed to have received the Gospel not from men but from the Lord Himself, — who was careful to state that when he met the chief Apostles in council they added nothing to him, should at all, and especially in writing (as the hypo- thesis generally assumes) to the very church where the influence of those other Apostles was at its highest, place himself on a level with their disciples as to the reception of the Gospel from them, — is a sup- position so wholly improbable, that I cannot explain its having been held by so many men of discernment, except on the supposition that their bias towards the Pauline authorship has blinded them to the well- known character and habit of the Apostle. 133. And to reply to this, that he thus speaks of himself when his apostolical authority is called in question, as it was in the Galatian church, and partially also in the Corinthian, but does not so where no such slight had been put upon his oflBce, is simply to advance that which is not the fact : for he does the same in an emphatic manner in Eph. iii. 2, 3, in which Epistle, to whomsoever addressed, there exist no traces of any rivalship to his own authority being in his view. 134. Certain other passages have been adduced as bearing out the idea of the figure of condescension here. But none of them, when fairly considered, really does so. For to take them one by one: — In Eph. ii. 3, .Col. i. 12, 13, Tit. iii. 3, there is no such figure, but the Apostle is simply stating the matter of fact, and counts himself to have been one of those spoken of. In 1 Cor. xi. 31, 32, he is asserting that which is true of all Christians equally ; himself, as liable to fall into sin and thus to need chastisement, being included. 7 See them in the note on this par. in my Greek Test. 168 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. lu 1 Thcss. iv. 17, — where see note, — there is no 8iich figure, for the Apostle is merely giviug expression to the expectation tluit he himself should be among them who should be alive in the flesh at the coming of our Lord. In Jude, ver. 17, there is no such figure. St. Jude, in writing thus, is giving us plain proof that he himself was not one of the Apostles. 135. Much stress has been laid, and duly, on the entire absence of j)ersonal notices of the Writer, as affecting the question of the Pauline authorship. This is so inconsistent with the otherwise invariable prac- tice of St. Paul, that some very strong reason must be supposed, which should influence him in this case to depart from that practice. Such reason has been variously assigned. And first, with reference to the omission of any superscription or opening greeting. It has been sup- posed that he would not begin by designating himself as an Apostle, because the Lord Himself was the Apostle (ch. iii. 1) of the Jewish people (so PantfEnus, above, par. 11). Or, because the Jewish Chris- tians in Palestine were unwilling to recognize him as such, only as an Apostle to the Gentiles (so Theodoret, and others). But to this it might be answered. Why then not superscribe himself " a servant of Jesus Christ," or the like, as in Phil. i. 1, Philem. 1, or simply "Paul," as in 1 and 2 Thess.? But a further reply has been given, and very widely accepted : that being in disfavour generally among the Jews, he did not prefix his name, for fear of exciting a prejudice against his Epistle, and so perhaps preventing the reading of it altogether. (So Clement of Alexandria, above, par. 14. So also Chrysostom, iii. p. 371.) But this cannot have been the purpose of the Author throughout, as is suflftciently shewn by such notices as those of ch. xiii. 18, 19, 23, which would have been entirely without meaning, had the readers not been aware who was writing to them. Yet, it is said, these notices do not occur till the end of the Ej)istle, when the important part of it has already been read through. Are we then to suppose that St. Paul seriously did in this case, that which he ironically puts as an hypothesis in 2 Cor. xii. 16, " beinj crafty I caught you loitk guile " ? And if he did it, how imperfectly and clumsily ! Could he not as easily have removed all traces of his own hand in the Epistle, as those at the beginning only ? And how are we to suppose that the Epistle came to the church to which it was addressed ? Did he put in at a window, or over a wall ? Must it not have come by the hand of some fi-iend or companion ? Must it not have been given into the hand of some that had the rule ? How happened it that the question was never asked, From whom does this come ? or if asked, how could it be answered but in one way ? And when thus answered, how could it fail but the Epistle would thenceforth be known as that of St. Paul ? 13G. It may be said that these last enquiries would prove too much ; 169 m 2 TN-TRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [ch. xv. ^ that they would equally apply, whoever wrote the Epistle ; and that the name of the Author was, on the view which they imply, equally sure to have been attached to it. But we may well answer, that this, however plausible, is not so in reality. It does not follow, because the name of the great Apostle was sure to be attached to it if he really wrote it, that every other name was equally sure. Many of his disci- ples and companions, eminent as they were, bore no authority to be compared with his. This is true even of Luke and Barnabas : much more of Titus, Silas, and Clement. And if one of these had been the acknowledged author, there being no notices in the Epistle itself whereby he might be with certainty recognized after the first circum- stances of its sending were forgotten, how probable, that a writing, committed to the keeping of a particular church, should have been re- tained indeed as a sacred deposit by them, but, in the midst of perse- cutions and troubles, have lost the merely traditional designation which never had become inseparable from it. In the one case, the name of St. Paul would commend the Epistle, and so would take the first, and an inalienable place : in the other, the weight and preciousness of the Epistle would survive the name of its Writer, which w:ould not of itself have been its commendation. The like might have happened to the Gospel, or Acts, of St. Luke, but for the fact, that in this case not one particular church, but the whole Christian world, was the guardian of the deposit, and of the tradition attached to it. 137. Another solution has been suggested by Steudel : that the book has more the character of a treatise than of an Epistle, and therefore was not begun in epistolary form : some letter being probably sent with it, or the customary personal messages being orally delivered. But the postu- late ma}^ be safely denied. Our Epistle is veritably an Epistle : addressed to readers of whom certain facts were specially true, containing exhorta- tions founded on those facts, and notices arising out of the relation of the writer to his readers ; which last sufficiently shew, that no other Epistle could have accompanied it, nor indeed any considerable trusting to the oral supplementing of its notices. ""SS. Yet another solution has been given by Hug and Spanheim: that in an oratorical style like that of the opening of this Epistle, it was not probable that a superscription would precede. True : but what, when conceded, does this indicate ? Is it not just as good an argument to shew that one who never begins his Epistles thus, is not the Writer, as to account for his beginning thus, supposing him the Writer ? The i-eason for our Epistle beginning as it does is, unquestionably, the character of the whole, containing few personal notices of the relation of the Writer to his readers. But granted, as we have sufficiently shewn, that it was not the object of the Author to remain unknown to his readers, I ask auv one capable of forming an unbiassed judgment, is it possible that 170 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. wore St. Paul that author, autl any conceivable Hebrew chnrch those readers, no more notices should be found, not perhaps of his Apostle- ship, but of the revelations of the Lord to him, of his pure intent and love towards them ? Any one who can suppose this, appears to me, I own, — however it may savour of presumption to say so, — deficient in appreciation of the phoenomena of our Epistle, and still more of the character of the great Apostle himself. 139. In Bleek's Introduction to his Commentary, on which, in the main features, this part of my Introduction is founded, several interest- ing considerations are here adduced as bearing on the question of the authoi-ship, arising out of the manner in which various points which arise are dealt with, as compared with the manner usual with St. Paul. Such considerations are valuable, and come powerfully in aid of a con- clusion otherwise forced upon us : but when that conclusion is not acquiesced in, they are easily diluted away by its opponents. They are rather confirmatory than conclusive : and have certainly not had justice done them by the supporters of the Pauline hypothesis ; who, as they seem to themselves to have answered one after another of them, repre- sent each in succession as the main ground on which the anti-pauline view is rested. 140. I would refer my English readers for the discussion of these ix>ints to Dr. Davidson's Introduction to the New Test., vol. iii., where they are for the most part treated fairly, though hardly with due appre- ciation of their necessarily subordinate place in the argument. The idea which a reader, otherwise uninformed, would derive from Dr. Davidson's paragraphs, is that those who allege these considerations make them at least co-ordinate with others, of which they in reality only come in aid. 141. The same may be said of the whole mass of evidence resting on modes of citation, words only once found, style of periods, and the like. It abounds on the one hand with striking coincidences, on the other with striking discrepancies : each of these has been made much of by the ardent fautors of each side, — while the more impartial Commentators have weighed both together. The general conclusion in my own mind derived from these is, that the author of this Epistle cannot have been the same with the author of the Pauline Epistles. The coincidences are for the most part those which belong to men of the same general cast of thought on the great matters in hand : the discrepancies are in turns of expression, use of different particles, different rhythm, diftei-ent com- pounds of cognate words, a mode of citation not independent but rather divergent, — and a thousand minor matters which it is easy for those to laugh to scorn who are incapable of estimating their combined evidence, but which when combined render the hypothesis of one and the same author entirely untenable. 171 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [cii. xv. 142. To the pha3nomena of citation in our Epistle I shall have occa- sion to advert very soon, when dealing with the enquiry who the author really was. (See below, parr. 149, 152, 158, 180.) The reader will find them treated at great length in Bleek, Davidson, and Forster. 143. Before advancing to clear the way for that enquiry by other considerations, I will beg the reader to look back with me once more over the course and hearing of the external evidence as regards the Pauline hypothesis. 144. The recognition of the Epistle as Pauline begins about the middle of the second century, and, in one portion only of the church — the Alex- andrine. Did this rest on an original historical tradition ? We have seen reason to conclude the negative. Was it an inference from the subject and contents of the Epistle, which, when once made, gained more and more acceptance, from the very nature of the case ? This, on all grounds, is more probable. Had an ancient tradition connected the name of St. Paul with it, we should find that name so connected not in one portion only, but in every part of the church. This however we do not find. We have no trace of its early recognition as Pauline elsewhere than in Alexandria. And even there, the earliest testimonies imply that there was doubt on the subject. Elsewhere, various opinions prevailed. Tertullion gives us Barnabas : Origen mentions two views, pointing to St, Luke and to Clement of Rome. None of these claim our acceptance as grounded on authentic historical tradition. But each of them has as much right to be heard and considered, as the Alexandrine. And the more, because that was so easy a deduction from the contents of the Epistle, and so sure to be embraced generally, whereas they had no such source, and could have no such advantage. 145. But there was one view of our Epistle, which never laboured under the uncertainty and insufficient reception which may be charged against the others : viz., that entertained by the church of Rome. It is true, its testimony is only negative : it amounts barely to this, — " The Epistle is not St. Paul's." But this evidence it gives " always, every where, by all." And its testimony is of a date and kind which far out- weighs the Alexandrine, or any other. Clement of Rome, the disciple of the Apostles, refers frequently and copiously to our Epistle, not indeed by name, but so plainly and unmistakeably that no one can well deny it. He evidently knew the Epistle well, and used it much and approvingly. Now, had he recognized it as written by St. Paul, — he might not indeed have cited it as such, seeing that unacknowledged centos of New Test, expressions are very common with him, — but is it conceivable that he should altogether have concealed such his recognition from the church over which he presided ? Is it not certain, that had Clement received it as the work of St. Paul, Ave should have found that tradition dominant and firmly fixed in the Roman church ? But that church is just the 172 § I.] ITS AUTIIORSIIIP. [INTKODUCTION. one, where we find no trace of such a tradition : a fact wholly irrccon- oilcable with such recognition by Clement. And if Clement did not so recognize it, arc we not thereby brought very much nearer the source itself, than by any reported opinion in the church of Alexandria ? 146. I shall have occasion again to return to this consideration: I introduce it here to shew, that in freely proposing to ourselves the enquiry, " Who wrote the Epistle ? " as to be ansAvered entirely from the Epistle itself, we are not setting aside, but are strictly following, the earliest and weightiest historical testimonies respecting it, and the inferences to be deduced from them. And if any name seems to satisfy the requirements of the Epistle itself, those who in modern times sug- gested that name, and those who see reason to adopt it, are not to be held up to derision, as has been done by Mr. Forster, merely because that name was not suggested by any among the ancients. The question is as open now as it was in the second century. They had no reliable tradition : we have none. If an author is to be found, it must be by consideration of the subject-matter itself. 147. With these remarks, I come now to the enquiries, 1) What data does the Epistle furnish for determining the Author ? aud 2) In what one person do those characteristics meet ? 148. 1. a) The writer of the Epistle is also the author. It is of course possible, that St. Paul may have imparted his thoughts to the Hebrew church by means of another. This may have been done in one of two ways : either by actual translation, or by transfusion of thought and argument : setting aside altogether the wholly unlikely hypothesis, that \\\e E})istle was diawn up and sent as St. Paul's by some other, without his knowledge and consent. 149. But first, the Epistle is not a translation. The citations throughout, with one exception (noticed below, § ii. par. 35 note), are from the Septuagint Greek version of the Old Test., and are of such a kind, that the peculiarities of that version are not unfrequently inter- woven into the argument, and made to contribute towards the result : which would be impossible, had the Epistle existed primarily in Hebrew. Besides, the prevalence of alliterations and plays on words, and the Greek rhythm, to which so many rhetorical passages owe their force, would of themselves compel us to this conclusion *. 150. And secondly, there are insuperable difficulties in the way of the hypothesis of any such secondary authorship as has very commonly been assumed, from the time of Origen downwards. Against this militate in their full strength all the considerations derived from those differences of style and diction, which as in this Epistle are inseparably interwoven into the argument : against this the whole arrangement and argumentation of * See tills treated move fully below, § v. parr. 1 — 8. 173 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. the Epistle, wlilcli are very different from those of St. Paul, shewing an independence and originality which could hardly have been found in the work of one who wrote down the thoughts of another : against this also the few personal notices which occur, and which manifestly belong to the Author of the Epistle. Supposing St. Paul to be speaking by another in all other places, how are we to make the transition in these ? The notices, which on the hypothesis of pure Pauline Authorship, seemed difficult of explanation, appear to me absolutely to defy it, if the secondary authorship be supposed. 151. b) The Author of the Epistle ivas a Jew. This, as far as I know, has never been doubted. The degree of intimate acquaintance shewn with the ceremonial law might perhaps have been acquired by a Gentile convert: but the manner in which he addresses his readers, evidently themselves Jews, is such as to forbid the supposition that he was himself a Gentile. Probability is entirely against such an address being used : and also entirely against the Epistle finding acceptance, if it had been used. 152. c) He was, however, not a pure Jew, speaking and quoting Hebrew : but a Hellenist ; i. e., a Jew brought up in Greek habits of thought, and in the constant use of the Septuagint version. His citations are from that version, and he grounds his argument, or places his reason for citing, on the words and expressions of the Septuagint, even where no corresponding terms are found in the Hebrew text. 153. d) He was one intimately acquainted with the way of thought^ and writings, of St. Paul. I need not stay here to prove this. The elaborate tables which have been drawn up to prove the Pauline author- ship are here very valuable to us, as we found them before in shewing the differences between the two writers. Dr. Davidson, Mr. Forster, or Bleek, in his perhaps more pertinent selections from the mass, will in a few minutes establish this to the satisfaction of any intelligent reader. That our author has more especially used one portion of the writings of the great Apostle, and why, will come under our notice in a following section. 154. e) And, considering the probable date of the Epistle, which I shall by anticipation assume to have been -m-itten before the destruction of Jerusalem, such a degree of acquaintance with the thoughts and wi'itings of St. Paul could hardly, at such a time, have been the result of mere reading, but must have been derived from intimate acquaint- ance, as a companion and fellow-labourer, with the great Apostle himself. The same inference is confirmed by finding that our author was nearly connected with Timotheus, the sen in the faith, and constant companion of St. Paul. 1 55. f ) It is moreover necessary to assume, that the Author of our 174 ^ I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introductiox. Epistle was deeply imhued icith the thoughts and phraseology of the Alexandrian school. The coincidences in thought and language between passages of this Epistle and the writings of Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, arc such as no one in his senses can believe to be fortuitous. These are for the most part noticed in the references, and the Commentary, in my Greek Testament. 156. These coincidences may have arisen from one of two reasons: either merely from the Author being acquainted with the writings of Philo, or from his having been educated in the same theological school with that philosopher, and so having acquired similar ways of thought and expression. The latter of these alternatives is on all grounds, and mainly from the nature of the coincidences themselves, the more pro- bable. By birth or by training, he was an Alexandrian ; not neces- sarily the former, for there were other great schools of Alexandrian learning besides the central one in that city, one of the most cele- brated of which was at Tarsus, the birth-place of the apostle Paul. So that this consideration will not of itself fix the authorship on that companion of St. Paul whom we know to have been an Alexandrian by birth. 157. g) The author was not an Apostle, nor, in the strictest sense, a contemporary of the Apostles, so that he should have seen and heard our Lord for himself. He belongs to the second rank, in point of time, of apostolic men, — to those who heard from eye and ear-witnesses. This will follow from the consideiation of the passage, ch. ii. 3, in parr. 130—132 above. 158. h) We may add to the above data some, which although less secure, yet seem to be matters of sound inference from the Epistle itself. Of such a character are, e. g., that the author was not a dweller in or near Jerusalem, or he would have taken his descriptions rather from the then standing Jewish temple, than from the ordinances in the text of the Septuagint version : — that he was a person of considerable note and influence with those to whom he ivrote, as may be inferred from the whole spirit and tone of his address to them : that he stood in some position of previous connexion ivith his readers, as appears from the words "that I may be restored to you," ch. xiii. 19: that he lived and wrote before the destniction of Jerusalem. 159. 2. It will be impossible to apply the whole of these data to the enquiry respecting individual men, without assuming, with regard to the last two mentioned at least, the result of the two following sections, " For what readers the Epistle was written," and " The place and time of writing." I shall therefore suspend the consideration of those tests till the results shall have been arrived at*, and meantime 9 See below, § ii. par, 36, and § iii. par. 4. 175 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [cii. xv. apply the others to such persons as are given us by history to choose from. 160. These are the following : Barnabas, Luke, Clement, Mark, Titus, Apollos, Silvanus, Aquila. These are all the companions of St. Paul, who were of note enough to have written such an Epistle : with the exception of Timotheus, who is excluded from the list, by being mentioned in the Epistle (ch. xiii. 23) as a different person from the Author. 16L Of these, Titus is excluded by the fact mentioned Gal. ii. 3, — that he was a Greek, and not circumcised even at the time when he accom- panied St. Paul in his third journey to Jerusalem, Acts xv. 2, 3 tf. 162. It is doubtful, whether a like consideration does not exclude St. Luke from the authorship of our Epistle. Certainly the first appearance of Col. iv. 10 — 14 numbers him among those who were not of the cii'cum- cisiou. Were this so, it would be impossible to allot him more than a subordinate share in the composition. This has been felt, and the hypo- thesis which takes him to have been the writer has been shaped accord- ingly. Thus we have seen above Clement of Alexandria held him to have translated the Epistle into Greek ^: and the idea that he wrote it under the superintendence of St.^Paul, incorporating the thoughts of the great Apostle, has been of late revived, and defended with considerable skill, by Delitzsch. And such, more or less modified, has been the opinion of many, both ancients and moderns: of Luculentius, Primasius (Cent. VI.), Haymo (died 853), Rhabanus Maurus (about 847) : and of Grotius, Crell, Stein, Kohler, Hug, Ebrard : several of the latter holding the independent authorship of St. Luke, which Delitzsch also concedes to have been possible. 163. And certainly, could we explain away the inference apparently unavoidable fi'om Col. iv. 14, such a supposition would seem to have some support from the Epistle itself. The students of the Commentary in my Greek Test. Avill very frequently be struck by the verbal and idiomatic coincidences with the style of St. Luke. The argument, as resting on them, has been continually taken up and pushed forward by Delitzsch, and comes on his reader frequently with a force which at the time it is not easy to withstand. 164. Yet, it must be acknowledged, the hypothesis, though so fre- quently and so strongly supported by apparent coincidences, does not thoroughly approve itself to the critical mind. We cannot feel convinced that St. Luke did really write our Epistle. The whole tone of the indi- vidual mind, as far as it appears in the Gospel and Acts, is so essentially different from the spirit of the Writer here, that verbal and idiomatic coincidences do not carry us over the difficulty of supposing the two to be 1 See par. 14. 176 § '•] ITS AUTIIOKSIIIP. [ixrnor.LCTioN. written by one and the same. There is nothing in St. Luke of the rheto- rical balance, nothing of the accumulated and stately period *, nothing of the deep tinge which would be visible even in narrative, of the threaten- ing of judgment. Within tlie limits of the same heavenly inspiration prompting both, St. Luke is rather the careful and kindly depicter of the blessings of the covenant, our Writer rather the messenger from God to the wavering, giving them the blessing and the curse to choose between: St. Luke is rather the polished Christian civilian, our Writer the fervid and prophetic rhetorician. The places of the two are different : and it would shake our confidence in the consistency of human characteristics under the influence of the Holy Spirit, were we to believe Luke, the beloved physician and Evangelist, to have become so changed, in the foundations and essentials of personal identity, as to have written this Epistle to the Hebrews. \65. If the preceding considerations have any weight, we must regard the coincidences above mentioned as the result of common education and manner of speech, and of common derivation of doctrine from the same personal source. St. Luke had derived his style from the same Alexan- drine scholastic training, his doctrine from the same father in the faith, as the Writer of our Epistle. 166. It appears never to have been advanced as a serious hypothesis, that St. Mark is the Writer of our Epistle. There are no points of coincidence between it and his Gospel, which would lead us to think so. He does not appear, after St. Paul's second missionary journey, ever to have been closely joined for any considerable time in travel or in mission- ary work with that Apostle : and again, he seems to have been a born Jerusalem Jew (Acts xii. 12 : see Introd. to Vol. I. ch, iii. § 1), which, by what has been before said, would exclude him. 167. The fact that Silvanus, or^Silas, belonged to the church at Jeru- salem (Acts XV. 22), would seem to exclude him also. In other points, our tests are satisfied by him. He was the constant companion of St. Paul : was imprisoned with him at Philippi (Acts xvi. 19 if.), while Timotheus remained at large : is ever named by the Apostle before Timo- theus (Acts xvii. 14, 15, xviii. 5 ; 2 Cor. i. 19 ; 1 Thess. i. 1 ; 2 Thess. i. 1): and afterwards is found in close connexion with St. Peter also (1 Pet. V. 12). It must be acknowledged, that as far as mere negative reasons are concerned, with only the one exception above named, there seems no cause why Silvanus may not have written our Epistle. But every thing approaching to a positive reason is altogether wanting. We 2 This remark especially applies to that portion of St. Luke's writings which would be sure by the merely superficial observer to be cited as furnishing an answer to it ; viz. the prologue to his Gospel. No two styles can be more distinct, than that of this preface, and of any equally elaborated passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 177 INTRODUCTION. J THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [ce. xv. know absolutely nothing of the man, his learning, his particular training, or the likelihood that he should have given us such an Ej^istle as we now possess. His claim is (with that one reservation) unexceptionable : but it must retire before that of any who is recommended by positive consi- derations ^ 168. A far stronger array of names and claims is made out for Clement of Rome, one of the fellow-workers of St. Paul in Phil. iv. 3. We have seen above (par. 19), that his name was one brought down to Origen by the "account which has come down to ws," together with that of St. Luke : we have found him mentioned as held by some to be the translator, e. g., by Euthalius (par. 46), Eusebius (par. 48) : the author, by Philastrius (par. 65), Jerome (par. 69), &c. This latter has in modern times been the opinion of Erasmus (par. 97), and of Calvin (par. 100). 169. We cannot pronounce with any certainty whether Clement was a Jew by birth or not. The probability is against such a supposition. The advocates of this theory however rest his claim mainly on the fact that many expressions and passages of our Epistle occur in the (un- doubtedly genuine) Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. 170. But to this it has been satisfactorily replied by Bleek and others, that such passages have much more the air of citations, than that of repetitions of the same thought and diction by their original author, and that they in fact in no wise differ from the many other reproductions of passages of the New Test., especially of St. Paul's Epistles, in the same letter of Clement. Bleek has besides directed attention to the great dissimilarity of the two writings, as indicating different authors. Clement's Epistle has nothing of the Alexandrine character, nothing of the speculative spirit, of that to the Hebrews. His style is pure and correct, but wants altogether the march of periods, and rhetorical rhythm, of our Epistle. Another objection is, that had Clement written it, there could hardly have failed some trace of a tradition to that effect in the church of Rome ; which, as we have seen, is not found. 171. The idea that Barnabas was the author of our Epistle seems to have been prevalent in the African Church, seeing that TertuUian quotes him as such without any doubt or explanation (above, par. 25). But it was unknown to Origen, and to Eusebius : and Jerome, .in his Catalog. c. 5, vol. ii. p. 838, says " either of Barnabas according to TertuUian, or of the Evangelist Luke according to some, or of Cleraent, &c. :" so that 3 Mynster and Bohme, from different points of view, have held to Silvanus : the former, assuming that our Epistle was sent with tliat to the Galatians, and to the same churches: the latter, fancying a great resemblance between our Epistle and the first of St. Peter, and holding it to have been written under the superintendence of that apostle : a supposition, I need not say, entirely untenable. 178 § I ] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [INTRODLCTION. it is probable that ho recognized the notion as Tertullian's only. And we may fairly assume that Philastrins (par. 65) and others refer to the same source, and that this view is destitute of any other external support than that which it gets from the passage of Tertulliau*. 172. It must then, in common with the rest, stand or fall on internal grounds. And in thus judging of it, we have two alternatives before us. Either the extant Epistle of Barnabas is genuine, or it is not. In the former case, the question is soon decided. So different are the styles and characters of the two Epistles, so different also the view which they take of the Jewish rites and ordinances, that it is quite impossible to imagine them the work of the same writer. The Epistle of Barnabas maintains that the ceremonial commands were even at first uttered not in a literal but in a spiritual sense : finds childish allusions, e. g., in Greek numerals, to spiritual truths : is in its whole dictiou and character spiritless, and flat, and pointless. If any one imagines that the same writer could have indited both, then we are clearly out of the limits of ordinary reasoning and considerations of probability. 173. But we may take the other and more probable alternative : that the so-called Epistle of Barnabas is apocryphal. Judging then of Bar- nabas from what we know in the Acts, many particulars certainly seem to combine in favour of him. He was a Levite, not of Judasa, but of Cyprus (Acts iv. 36) : he was intimately connected with St. Paul during the early part of the missionary journeys of that Apostle (Acts ix. 27, XV. 41), and in common with him was entrusted with the first ministry to the Gentiles (Acts xi. 22 ff., xv. 12, &c. ; Gal. ii. 9, &c.) : he was called by the Apostles (Acts iv. 36) by a name which we have seen reason to interpret ' son of exhortation.' 174. These particulars are made the most of by Wieseler, as support- ing what he considers the only certain tradition on the subject. But as we have seen this tradition itself fail, so neither will these stand under stricter examination. For Barnabas, though by birth a Cyprian, yet dwelt apparently at Jerusalem (Acts ix. 27, xi. 22) : and there, by the context of the narrative, must the field have been situated, which he sold to put its price into the common stock. As a Levite, he must have been thoroughly acquainted with the usages of the Jerusalem temple, which, as before observed, our Writer does not appear to have been. It is quite out of the question to suppose, as Wieseler does, that Barnabas, a Levite wbo had dwelt at Jerusalem, would, during a subsequent ministration in Egypt, have cited the usages of the temple at Leontopolis rather than those at Jerusalem. If such usages have been cited, it must be by an Egyptian Jew to whom Jerusalem was not familiar. * It has been uplield in modern times by J. E. Chr.-Schmidt, Tw ?stLn, Ulhnann, Tbierscb, Wieseler. On tbe last of tbese, see below, oar. 174. 179 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [cb. xv. 175. Perhaps too much has been made, on the other side, of the manifest inferiority of Barnabas to Paul in eloquence, and of the fact that as the history goes on in the Acts, the order becomes reversed, and from "Barnabas and Saul" or "Paul" (ch. xi. 30, xii. 25, xiii. 2, 7) Ave have "Paul and Barnabas" (ch. xiii. 43, 46, 50, xv. 2 twice, 22, 35, with only occasional intermixture of the old order, ch. xiv. 14, xv. 12, 25) : Barnabas gradually becoming eclipsed by the eminence of his far greater colleague. For 1 ) it is very possible that eloquence of the pen, such as that in our Epistle, might not have been wanting to one who Avas very inferior to St. Paul in eloquence of the tongue : and 2) it was most natural, that in a history written by a companion of St. Paul, and devoted, in its latter portion at least, to the Acts of St. Paul, the name of the great Apostle should gradually assume that pre-eminence to which on other grounds it was unquestionably entitled. 176. It would appear then, that against the authorship by Barnabas there can only be urged in fairness the one objection arising from bis residence at Jerusalem : which on the hypothesis of the Epistle being addressed to the church at Jerusalem, Avould be a circumstance in his favour Avith reference to such expressions as that I may be restored to you, ch. xiii. 19 and the acquaintance with the readers implied through- out the Epistle. On the whole, it must be confessed, that this view comes nearest to satisfying the conditions of authorship of any that have as yet been treated ; and should only be set aside, if one approaching nearer still can be found. 177. It remains that we enquire into the claims of the two remaining apostolic persons on our list, Aquila, and Apollos. The former of these, a Jcav of Pontus by birth, was once, with his wife Priscilla, resident in Rome, but was found by St. Paul at Corinth on his first arrival there (Acts xviii. 2), having been compelled to quit the capital by a decree of Claudius. It is uncertain whether at that time he Avas a Christian ; but if not, he soon after became one by the companionship of the Apostle, who took up his abode, and wrought at their common trade of tent-making, Avith Aquila and Priscilla. After this, Aquila became a zealous forwarder of the Gospel. We find him (Acts xviii. 18) accompanying St. Paul to Ephesus, and in his company there when he A\n-ote 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. xvi. 19) : again at Rome when the Epistle to the Romans Avas written (Rom. xvi. 3) : at Ephesus again Avhen 2 Tim. Avas Avritten (2 Tim. iv. 19). 178. From these places it appears, that Aquila was a person of con- siderable importance among the brethren : that the church used to assemble in his house : that he and his wife Priscilla had exposed their lives for the Gospel's sake. And from Acts xviii. 26 aa^c find, that they were also well able to carry on the Avork of teaching, even with such a pupil as Apollos, Avho Avas mighty in the Scriptures. 180 § L] ITS AUTIIORSIIIP. [introduction. 179. It must be owned that these circumstances would constitute a fair prima facie case for Aquila, were it not for certain indications that he himself was rather the ready and zealous patron, than the teacher; and that this latter work, or a great share in it, seems to have belonged to his wife, Priscaor Priscilla. She is ever named with him, even Acts xviii. 26, where the instruction of Apollos is described: and not unfre- quently her name precedes his (Acts xviii. 18 ; Rom. xvi. 3 ; 2 Tim. iv. 19): an aiTangement so contrary to the custom of antiquity that some very sufficient reason must have existed for it. At all events, the grounds on which an hypothesis of Aquila's authorship of our Epistle would rest, must be purely of a negative kind, as far as personal capacity is concerned. And it does not appear that any, either in ancient or modern times, have fixed on him as its probable writer, 180. There is yet one name rem.aining, that of Apollos, in whom certainly more conditions meet than in any other man, both negative and positive, of the possible authorship of our Epistle. The language in which he is introduced in the Acts (xviii. 24) is very remarkable. He is there described as " a certain Jew, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, being mighty in the Scriptures." Every word here seems fitted to point him out as the person of whom we are in search. He is a Jew, born in Alexandria : here we have at once two great postulates fulfilled : here we at once might account for the Alexandrian language of the Epistle, and for the uniform use of the Septuagint version, mainly (if this be so) in its Alexandrian form. He is an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures. As we advance in the description, even minute coincidences seem to confirm our view that we are here at last on the right track. He is described as knowing only the baptis7n of John, but being more perfectly taught the way of the Lord by Aquila and Priscilla. No Avonder then that a person so instituted should specify the doctrine of baptisms as one of the components in the foundation of the Christian life (Heb. vi. 2). It is described as his characteristic, that he began to speak boldly in the synagogue : is it wonderful then that he, of all New Test, writers, should exhort. Cast not away your boldness of speech or confidence (Heb. x. 35), and (using the same word) declare to his readers that they were the house of Chi-ist if we hold fast our confidence (Heb. iii. 6)? 181. Nor, if we j^roceed to examine the further notices of him, does this first impression become weakened. In 1 Cor. i. — iv., we find him described by inference as most active and able, and only second to St, Paul himself in the church at Corinth. It would be difficult to selecl words which should more happily and exactly hit the relation of the Epistle to the Hebrews to the writings of St. Paul, than those of 1 Cor. iii. 6, " I planted, Apollos watered." And the eloquence and rhetorical richness of the style of Apollos seems to have been exactly that, wherein 181 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. his teaching iliffered from that of the Apostle. It is impossible to help feeling that the frequent renunciations, on St, Paul's part, of words of excellency or human wisdom, have reference, partly, it may be, to some exaggeration of Apollos' manner of teaching by his disciples, but also to some infirmity, in this direction, of that teacher himself. Compare especially 2 Cor. xi. 3. 182. It is just this difference in style and rhetorical character, which, in this case elevated and chastened by the informing and pervading Spirit, distinguishes the present Epistle to the Hebrews from those of the great Apostle himself. And, just as it was not easy to imagine either St. Luke, or Clement, or Barnabas, to have written such an Epistle, so now we feel, from all the characteristics given us of Apollos in the sacred narrative, that if he wrote at all, it would be an Epistle precisely of this kind, both in contents, and in style. 183. For as to the former of these, the contents and argument of the Epistle, we have a weighty indication furnished by the passage in the Acts: "For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, shewing by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." What words could more accurately desci'ibe, if not the very teaching itself, yet the opening of a course of argument likely, when the occasion offered, to lead to the teaching of our Epistle ? 184. Again, we seem to have found in Apollos just that degree of dependence on St. Paul which we require, combined with that degree of independence which the writer of our Epistle must have had. In- structed originally in the elements of the Christian faith by Aquila and Priscilla, he naturally received it in that form in which the Great Apostle of the Gentiles especially loved to put it forth. His career however of Christian teaching began and was carried on at Corinth, without the personal superintendence of St. Paul : his line of arguing with and convincing the Jews did not, as St. Paul's, proceed on the covenant of justification by faith made by God with Abraham, but took a different direction, that namely of the eternal High-priesthood of Jesus, and the all-sufficiency of His one Sacrifice. Faith indeed with him occupies a place fully as important as that assigned to it by St. Paul : he does not however dwell on it mainly as the instrument of our justification before God, but as the necessary condition of approach to Him, and of persistence in our place as partakers of the heavenly calling'. The * Tlio " tojwsiify" which occurs twenty-eight times in the Epistles of St. Paul, is not once found in tlic Epistle to the Hebrews : sind the citation from Hah. ii. 4, " the (or, any) just man shall live bi/ faith," though it forms the common starting-point for St. Paul, Rom. i. 17, and the Writer of our epistle, eh. x. 38, leads them in totally different directions : St. Paul, to unfold the doctrine of righteousness by faith ; our Writer, to celebrate the triumphs of the life of faith. 182 § I] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [INTKODUCTIOX toiicliiiig of this Epistle is not indeed in any particular inconsistent witli, but neitlier is it dependent on, tlie teaching of St. Paul's Epistles. 185. We may advance yet further in our estimate of the probahiiity of Apollos having writttii as we find the Author of this Epistle writing. The whole spirit of the First Epistle to the Corinthians shews us, that there had sprung up in the Corinthian church a rivalry between the two modes of teaching ; unaccompanied by, as it assuredly was not caused by, any rivalry between the teachers themselves, except in so far as was of necessity the case from the veiy variety of the manner of teaching. And while the one fact, of the rivalry between the teachings and their disciples, is undeniable, the other fact, that of absence of rivalry between the Teachers, is shewn in a very interesting manner. On the side of St. Paul, by his constant and honourable mention of Apollos as his second and helper : by Apollos, in the circumstance mentioned 1 Cor. xvi. 12, that St. Paul had exhorted him to accompany to Corinth the bearers of that Epistle, but that he could not prevail on him to go at that time : he only promised a future visit at some favourable opportunity. Here, if I mistake not, we see the generous confidence of the Apostle, wishing Apollos to go to Corinth and prove, in spite of what had there taken place, the unity of the two apostolic men in the faith : here too, which is important to our present subject, we have the self-denying modesty of Apollos, unwilling to incur even the chance of being set at the head of a party against the Apostle, or in any way to obtrude him- self personally, where St. Paul had sown the seed, now that there had grown up, on the part of some in that Church, a spirit of invidious per- sonal comparison between the two. 186. If we have interpreted aright this hint of the feeling of Apollos as regarded St. Paul ; if, as we may well suppose in one ^^ fervent in spirit" such a feeling was deeply implanted and continued to actuate him, — what more likely to have given rise to the semi-anonymous cha- racter of our present Epistle ? He has no reason for strict concealment of himself, but he has a strong reason for not putting himself promi- nently forward. He does not open with announcing his name, or sending a blessing in his own person : but neither does he write throughout as one who means to be unknown : and among the personal notices at the end he makes no secret of circumstances and connexions, which would be unintelligible, unless the readers were going along with a writer personally known to them. And thus the tAVO-sided phoenomcna of our Epistle, utterly inexplicable as they have ever been on the hypo- thesis of Pauline authorship or superintendence, would receive a satis- factory explanation. 187. It will be plainly out of place to object, that this explanation would only hold, on the hypothesis that our Epistle Avas addressed to the Jews at Corinth. The same spirit of modest self-abnegation would Vol. II. Part II.— 183 u INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [ch. xv. liardly, after such an indication of it, be wanting in Apollos, to -what- ever church he was writing. But I reserve it for the next section to enquire how far this view is confirmed or imjingned by our conchision as to the church to which the Epistle was, in all probability, originally aldresscd *, 188. The history of the hypothesis that Apollos was the author of our Epistle, has been given by implication, from the time of Luther, its apparent originator, above in parr. 98 — 108. It may be convenient to give liere, in one conspectus, the principal names in its favour : Luther, Osiander, Le Clerc, Heumann (1711), Lorenz Miiller (1717), Semler, Ziegler, Dindorf, Bleek, Tholuck, Credner, Reuss, the R.-Catbolics Feilmoser and Lutterbeck (the latter with this modification, that he believes St. Paul to have written the 9 last verses, and the rest to have been composed by Apollos in union with St. Luke, Clement, and other companions of the Apostle), — De Wette, Liiuemann. 189. The objection which is commonly set against these probabilities is, that we have no ecclesiastical tradition pointing to Apollos : that it is unreasonable to suppose that the church to which the Epistle was sent should altogether have lost all trace of the name of an author who must have been personally known to them. This has been strongly urged, and by some, e. g. Mr. Forster, regarded as a ground for attempt- ing to laugh to scorn the hypothesis, as altogether unworthy of serious consideration'. 190. But if any student has carefully followed the earlier paragraphs of this section, he will be fully prepared to meet such an objection, and will not be deterred from the humble search after truth by such scorn. He will remember how we shewed the failure of every attempt to establish a satisfactory footing for any view of the authorship as being the tradition of the church : and proved that, with regard to any re- search into the subject, we of this day approach it as those of old did in their day, with full liberty to judge from the data furnished by the Epistle itself. 191. And he will also bear in mind, that the day is happily passing away with Biblical -m-iters and students, when the strong language of those, who were safe in the shelter of a long-prescribed and approved opinion, could deter any from humble and faithful research into the various phenomena of God's word itself: when the confession of having found insoluble diflBculties was supposed to indicate unsound- ness of faith, and the recognition of discrepancies was regarded as affecting the belief of divine inspiration. We have at last in this country begun to learn, that Holy Scripture shrinks not from any tests, « See below, § ii. par. 36. 7 Apostolical authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews, preface, pp ix x 184 §. II.] FOR WHAT READERS WRITTEN, [intuoduction however severe, aud requires not auy artificial defences, however ajjpa- rendy expedient. SECTION II. FOR WHAT READERS IT WAS WRITTEN. 1. That the book before us is an Epistle, not a homily or treatise, is too plain to require more than a passing assertion. Its personal and circumstantial notices are inseparable from it, and the language is throughout epistolary, as far as the nature of the subject would permit. 2. And it is almost equally plain, that it is an Epistle addressed to Jud^o-Christians, The attempt to dispute this must be regarded rather as a curiosity of literature, than as worthy of serious attention. The evidence of the Mdiole Epistle goes to show, that the readers had been Jews, and were in danger of apostatizing back into Judaism again. Not a syllable is found of allusions to their conversion from the aliena- tion of heathenism, such as frequently occur in St. Paul's Epistles : but every where their original covenant state is assumed, and the fact of that covenant having been amplified and superseded by a better one is insisted on. 3. If then it was written to Judaso-Christians, on whom are we to think as its intended recipients ? 4. Was it addressed to the lohole body of such converts throughout the world ? This view has found some few respectable names to defend it. But it cannot be seriously entertainotl. The Epistle assumes through- out a local habitation, and a peculiar combination of circumstances, for those who are addressed : and concludes, not only with greetings from " those from Italy, ^' but with au expressed intention of the Writer to visit those addressed, in company with Timotheus; which would be impossible on this oecumenical hypothesis. 5. If then we are to choose some one church, the first occurring to us is the mother church at Jerusalem, perhaps united with the daughter churches in Palestine. And this, in one form or other, has been the usual opinion : countenanced by many phajnomeua in the Epistle itself. At and near Jerusalem, it is urged, a) would that attachment to the temple- worship be found which seems to be assumed on the part of the readers : there again b) were the only examples of churches almost purely Judaic in their composition : there only c) would such allusions as that to going forth to suffer with Christ " loithout the gate" (ch. xiii. 12), be under- stood and appreciated. 6. But these arguments are by no means weighty, much less decisive. For a) we do not find any signs in our Epistle that its readers were to be persons who had the temple-service before their eyes ; the Writer 185 n 2 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. refers much more to his Septuagint, than to any existing practices : and men with their Bibles in their liands might well have been thus addressed, even if they had never witnessed the actual ceremonies themselves. Besides which, allJews were supposed to be included in the temple-rites, wherever dwelling, and would doubtless be quite as familiar with them as there can be any reason here for assuming. And again, even granting the ground of the argument, its inference is not necessary, for there was another Jewish temple at Leontopolis in Egypt, wherein the Mosaic ordinances were observed. 7. With regard to b), it may well be answered, that such an exclu- sively Jewish church, as would be found in Palestine only, is not required for the purposes of our Epistle. It is beyond question that the Epistle of St. James was written to Jewish Christian converts ; yet it is expressly addressed to the dispersion outside Palestine, who must every where have been mingled with their Gentile brethren. Besides, it hag been well remarked ^, that the Epistle itself leads to no such assumption of an exclusively Jewish church. It might have been sent to a church in which both Jews and Gentiles were mingled, to find its own readers : and such an idea is countenanced by the exhortation, ch. xiii. 13, compared with the words '■'■ not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together" ch. X. 25. It has been well shown by Riehm, that our Writer's whole pro- cedure as concerns Gentile Christians can only be accounted for by his regarding the Jewish people — see ch. ii. 17, iv. 9, xiii. 12, ii. 16, — as the primary stock, into which' all other men were to be engrafted for the purposes of salvation : as a theocratic rather than a physical develop- ment. For that the Lord Jesus tasted death on behalf of every man, is as undeniably his doctrine. 8. The argument c) is evidently not decisive. Wherever there were Jews, priding themselves on their own nationality, and acquainted with the facts of our Lord's death, such an exhortation might be used. The type is derived from the usage of the tabernacle ; the antitype, from a known historical fact : the exhortation is, as explained by Theodoret (see note on ch. xiii. 13), to come forth out of the then legal polity of Judaism, content to bear the reproach accruing in consequence : all of which would be as applicable any where, as in Palestine, or at Jerusalem. 9. There seems then to be at least no necessity for adopting Jerusalem or Palestine as containing the readers to whom our Epistle was addressed. But on the other hand there are reasons against such an hypothesis, of more or less weight. These I will state, not in order of their importance, but as they most naturally occur 8 By Holzmann, in an article in the Studien uiul Kritikon, 1859, part ii.; to which I have been indebted for several suggestions on this part of my subject. 186 § II.] FOR WHAT READERS WRITTEN, [introduction. 10. The language and style of our Epistlo, if it was addressed to Jews in Jerusalem or Palestine, is surely unaccountable. For, although Greek Avas commonly spoken iu Palestine, yet on the one hand nc writer who wished to obtain a favourable hearing with Jews there on matters regarding their own religion, would choose Greek as the medium of his communication (compare Acts xxii. 2). And the gospel of St. Matthew is no case iu point : for whatever judgment we may form respecting the original language of our present gospel, there can be no doubt that the apostolic oral teaching, on which our first three gospels are founded, was originally extant in Aramaic : whereas it is impossible to suppose the Epistle to the Hebrews a translation, or originally extant in any other tongue than Greek. And, on the other hand, not only is our Epistle Greek, but it is such Greek, as necessarily presup- poses some acquaintance with literature, some practice not merely in the colloquial, but in the scholastic Greek of the day. And this surely was as far as possible from being the case with the churches of Jerusalem and Palestine. 11. A weighty pendant to the same objection is found in the unvary- ing use of the Septuagint Greek version by our Writer, even, as in ch. i. 6, ii. 7, X. 5, where it differs from the Hebrew text. " How astonishing is this circumstance," says Wieselcr, " if he was writing to inhabitants of Palestine, with whom that version had no authority ! " 12. Another objection is, that it is not possible to conceive either of St. Paul himself or of any of his companions, that they should have stood iu such a relation to the Jerusalem or Pali stiue churches, as we find subsisting between the Writer of our Epistle and his readers. To sup- pose such a relation in the case of the Apostlt himself, is to cut oui'selves loose from all the revealed facts of his course, and sujjpose a totally new mind to have sprung up in Jerusalem towards him. And least of all bis companions could such a relation have subsisted in the case of Apollos and Timotheus ; at least for many years, far moro than history will allow, after the speech of St. James in Acts xxi. 2C. 13. Connected with this last difficulty would be the impossibility, on the hypothesis now in question, of giving any satisfactory meaning to the notice in ch. xiii. 24, They from Italy salute you. If the Writer was, as often supposed, in Rome, how unnatural to specify the Jews residing there by this name ! if in Italy, how unnatural again that he should send greeting from Christian Jews so widely scattered, thereby depriving the salutation of all reality ! If again he was not in Rome nor in Italy, what reason can be suggested for his sending an especial salutation to Jews in Palestine from some present with him Avho happened to be from Italy ? The former of these three supposi- tions is perhaps the least unlikely : but the least unlikely, how unlikely ! 187 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [cii. xv 14. Again, the historical notices in our Epistle do not fit the hypo- thesis in question. The great notice of ch. ii. 3, would be strictly true of any church rather than that of Jerusalem, or those in Palestine generally. At any date that can reasonably be assigned for our Epistle (see below, § iii.), there must have been many living in those churches, who had heard the Lord for themselves. And though it may be said that they had, properly speaking, received tha tidings of salvation from those that heard Him, yet such a body, among whom Jesus Himself had lived and moved in the flesh, would surely not be one of which to predicate the words in the text so simply and directly. Rather should we look for one of which they might be from the first and without controversy true. 15. Another historical notice is found ch. vi. 10, who have ministered to the saiats, and do minister, which would be less applicable to the churches of Jerusalem and Palestine, than to any others. For it was they who were the objects, not the subjects of this ministration, through- out the ministry of St. Paul : and certainly from what we know of their history, their situation did not improve after that Apostle's death. This ^^ ministration for the saints'" was a duty enjoined by him on the churches of Galatia (1 Cor. xvi. 1 ; Rom. xv. 26), Macedonia, and Achaia, and doubtless by implication on other churches also (see Rom. xii. 13) : the saints being the poor believers at Jerusalem. And though, as has been replied to this, some of the Jerusalem Christians may have been wealthy, and able to assist their poorer brethren, yet we must notice that the ministration here is predicated not of some among them, but of the church, as such, in general : which could not be said of the church in Jerusalem. 16. There are some notices, on which no sti'ess can be laid either way, as for, or as against, the claim of the Jerusalem church. Such are, that found ch. xii. 4, which in the note there we have seen reason to apply rather to the figure there made use of, than to any concrete fact assign- able in history : and that in ch. v. 12, which manifestly must not be taken to imply that no teachers had at that time proceeded from the particular church addressed, but that its members in general were behind what might have been expected of them in spiritual knowledge. 17. It may again be urged, that the absence, no less than the presence of historical allusions, makes against the hypothesis. If the Epistle were addressed to the church at Jerusalem, it seems strange that no allusion should be made in it to the fact that our Lord Himself had lived and taught among them in the flesh, had before their eyes suffered death on the Cross, had found among them the first witnesses of Ills Resur- rection and Ascension. 18. If then wc cannot fit our Ejjistle to the very widely spread assumption that it was addressed to the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem and Palestine, we must obviously put to the test, in search of its original 188 § II.] FOR WHAT READERS WRITTEN, [intkoduction. readers, the various other churches which came withiu the working of St. Paul and his companions. Of many of these, which have in turn become the subjects of hypotheses, it is hardly necessary to give more than a list. Wall believed the Epistle to have been written to the Hebrew Christians of Proconsular Asia, Macedonia, and Greece : Sir J. Newton, Ijolten, and Bengel, to Jews who had left Jerusalem on account of the war, and were settled in Asia Minor : Credner, to those in Lycaonia : Storr, Mynster, and Rinck, to those in Galatia ; Lyra and Ludwig, to those in Spain : Semler and Nosselt, to those in Thessalonica : Bohme, to those in Antioch : Stein, to those in Laodicea (see the citation from Philastrius in § i. 65, and note) ; Roth, to those in Antioch : Baum- garten-Crusius, to those at Ephesus and Colossae. 19. Several of these set out with the assumption of a Pauline author- ship ; and none of them seems to fulfil satisfactorily any of the main conditions of our problem. If it was to any one of these bodies of Jews that the Epistle was addressed, we know so little about any one of them, that the holding of such an opinion on our part can only be founded on the vaguest and wildest conjecture. To use arguments against such hypotheses, would be to fight with mere shadows. 20. But there are three churches yet remaining which will require more detailed discussion : Corinth, Alexandria, and Rome. The reason for including the former of these in this list, rather than in the other, is, that on the view that ApoUos was the Writer, the church in which he so long and so effectively laboured, seems to have a claim to be considered. 21. But the circtmistances of the Jewish portion of the church at Corinth were not such as to justify such an hypothesis. It does not appear to have been of sufficient importance in point of numbers : nor can the assertion that it was confirmed to us by those that heard [Him], of ch. ii. 3, have been assorted of them, seeing that they owed their conversion to the ministry of St. Paul. 22. Alexandria is maintained by Schmidt and Wieseler to have been the original destination of the Epistle. There, it is urged, were the greatest number of resident Jews, next to Jerusalem : there, at Leon- topolis in Egypt, was another temple, with the arrangements of which the notices in our Epistle more nearly correspond than with those in Jerusalem : from thence the Epistle appears first to have come forth to the knowledge of the church. Add to which, the canon of Muratori (see above, § i. par. 31) speaks of an Epistle to the Alexandrines, which may probably designate our present Epistle. Besides all this, the Alexandrine character of the language, and treatment of subjects in the Epistle, and manner of citation, are urged, as pointing to Alexandrine readers. 23. And doubtless there is some weight in these considerations : 189 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. enougli, in the mere balance of probabilities, to cause us to place this hypothesis far before all others which have as yet been treated. Still there are some circumstances to be taken into account, which rather weaken its probability. One of these is that, various as are the notices of the Epistle fiom early Alexandrine writers, we find no hint of its having been addressed to their own church, no certain tradition con- cerning its author. Another arises from the absence of all positive history of the church there in apostolic times, by which we might try, and verify, the few historic notices occurring in the Epistle. Indeed as far as the more personal of those notices are concerned, the same objections lie against Alexandria, as have before been urged against Palestine : the difficulty of assigning a reason for the salutation from those from Italy, and of imagining, within the limits which must be set to the date of the Epistle, any such relation of Timotheus to the readers, as is supposed in ch. xiii. 23. 24. These objections would lead us, at all events, to pass on to the end of our list befoi'e we attempt to pronounce on the preponderance of probability, and take into consideration the claims of Eome herself. These were in part put forward by Wetstein, and have recently been urged in Holzmann's article in the Studien u. Kritiken for 1859. 25. They may be briefly explained to be these : 1) The fact of the church at Rome being just such an one, in its oi'igin and composition, as this Epistle seems to presuppose. It has been already seen (par. 7) that when, as we are compelled, we give up the idea of its having been addressed to a church exclusively consisting of Jud^eo- Christians, we necessarily are referred to one in which the Jewish believers formed a considerable portion, and that the primary stock and nucleus, of the church. Now this seems to have been the case at Rome, from the indi- cations furnished us in the Epistle to the Romans. " The Jew first, and also the Gentile," is a note frequently struck in that Epistle ; and the Church at Rome seems to be the only one of those with which St. Paul had been concerned, which would entirely answer to such a description. 26. 2) The great key to the present question, the historical notice, ch. ii. 3, fits exceedingly well the circumstances of the church of Rome. That chiu'ch had arisen, not from the preaching of any Apostle among them, but from a confluence of primitive believers, the first having arrived there probably not long after our Lord's Ascension : see Acts ii. 10. In Rom. i. 8, written in all probability in the year 58 a.d., St. Paul states, " Your faith is spoken of in the whole world:" and in xvi. 19, " Tour obedience hath come unto all men: " the inferences from which, and their proper limitation, I have discussed in the Introd. to that Epistle. And in Rom. xvi. 7, we find a salutation to Andronicus and Junias, Jews (see note there), " who are of note among the Apostles, 190 § II.] FOR WHAT READERS WRITTEN. Lintroductiox. who also ivere in Christ before ??ie." So that here wc have a church, the only one of all those with which St. Paul and his companions wore concciiuHl, of wliii'h it could bo said, that the Gospel was confirmed to us by them that heard [Ilim] : the Apostle himself not having arrived there till long after such confinnation had taken place. 27. Again 3) it was in Rome, and Rome principally, that Jiidaistic Christianity took its further development and forms of error : it was there, not in Jerusalem and Palestine, that at this time the various and strange doctrines, against which the readers are warned, ch. xiii. 9, were springing up. " As soon as the gloom of the earliest history begins to clear a little, Ave find face to face at Rome Valentinians and Marcionites, Praxeas and the Montanists (Proclus), Hegesippus and the Elcesaites, Justin, and Polycarp. Here it was that there arose in the second half of the 2nd century the completest exposition of theosophic Judaism, the Clementines, the literary memorial of a manoeuvre which had for its aim the absorption of the whole Roman Church into Judaso- Christianity "." We have glimpses of the beginning of this state of Judaistic development even in St. Paul's lifetime, at two distinct periods ; when he wrote the Epistle to the Romans, about a.d. 58, compare Rom. xiv. xv. to ver. 13, — and later, in that to the Philippians, about A.D. 63 (see Introd. to that Epistle); and Phil. i. 14 — 17: again in the bitterness conveyed in " beware of the concision" and the following verses, Phil. iii. 2 ff. 28. It is also to be remarked 4) that the personal notices found in our Epistle agree remarkably Avell with the hypothesis that it Avas addressed to the Church at Rome. The information respecting Timo- theus could not come amiss to those who had been addressed in the words, " Timotheus my fellow-worker saluteth you,^^ Rom. xvi. 21; who had been accustomed to the companionship o£ " Paul and Timotheus" among them, Phil. i. 1; Col. i. 1; Philem. 1: and the words, they from Italy salute you, of ch. xiii. 24, receive a far more likely interpretation than that conceded as possible above, § i. par. 126, if we believe the Writer to be addressing his Epistle from some place where were present Avith him Christians from Italy, AA'ho Avould be desirous of sending greet- ing to their brethren at home. If he Avas Avriting e. g. at Alexandria, or at Ephesus, or at Corinth, such a salutation would be very natural. And thus we should be giving to the phrase they from its most usual New Test, meaning, of persons Avho have come from the place indicated : see Matt. XV. i ; Acts vi. 9 ; x. 23. Ea^cu Bleek, who holds our Epistle to have been addressed to the church in Palestine, takes this view, and assigns as its place of Avriting, Ephesus or Corinth. But then, what sense would it have, to send greeting to Palestine from they from Italy? • Holzmann. 191 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [en. xv. 29. Another set of important notices whicli tliis hypothesis will illustrate is found, where past persecution, and the death of eminent men in the church, are alluded to. These have ever presented, on the Palestine view, considerable difficulties. Any assignment of them to known historical occurrences would put them far too early for any probable date of our Epistle : and it has been felt that the deaths by martyrdom of St. Stephen, St, James the Great, and the like, were far from satisfying the expression, the decease of your leaders, which they were commanded to imitate : and though the time during which the Epistle must have reached Jerusalem was indeed one of great and unexampled trouble and disorganization, we know of no general per- secution of Christians as such, since that which arose on account of Stephen, which was hardly likely to have been in the Writer's mind. 30. But on the Roman hypothesis, these passages are easily explained. About 49 or 50, Claudius, as Suetonius tells ns, " expelled from Rome the Jews, who were continually stirring up tumults under the instigation of Chrestus." This time may well be alluded to by the expression, remember the former days, in ch. x. 32 ; for under the blundering expression, " at the instigation of Chrestus" it is impossible not to recognize troubles sprung from the rising of the Jews against the Christian converts. Thus also will the fact of the sympathy with pri- soners receive a natural interpretation, as imprisonments and trials would necessarily have accompanied these " continual tumults," before the final step of expulsion took place : and the taking with joy the spoiling of their goods may be easily understood, either as a result of the tumults themselves, or of the expulsion, in which they had occasion to test their knowledge that they had for themselves a better and abiding possession. 31. It is true there are some particulars connected with this passage, which do not seem so well to fit that earlier time of trouble, as the Neronian persecution nearly fifteen years after. The only objection to taking that event as the one referred to, would be the expression the former days, and the implication conveyed in the assertion, that they then suffered affliction after they were enlightened : considering that we cannot go beyond the destruction of Jerusalem, at the latest eight years after, for the date of our Epistle. Still it is not impossible that both these expressions might be used. A time of great peril passed away might be thus alluded to, even at the distance of five or six years: and it might well be, that the majority of the Roman Jewish Christians had become converts during the immediately preceding imprisonment «f St. Paul, and by his means. 32. On this supposition, still more light is thrown on this passage, and on the general tenor of the martyrology in the eleventh chapter. 192 § 11 ] FOR WHAT READERS WRITTEN. [ixTnonucTioN. Tims the great fight of afflictions is fully justified : thus, the being made a spectacle of in reproaches and tribulations, which finds almost an echo in the expression of Tacitus, that mockery was added to the sufferings of the dying Christians, and is so exactly in accord, when literally taken, with the cruel exposures and deaths in the circus. The prisoners and the spoiling too, on this supposition, would be matters of course. And I own, notwithstanding the objection stated above, that all this seems to fit the great Neronian persecution, and in the fullest sense, tliat only. 33. To that period also may we refer the notice in ch. xiii. 7 ; " Remember your leaders, Avho spoke to you the word of God, of whom regarding the end of their conversation, imitate their faith." It may be indeed, that this refers simply to a natural death in the faith of Christ : but it is far more probable, from the terms used, that it points to death by martyrdom : faith having been so strongly illustrated in ch. xi., as bearing up under torments and death. 34. On this hypothesis, several other matters seem also to fall into place. The setting at liberty of Timotheus may well refer to the termination of some imprisonment of Timotheus consequent upon the Neronian persecution, from Avhich peihaps the death of the tyrant liberated him. Where this imprisonment took place, must be wholly uncertain. I shall speak of the conjectural probabilities of the place indicated by the words if he come shortly, when I come to treat of the time and place of writing ^ 35. The use evidently made in our Epistle of the Epistle to the Romans, above all other of St. Paul's ^ will thus also be satisfactorily accounted for. Not only was the same church addressed, but the Writer had especially before him the matter and language of that Epistle, which was written in all probability from Corinth, the scene of the labours of Paul and Apollos. 36. The sort of semi-anonymous character of our Epistle, already treated of when we ascribed the authorship to Apollos, will also come in here, as singularly in accord with the circumstances of the case, and with the subsequent tradition as regards the Epistle, in case it was addressed to the church in Rome. Supposing, as we have gathered ' See below, § iii. par. 4. » This has been noticed by many; and may be established by consulting those Commentators and writers, who have drawn up tables of verbal coincidence with a view of proving the Pauline authorship. There is reason for thinking that the peculiar form of the quotation, " Vengeance is mine, I will repay," in ch. x. 30, agreeing neither with the Hebrew text of Deut. xxxii. 35, nor with the Scptuiigint version there, is owing to its having been taken direct from Rom. xii. 19. And the whole form of exhortation in our ch. xiii. 1 — 6, reminds us forcibly of that in Rom. xii. 1 — 21. Sec also Rom. xiv. 17, as compared with Ileb. xiii. 9, in § iv. par. 1, note. 193 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [oh. xv. from the notices of Apollos in 1 Cor., that he modestly shrunk from being thought to put himself into rivalry with St. Paul, and that after the death of the Apostle he found it necessary to write such an Epistle as this to the Church in the metropolis, what more likely step would he take with regard to his own name and personality in it, than just that which we find has been taken : viz., so to conceal these, as to keep them from having any prominence, while by A^arious minute personal notices he prevents the concealment from being complete ? And with regard to the relation evidently subsisting between the Writer and his readers, all we can say is that, in defect of positive knowledge on this head connecting Apollos with the church at Rome, it is evidently in the metro- polis, of all places, where such a relation may most safely be assumed. There a teacher, whose native place was Alexandria, and who had tra- velled to Ephesus and Corinth, was pretty sure to have been : there many of his Christian friends would be found : there alone, in the absence of positive testimony, could we venture to place such a cycle of dwelling and teaching, as would justify the expression, restored to you, of our ch. xiii. 19: in the place whither was a general confluence of all, and Avhere there is ample room for such a course after the decease of St. Paul. 37. And what more likely fate to befall the Epistle in this respect, than just that which did befall it in the Roman Church : viz., that while in that church, and by a contemporary of Apollos, Clement, w^e find the first use made of our Epistle, and that the most familiar and copious use, — its words are never formally cited, nor is any author's name attached ? And was not this especially likely to be the case, as Clement was writing to the Corinthians, the very church where the danger had arisen of a rivalry between the fautors of the two teachers ? 38. And as time goes on, the evidence for this hypothesis seems to gather strength, in the nature of the traditions respecting the authorship of our Epistle. While in Africa and the East they are most various and inconsistent with one another, and the notion of a Pauline origin is soon suggested, and gains rapid acceptance, it is in the church of Rome alone, and among those influenced by her, that we find an ever steady and unvarying assertion, that it was not tvritten hy St. Paul. By whom it was written, none ventured to say. How weighty the reasons may have been, which induced silence on this point, we have now lost the power of appreciating. The fact only is important for us, that the few personal notices which occur in it were in course of time overborne, as indications of its author, by the prevalent anonymous character : and that the same church which possessed as its heritage the most illustrious of St. Paul's own epistles, was ever unanimous in disclaiming, on the part of the Apostle of the Gentiles, the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 194 § III.] TIME AND PLACE OF WRITING, [introduction. 39. The result of the above enquiry may bo shortly stated. As tlio current of popular opinion in the church has gradually set in towards the Pauline authorship, inferring that a document at first sight so Pauline must have proceeded from the Apostle himself : so has it also set in towards the church at Jerusalem as the original readers, inferring that the title, to the Hebrews, must be thus interpreted. But as in the one case, so in the other, the general popular opinion does not bear examination. As the phasnomena of the Epistle do not bear out the idea of the Pauline authorship, so neither do they that of being addressed to the Palestine churches. And as in the other case there is one man, when we come to search and conjecture, pointed out as most likely to have -written the Epistle, so here, when we pursue the same process, there is one place pointed out, to which it seems most likely to have been addressed. At Rome, such a Church existed as is indicated in it : at Rome, above all other places, its personal and historical notices are satisfied : at Rome, we find it first used : at Rome only, is there an unanimous and unvarying negative tradition regarding its authorship. To Rome then, until stronger evidence is adduced, we believe it to have bfccn originally written. SECTION III. TIME AND PLACE OF WRITING. 1. Almost all Commentators agree in believing that our Epistle was written before the destruction of Jerusalem. And rightly: for if that great break-up of the Jewish polity and religious worship had occurred, we may fairly infer, that some mention of such an event would have been found in an argument, the scope of which is to shew the transitoriness of the Jewish priesthood and the Levitical ceremonies. It would be inconceivable, that such an Epistle should be addressed to Jews after their city and temple had ceased to exist, 2. This then being assumed, as our later limit, i. e. a.d. 70, or at the latest assigned date, 72, it remains to seek for an earlier limit. Such would appear to me to be fixed by the death of St. Paul : but inasmuch as 1) this would not be recognized either by the advocates of the Pauline authorship, or by those who believe that the Epistle, though possibly written by another, was superintended by the Apostle, and seeing 2) that the date of that event itself is wholly uncertain, it will be necessary to look elsewhere for some indication. And the onljt traces of one will, I conceive, be found by combining several hints fur- nished by the Epistle. Such are, a) that the frst generation, of those who had seen and heard the Lord, was at all events nearly ^yassed 195 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. away : b) that the first leaders of the church had died, probably under the persecution elsewhere alluded to : c) that Timotheus had been im- prisoned, and was then set free, probably in connexion with that same persecution. If these notices are to be taken, as maintained above (§ ii. par. 31 ff.), to apply to the Neronian persecution, then the Epistle cannot have been written till some considerable time after that, in order to justify the expression, remember tlie former days, of our eh. X. 32. Now that persecution broke out in 64, and lasted four years, i.e. till Nero's death in 68. And I may notice, that even those who are far from adopting the views here advocated as to the Author and readers of the Epistle, yet consider, that the liberation of Timotheus may well have been connected with the cessation of the Neronian persecution. 3. If we follow these indications, we shall get the year 6S as our earlier limit, and the time of writing the Epistle will be 68 — 70, i.e. during the siege of Jerusalem by the armies of Titus, to which we may perhaps discern an allusion in ch. xiii. 14, for we have here no abiding city, but we seek one to come. 4. With regard to the place of writing, we are almost entirely in the dark. Taking the usual New Test, sense, above maintained, for those from Italy, — " persons whose home is in Italy, but who are now here," — it cannot have been written in Italy. Nor is Apollos (for when we are left, as now, to the merest conjecture, it is necessary to shape our course by assuming our own hyjDOthesis) likely, after what had happened, again to be found fixed at Corinth. Jerusalem, aud indeed Palestine, would be precluded by the Jewish war then raging ; Ephesus is possible, and would be a not unlikely resort of Timotheus after his liberation (ch. xiii. 23), as also of Apollos at any time (Acts xviii. 24) : Alexandria, the native place of Apollos, is also possible, though the words if he come shortly, applied to Timotheus, would not so easily fit it, as on his libe- ration he would be more likely to go to some parts Avith which he was familiar than to Alexandria where he was a stranger. In both these cities there may well have been persons from Italy sojourning : and this very phrase seems to point to some place of considerable resort. On the whole then, I should incline to Ephesus, as the most probable place of writing : but it must be remembered that on this head all is in the realm of the vaguest conjecture. SECTION IV. t OCCASION, OBJECT OF WRITING, AND CONTENTS. 1. The occasion which prompted this Epistle evidently was, the enmity of the Jews to the Gospel of Christ, which had brought a 196 § IV.] OCCASION, OBJECT OF WRITING, &c. [introductiox. double danger on the church : on the one hand that of persecution, on the other that of apostasy. Between these lay another, that of mnigling with a certain recognition of Jesus as the Christ, a leaning to Jewish practices and valuing of Jewish ordinances. But this latter does not so much appear in our Epistle, as in those othei's which were written l^y St. Paul to mixed churches ; those to the Romans ^ the Galatians, the Colossians. The principal peril to which Jewish converts were exposed, especially after they had lost the guidance of the Apostles themselves in their various churches, was, that of falling back from the despised Ibllowing of Jesus of Nazareth into the more compact and apparently safer system of their childhood, which moreover they saw tolerated as a lawful religion, while their own was outcast and proscribed. 2. The object then of this Epistle is, to shew them the superiority of the Gospel to the former covenant : and that mainly by exhibiting, from the Scriptures, and from the nature of the case, the superiority of Jesus Himself to both the messengers and the High Priests of that former covenant. This is the main argument of the Epistle, filled out and illusti'ated by various corollaries springing out of its diffei'ent parts, and expanding in the directions of encouragement, warning, and illus- tration. 3. This argument is entered on at once without introduction in ch. i., where Christ's superiority to the angels, the mediators of the old cove- nant, is demonstrated from Scripture. Then, having interposed (ii. 1 — 4) a caution on the greater necessity of taking heed to the things which they had heard, the Writer shews (ii. 5 — 18) why He to whom, and not to the angels, the future world is subjected, yet was made lower than the angels : viz. that He might become our merciful and faithful High Priest, to deliver and to save us, Himself having undergone temptation like ourselves. 4. Having mentioned this title of Christ, he goes back, and prepares the way for its fuller treatment, by a comparison of Him with Moses (iii. 1 — 6), and a shewing that that antitypical rest of God, from which unbelief excludes, was not the rest of the seventh day, nor that of the possession of Canaan, but one yet reserved for the people of God (iii. 7 — iv. 10), into which we must all the more strive to enter, because the Avord of our God is keen and searching in judgment, and nothing hidden from His sight, with whom we have to do (iv. 11 — 13). 5. He now resimies the main consideration of his great subject, the ' One remarkable trace we have of allusion to this form of error, — in its further development, as appears by the verdict of past experience which is appended, but other- wise singularly resembling a passage in the Epistle to the Romans (xiv. 17), in our ch. xiii. 9, "For it is good that the heart be established with grace, not with meats, by which they were not profited who tvalked in them." 197 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. High Priesthood of Christ, with a hortfitorj note of passage (iv. 14 — 16). This subject he pursues through the whole middle portion of the Epistle (v. 1 — X. 18), treating it in its various aspects and requirements. Of these we have (v. 1 — 10) the conditions of High Priesthood: (v. 11 — vi. 20) a digression complaining, with reference to the difficult subject of the Melchisedsk-priesthood, of their low state of spiritual attainment, Avarning them of the necessity of progress, but encouraging them by God's faithfulness: (vii. 1 — x. 18) the priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchisedek, in its distinction from the Levitical priesthood (see the various steps set forth in the headings in the commentary), as perpetual, — as superior, in that Abraham acknowledged himself inferior to Melchisedek, — as having power of endless life, — as constituted with an oath, — as living for ever, — as without sin, — as belonging to the heavenly sanctuary, and to a covenant promised by God Himself : — as consisting in better ministrations, able to purify the conscience itself, and to put away sin by the one Sacrifice of the Son of God. 6. Having thus completed his main argument, he devotes the con- cluding portion (x. 19 — xiii. 25) to a series of solemn exhortations to endurance in confidence and patience, and illustrations of that faith, on which both must be founded. In x. 19 — 39, we have exhortation and warning deduced from the facts lately proved, our access to the heavenly place, and our having a great High Priest over the house of God : then by the Pauline citation the (or, my) just man shall live by faith, a transition note is struck to ch. xi. which entirely consists in a panegyric of faith and a recounting of its triumphs : on a review of which the exhortation to run the race set before us, and endure chastisement, is again taken up, ch. xii. And the same hortatory strain is pursued to the end of the Epistle ; the glorious privileges of the Christian cove- nant being held forth, and the awful peril of forfeiting them by apostasy ; — and those graces, and active virtues, and that stedfastness in suffering shame, being enjoined, which are necessary to the following and imitation of Jesus Christ. The valedictory prayer (xiii. 20, 21), and one or two personal notices and greetings, conclude the whole. SECTION V. LANGUAGE AND STYLE. 1. Something has already been said, in the previous enquiry into the authorship of our Epistle, respecting the question of its original lan- guage*. There also the principal passages of the Fathers will be found which bear on this subject. They may be thus briefly summed up : * See above, § i. par. 1 19. 198 § v.] LANGUAGE AND STYLE. [intuoduction. 2. The idea of a Hebrew original is found in Clement of Alexandria (cited above, § i. par. 14), in Eusebius (ib. par. 48), Jerome, Theodoret, Euthalius (above, § i. par. 46), Primasius, John Damascenus, CEcume- nius, Theopbylact, — in Cosmas Indicopleustes, — in Ehabaniis Maurus, — in Thomas Aquinas ; in some modern writers, especially Hallet, in an enquiry into the author and language of the Epistle, appended to Peirce's Commentary (1742), and Michaelis. 3. Still such an apparently formidable array of ancient testimony is not to be taken as such, without some consideration. Clement's assertion of a Hebrew original is not reproduced by his scholar Origen, but on the contraiy a Greek original is presupposed by his very words (above, § i. par. 19), And this his divergence from Clement of Alexandria is not easy to explain, if he had regarded him as giving matter of history, and not rather a conjecture of hig own. Indeed, the passage of Clement seems to bear this latter on the face of it : for it connects the similarity of style between this Epistle and the Acts with the notion of St. Luke being its translator. If we might venture to fill up the steps by which the inference came about, they would be nearly these : " The Epistle must be St. Paul's. But St. Paul was a Hebrew, and was writing to Hebrews : how then do we find the Epistle iu Greek, not unlike in style to that of the Acts of the Apostles ? What, if the writer of the Greek of that book were also the writer of the Greek of this, — and St. Paul, as was to be supposed, wrote as a Hebrew to the Hebrews, in Hebrew, St. Luke translating into Greek?" 4. Again, Eusebius is not consistent in this matter with himself. In another place he clearly implies that the Epistle was written in Greek. And such has been the opinion of almost all the moderns: of all, we may safely say, who have handled the subject impartially and intelligently. The reasons for this now generally received opinion are mainly found in the style of the Epistle, which is the most purely Greek of all the writings of the New Test.: so that it would be violating all probability to imagine it a translation from a language of entirely different rhetorical character. The construction of the periods is such, in distinction from the character, in this particular, of the Oriental languages, that if it is a translation, the whole argumentation of the original must have been broken up into its original elements of thought, and all its connecting links recast ; so that it would not be so much a translation, as a re- writing, of the Hebrew Epistle. 5. The plays on words again, and the citations from the Septuagiut version being made in entire independence of the Hebrew text, foi-m col- lectively a presumptive proof, the weight of which it is very difficult to evade, that the present Greek text is the original. Such peculiarities belong to thought running free and selecting its own words, not to the constrained reproduction of the thoughts of another in another tongue. Vol. II. Part II.— 199 o INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [ch. xv. If our English version be examined in any of those numerous places where St. Paul has indulged in plays on words, no such will be found in the translation. And yet English is much nearer to Greek than Greek to any dialect of the Hebrew. 6, 7. Other arguments, which can hardly be appreciated by the English reader, will be found in this place in my Greek Testament. 8. These considerations, coming in aid of the conviction which must be felt by every intelligent Greek scholar that he is reading an original composition and not a version, induce us to refuse the idea of a Hebrew original, and to believe the Epistle to have been first written in Greek. 9. The style of our Epistle has been already touched upon in our enquiry respecting the authorship, § i. parr. 116 ff. From the earliest times, its diversity from that of the writings of St. Paul has been matter of remark. It is a nearer approach to classical Greek. The main differ- ence for us, which will also set forth its characteristic peculiarity, is, that whereas St. Paul is ever as it were struggling with the scantiness of human speech to pour forth his crowding thoughts, thereby falling into rhetorical and grammatical irregularities, the style of our Epistle flows regularly on, with no such suspended constructions. Even where the subject induces long parentheses, the Writer does not break the even flow and equilibrium of his style, but returns back to the point where he left it. 10. Again, the greatest pains are bestowed on a matter which does not seem to have engaged the attention of the other sacred writers, even including St. Paul himself: viz. rhetorical rhythm, and equilibrium of words and sentences. In St. Paul's most glorious outbursts of eloquence, he is not rhetorical. In those of the Writer of our Epistle, he is elaborately and faultlessly rhetorical. The particles and participles used are all weighed with a view to this efiect. The simple expressions of the other sacred writers are expanded into longer words, or into sonorous and majestic clauses. SECTION VI. CANONICITY. 1. This part of our introduction must obviously be treated quite irrespective of the hypothesis of the Pauline authorship of the Epistle. That being assumed, its canonicity follows. That being denied, our object must be to shew how the Epistle itself was regarded, even by those who were not persuaded of its apostolicity. 2. The earliest testimonies to it are found where we might expect them, in the Church of Rome, and in the writings of one who never cites it as apostolic. It will be important for us to see, in what estimation Clement held it. He makes, as we have already seen, the most frequent 200 § Ti.] CANONICITY. [introduction. ami copious use of it, never citing it expressly, never appealing to it as Scripture, but adopting its words and expressions, just as he does those of other books of the New Testament. It is to be observed, that when in the course of thus incorporating it he refers to the Scripture, or uses the expression it is written, it is with regard to texts quoted not from it only, but also from the Old Test. By this procedure we cannot say that Clement casts any slight on this Epistle, for it is his constant practice. He frequently quotes Scripture as such, but it is always the Old Test. Two or three times he adduces the sayings of our Lord, but never even this in the form of a citation from our existing gospels, or in agreement with their exact words. All we can gather from Clement is, that, treat- ing this as he does other Epistles^ and appropriating largely as he does its words and expressions, he certainly did not rank it below those others : an inference which would lead us to believe that he recognized its canonical authority. But to found more than this on Clement's testimony, would be unwarranted by fair induction. 3. Justin Martyr, amidst a few allusions to our Epistle, makes what can hardly but be called canonical use of it in his first Apology. There, in explaining that the Word of God is also His Son, he adds, " More- over, He is called Angel and Apostle." Now it appears from his own statement in another place, that the allusion in the words, " He is called an angel," is to Gen. xviii. 2. It would seem therefore, seeing that Heb. iii. 1 is the only place where our Lord is entitled an apostle, that the clause meant to embrace under it that passage as a Scripture testimony equipollent with the other, 4. In Clement of Alexandria and Origen, the recognition of our Epistle as canonical depends on its recognition as the work of St. Paul. Where they both cite it as Scripture, it is as written by him : and where Origen mentions the doubt about its being his, he adduces other Scripture testi- mony, observing that it needs another kind of proof, not that the Epistle is canonical, but that it is St. Paul's. 5. And very similar was the proceeding of those parts of the church where the Pauline authorship was not held. Irenteus, as we have seen, makes no use of the Epistle. The fragment of Muratori, representing the view of the Roman church, probably does not contain it. TertuUian, who regards it as written by Barnabas, the ^^ companion of the Apostles," cites it, not as authoritative in itself, but as recording the sentiments of such a companion of the Apostles. 6. Our Epistle is, it is true, contained in the Syriac version (Peschito) made at the end of the second century : but it is entirely uncertain, whether this insertion in the canon accompanied a recognition of the Pauline authorship, or not. This recognition, which prevailed in that * The only exception is in an express citation in c. 47 from 1 Corinthians, where, writing to the Corinthians, he is appealing to the authority of St. Paul. 201 O 2 INTEODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [cu. xv. part of the church in after times, may have at first occasioned its insertion in the canon ; but we cannot say that it did. 7. But in the Alexandrine Church the case was diiferent. There, as we have seen, the assumption of Pauline authorship appears early and soon prevails universally : and in consequence we find the canonical authority there unquestioned, and the Epistle treated as the other parts of Scripture. 8. Throughout the Eastern Churches, the canonicity and apostolicity were similarly regarded as inseparably connected. It is true that Eusebius, in numbering it among the controverted books, together with the Epistles of Barnabas and Clement and Jude, and the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, might seem to attribute to it another authorship, were it not evident from his constant use of it, and his numbering it in his prin- cipal passage on the Canon among the acknoAvledged books, that the doubt must be resolved into that on the Pauline authorship. 9. In the Western Church, where this was not recognized, neither do we find, even down to the middle of the fourth century, any use made of the Epistle as canonical. Even Novatian and Cyprian, who might well have thus used it, have not done so : nor in the controversies on the reception of the lapsed, and on the repetition of heretical baptism, do we ever find it adduced on either side, apposite as some passages are to the subjects in dispute. Only with the assumption, gradually imported from the East, of a Pauline origin, do we find here and there a Western ■\ATiter citing it as of canonical authority. 10. It is in Jerome first that we find° any indication of a doubt whether canonicity and Pauline authorship are necessarily to stand and fall together. The same is found' now and then in the writings of Augustine. But soon after this time the general prevalence, and ulti- mately authoritative sanction, of the view of the Pauline authorship, closed up any chance of the canonicity of the Epistle being held on independent grounds : and it was not till the times of the Reformation, that the matter began to be again enquired into on its own merits. 11. The canonicity was doubted by Cardinal Cajetan, but upheld by Erasmus, in these remarkable words : " Nay, I cannot think that our faith is in peril, if the whole Church is at fault in the title of this Epistle, if only it be acknowledged that the Holy Spirit was the primary Author, which is commonly held by all." In the Roman Catholic Ciiurch, however, the authoritative sanction given by the Council of Trent to the belief of the Pauline origin efiectually stopped all intelligent enquiry. 12. Among reformed theologians, the canonicity of our Ejiistle was * See above, § i. parr. 68 — 80 : csp. par. 74 7 See § i. par. 81 ff. 202 § VI.] CANONICITY. [introduction. strongly upheld, even when the Panlinc authorship was not recognized. Calvin sayp, in his prologue to the Epistle, — " I embrace it without con- troversy as among the apostolical writings, and doubt not that it arose in former days from the artifice of Satan that some detracted from its authority. For there is none of the sacred books that treats so clearly of Christ's priesthood, so gloriously extols the force and dignity of the one sacrifice which He offered by His Death, treats so copiously of the use and abrogation of ceremonies, and in a word more fully explains Christ as the end of the law. Wherefore let us not suffer the Church of God and ourselves to be spoiled of such a treasure, but constantly claim its possession. Who composed it, is not much worth caring about." 13. Beza speaks in the same strain: " What is the use of contending about the author's name, which he himself wished to conceal ? Let it suflttce to know this, that it was truly dictated by the Holy Spirit, &c." 14. Similarly also the Galilean Confession, which, though it divides it off from the Pauline writings, yet includes it without remark among the canonical books. So also the Arminians, e. g. Limborch, who, believing it to have been written by one of the companions of Paul, with Paul's knowledge, acknowledges its divine authority, and even prefers it to many of the Apostle's own writings. 15. Among the early Lutheran divines there were some differences of opinion respecting the place to be assigned to the Epistle ; the general view being, that it was to be read, as Jerome first wrote of the Apo- cryphal Old Test, books, for the edification of the people, but not for the confirmation of ecclesiastical doctrines. In other words, it Avas set apart, — and in this relegation six other books shared, 2 Pet., 2 and 3 John, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse, — among the Apocryphal writings appended to the New Test. And this order was usually followed in the German Bibles. 16. Soon however after the beginning of the 17th century, this dis- tinction began to be obliterated, and the practice to be introduced of calling these books deutero-canonical, i. e. canonical in the second rank, and, although thus called, of citing them as of equal authority, and equally inspired, with the other books. Since that time, the con- troversies respecting the books of Scripture have taken a wider range, and it has not been so much respecting canonicity, as respecting origin, character, and doctrine, that the disputes of divines have been waged. 17. In our own country, at the time of the Reformation, while the question of authorship was left open, the canonical authority of the Epistle was never doubted. To establish this, it may be enough to cite some testimonies. In Tyndale's prologue to the Epistle, he says, having mentioned the objection to the Pauline authorship from ch. ii. 3, 203 INTRODUCTION.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [en. xv. " Now whether it were Paul's or no, I say not, but permit it to other men's judgments : neither tliink I it to be an article of any man's faith, but that a man may doubt of the author." Then, having met several objections against its canonicity urged from certain texts in it, as eh. vi. 4 ff., ch. x. 26 ff., ch. xii. 17, he concludes, " Of this ye see that this Ejjistle ought no more to be refused for a holy, godly, and catholic, than the other authentic Scriptures." And, speaking of the Writer, he says, " It is easy to see that he was a faithful servant of Christ, and of the same doctrine that Timothy was of, yea and Paul himself was of, and that he was an Apostle, or in the Apostles' time, or near thei'eunto. And seeing the Epistle agreeth to all the rest of the Scripture, if it be indifferently looked on, why should it not be authority, and taken for holy Scripture * ? " 18. Fulke, in his defence of Translations of the Bible*, while de- fending the omission of the name of St. Paul in the title of the Epistle in the Geneva Bible of 1560, says, " Which of us, I pray you, that thinketh that this Epistle was not written by St. Paul, once doubteth whether it be not of apostolical spirit and authority ? Which is mani- fest by this, that both in preaching and writing we cite it thus, the Apostle to the Hebrews." 19. Bp. Jewel again, in hig Defence of the Apology, p. 186, where he is speaking of the charge of anonymousness brought against it, says, " The Epistle unto the Hebrews, some say, was written by St. Paul, some by Clemens, some by Barnabas, some by some other : and so are we uncertain of the author's name." 20. Whittaker says, " Thus, then, we doubt not of the authority of any book of the New Testament, nor indeed of the author of any, save only the Epistle to the Hebrews. That this Epistle is canonical, all concede in the fullest sense : but it is not equally clear that it was written by the Apostle Paul. . . . We need not be very earnest in this debate ; it is not a matter of necessity, and the question may very well be left in doubt, provided that, in the mean while, the authority of the Epistle be allowed to remain clear and uncontested ^''." 21. With regard to the question itself, in what light we are to look on our Epistle with respect to canonicity, it is one which it will be well to treat here on general grounds, as it will come before us again more than once, in writing of the remaining books of the New Test. 22. We might put this matter on the ground which Jerome takes in his Epistle to Dardanus, " It makes no matter whose it is, for it is plainly the work of a catholic (ecclesiastical) author :" or on that 8 Tyndalc's Doctrinal Treatises, &c, Parker Society's ecln., pp. 521, 522. 9 Parker Society's edn., pp. 32, 3^. »» Parker Society's edn., pp. 106, 107. 204 § VI. J CANONICITY. [introduction. which Erasmus takes, when he says that the "primary Author" is the Holy Spirit, and so puts by as indifferent the question of the secondary autlior : thus in both cases resting the decision entirely on tlie character of the contents of the book itself. 23. But this woukl manifestly be a wrong method of proceeding. We do not thus in the case of other writings, whose unexceptionable evangelic character is universally acknowledged. To say nothing of later productions, no one ever reasoned thus respecting the Epistle of Barnabas, or that of Clement to the Corinthians, or any of the quasi- apostolic writings. None of the ancients ever dealt so before Jerome, nor did Jerome himself in other passages. More than intrinsic excel- lence and orthodoxy is wanting, to win for a book a place in the New Test, canon. Indeed any reasoning must be not only in itself insufficient, but logically unsound, which makes the authority of a book which is to set us our standard of doctrine, the result of a judgment of our own respecting the doctrine inculcated in it. Such judgment can be only subsidiary to the enquiry, not the primary line of its argument, which must of necessity be of an objective character. 24. And when we come to proofs of this latter kind, it may well be asked, which of them we are to accept as sufficient. It is clear, we cannot appeal to tradition alone. We must combine with such an appeal, the exercise of our own judgment on tradition. When, for example, the Church of England takes, in her sixth article, the ground of pure tradition, and says, " In the name of the Holy Scripture, we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church," she would by implication, if consistent with herself, exclude from the Canon at the least the Apoealypse, which was for some centm*ies not received by the Eastern and for the most part by the Greek church, and our Epistle, which was for some centuries not received by the whole Latin church. Nay, she would go even further than this : for even to the present day the Syrian church excludes the Apocalypse, the Epistles of St. Jude, 2 and 3 John, and 2 Peter, from the Canon. It is fortunate that our Church did not leave this definition to be worked out for itself, but, giving a detailed list of Old Test, books, has appended to it this far more definite sentence : " All the books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them Canonical :" thus adojiting the list of New Test, books in common usage in the Western Church at the time, about which there could be no difference. 25. If then tradition pure and simple will not suffice for our guide, how are we to combine our judgment with it, so as to arrive at a satis- factory conclusion ? It is manifest, that the question of origin comes in here as most important. If the genuineness of a book be in dispute, as e. g. that of 2 Peter, it suffices to make it reasonably probable that 205 TJiTRODUCTiON.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, [en. xv. it was written by him whose name it bears. When this is received, all question of canonicity is at rest. In that case, the name of the Apostle is ample guarantee. And so with our Epistle, those who think they can prove it to be the work of St. Paul, are no longer troubled about its canonicity. This is secured, in shewing it to be of apostolic origin. 26. And so it ever was in the early Church. Apostolicity and Canonicity were bound together. And in the case of those historical books which were not written by apostles themselves, there was ever an effort to connect their writers, St. Mark with St. Peter, St. Luke with St. Paul, so that at least apostolic sanction might not be wanting to them. What then must be our course with regard to a book, of which we believe neither that it was written by an Apostle, nor that it had apostolic sanction ? 27. This question must necessarily lead to an answer not partaking of that rigid demonstrative character which some reasoners require for all inferences regarding the authority of Scripture. Our conclusion must be matter of moral evidence, and of degree : must be cumulative, — made up of elements which are not, taken by themselves, decisive, but which, taken together, are sufficient to convince the reasonable mind. 28. First, we have reason to believe that our Epistle was written by one who lived and worked in close union with the Apostle Paul : of whom that Apostle says that he " planted, and Apollos watered, and God gave the increase :" of whom it is elsewhere in holy writ declared, that he was " an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures :" that he " helped much them which had believed through grace :" that he " mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, shewing*by the Scrip- tures that Jesus was Christ." 29. Secondly, having, as we believe, from his pen such an Epistle, we find it largely quoted by one who was himself a companion of the Apostles, — and almost without question appealed to as Scripture by another primitive Christian writer : and both these testimonies belong to that very early age of the Church, when controversies about canoni- city had not yet begun. 30. Thirdly, in the subsequent history of the Church, we find the reception of the Epistle into the Canon becoming ever more and more a matter of common consent : mainly, no doubt, in connexion with the hypothesis of its Pauline authorship, but, as we have shewn above, not in all cases in that connexion. 31. Fourthly, we cannot refuse the conviction, that the contents of the Epistle itself are such, as powerfully to come in aid of these other considerations. Unavailing as such a conviction would be of itself, as has been previously noticed, yet it is no small confirmation of the 206 cii. XVI.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [introduction. evidence wliich probable authorship, early recognition, and subsequent consent, furnish to the canonicity of our Epistle, when wo find that no- where are the main doctrines of the faith more purely or more majes- tically set forth : nowhere Holy Scripture urged with greater authority and cogency ; nowhere those marks in short, which distinguish the first rank of primitive Christian writings from the second, more un- equivocally and continuously present. 32. The result of this combination of evidence is, that though no considerations of expediency, nor consent of later centuries, can ever make us believe the Epistle to have been written by St. Paul, we yet conceive ourselves perfectly justified in accounting it a portion of the New Test, canon, and in regarding it with the same reverence as the rest of the Holy Scriptures. There are other subjects of deep interest connected with our Epistle, such as its relation, in point of various aspects of Christian doctrine, to the teaching of St. Paul, of St. John, of St. James, and of St. Peter : its connexion with, and independence of, the system of Philo : to treat of which would extend this introduction, already long, to the size of a volume. They will be found discussed in the first part of Riehm's " Lehrbegriflf des Hebraerbriefes," Ludwigsburg, 1858. CHAPTER XVI. THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES. SECTION I. ITS AUTHORSHIP. 1. It has been very generally agreed, that among the apostolic per- sons bearing the name of James (Jacobus), the son of Zebedee, the brother of St. John, cannot well have written our Epistle. The state of things and doctrines which we find in it can hardly have been reached as early as before the execution of that Apostle, related in Acts xii. 2. But when we have agreed on this, matter of controversy at once arises. It would appear from the simple superscription of our Epistle with the name Jacobus, that we are to recognize in its Writer the apostolic person known simply by this name in the Acts, — who was the 207 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xyi. president of the cliurch at Jerusalem (Acts xii. 17 ; xv. 13 ff. ; xxi. 18), and is called by St. Paul the brother of our Lord (Gal. i. 19). This also being pretty generally granted, the question arising is : Was this James identical with, or was he distinct from, James the son of Alphasus, one of the Twelve apostles (Matt. x. 3; Mark iii. 18; Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13) ? 3. I have partly anticipated the answer to this question in my note on Matt. xiii. 55, where I have maintained that, consistently with the straightforward acceptation of Scripture data, we cannot believe any of those who are called the brethren of our Lord to have been also of the number of the Twelve. I conceive John vii. 5, as compared with ib. vi. 67, 70 immediately preceding, to be decisive on this point ; and since I first expressed myself thus, I have seen nothing in the least degree calculated to shake that conviction'. And, that conclusion still standing, I must of course believe this James to be excluded from the number of the Twelve, and if so, distinct from the son of Alpheeus. 4. Still, it will be well to deal with the question on its own ground. And first, as to the notices in Scripture itself which bear on it. And these, it must be acknowledged, are not without difficulty. As, e. g., those which occur in St. Luke, who must have been well aware of the Btate of matters in the church at Jerusalem. He names, up to Acts xii., but two persons as James : one, whom he always couples with John (Luke V. 10 ; vi. 14 ; viii. 51 ; ix. 28, 54 [Acts i. 13]), and in Acts xii. 2 relates, under the name of " the brother of John" to have been slain with the sword by Herod : the other, whom he twice introduces as ^^ Jacobus (James) the (son) of Alphceus" (Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13). Besides, in accordance with the usage of the Greek idiom, the genitive of the name, "o/ Jacobus" (James), is thrice mentioned by him as desig- nating by relationship other persons: in Luke vi. 16; Acts i. 13, we read of Judas the (brothei- ?) of Jacobus (James), and in Luke xxiv. 10, oi Mary the (mother?) o/ Jacobus (James): interpreting which latter expression by Matt, xxvii. 56 ; Mark xv. 40, 47, and xvi. 1, and by John xix. 25, we shall infer that the Mary here mentioned being the wife ' Nothing can be lamer than the way in which Lange (in Herzog's Encycl. art. Jacobus) endeavours to escape the conclusion. I subjoin it as the latest specimen of what ingenuity can do against plain matter of fact : " The kind of unbelief here predicated of our Lord's Brethren is parallel with that of Peter, Ma.tt. xvi. 22, 23, and of Thomas, John xx. 25. John is evidently speaking, not of unbelief in the ordinary sense, which rejected the Messiahship of Jesus, but of that unbelief, or that want of trust which made it difficult for our Lord's disciples. His Apostles, and even His Mother, to reconcile themselves to His way of life, or to His concealment of Himself." Against this finessing I would simply set 1) the usage of the term to helieve in Him, John ii. 11; iv. 39; vii. 31, 39, 48; viii. 30; ix. 36 ; x. 42; xi. 45, 48; xii. 37 (with "not"), 42: and 2) the " not even," following on the unbelief of the Jews ver. 1, with which the " did His brethren believe in Him " is introduced. 208 § I] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. of Alpliaeus (or Clopas), the ellipsis must be filled up by the word mother, and "Jacobus" (James) in this place designates James the son of Alpha^us. And as regards "Judas the (brother?) of Jacobus" (James), we may well suppose that the same person is designated by the genitive, however difficult it may be to fill in the ellipsis. We have a Judas, who designates himself " the brother of Jacobus" (James), Jude 1 : but whether these are to be considered identical, must be determined by the result of our present investigation. 5. The question for us with regard to St. Luke, is the following : In Acts xii. 1 7, and in the subsequent parts of that book, we have a person mentioned simply as "Jacobus" (James), who is evidently of great authority in the church at Jerusalem. Are we to suppose that St. Luke, careful and accurate as his researches were, was likely to have introduced thus without previous notice, a new and third person bearing the same name ? Does not this testify strongly for the identity of the two ? 6. The best way to answer this question will be, to notice St. Luke's method of proceeding on an occasion somewhat analogous. In Acts i. 13, we find " Philip " among the Apostles. In ib. vi. 5, we find a " Philip" among the seven, appointed to relieve the Apostles from the daily ministration of alms. In ib. viii. 5, we read that "Philip" went down to a city of Samaria and preached. Now as there is nothing to identify this part of the narrative with what went before, or to imply that this was not a missionary journey of one of the Apostles, distinct from the dispersion from which they were excepted above, ver. 1, it is not at the first moment obvious which Philip is meant. It is true, that intelligent comparison of the parts of the narrative makes it plain to us : but the case is one in point, as shewing, that St. Luke is in the habit of leaving it to such compai-ison to decide, and not of inserting notices at the men- tion of names, to prevent mistake. This would be much more in the practice of St. John, who writes, xiv. 22, "Judas, not Iscariot :" see also xi. 2. It seems then that the practice of St, Luke will not decide for us, but our enquiry must still be founded on the merits of the question itself. 7. And in so doing, we will make first the hypothesis of the identity of James the son of Alphaeus with James the Lord's brother. Then, besides the great, and to me insuperable difficulty in John vi. 70, vii. 5, we shall have the following circumstances for our consideration: 1) In Matt, xxvii. 56, and Mark xv. 40, we read of Mary the mother of James and Joses : and in Mark, the epithet " the small" or " less" is attached to " Jacobus " (James). Now on the hypothesis of James, the brother of the Lord, being identical with the son of Alphajus, there were four such sons. Matt. xiii. 55 ; James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas : and of these four, two, James and Judas, Avere Apostles. So that, leaving out of the question for the moment the confusion of the names Joses and 209 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xvi. Joseph, we should thus have Mary the wife of Clopas designated as the mother of James, who was an apostle, and of Joses, who was not an apostle, to the exclusion of her son Judas, who was also an apostle. Is not this, to say the least, extremely improbable ? 8. And besides this, let us review for a moment the epithet " the small" attached to " Jacobus " (James) by St. Mark. Beyond question, at the time when this Gospel was written, James the son of Zebedee had long ago fallen by the sword of Herod ^ And as certainly, at this time James the Lord's brother was at the head of the mother church at Jeru- salem, one of the three pillars (Gal. ii. 9) of the Christian body. Was it likely that at such a time (for the notice and epithet is one whose use must be sought at the time of the publication of the Gospel, not at that of the formation of the apostolic oral history, seeing that it does not occur in the parallel place in Matthew) the epithet " the small" would be attached to this James by way of distinguishing him from that other, long since martyred ? Is it not much more probable that the epithet, for whatever reason, was attached to James the son of Alphseus to dis- tinguish him from this very James the brother of the Lord ? 9. If James the son of Alphasus, the Apostle, were the head of the mother church at Jerusalem, and a man of such distinction among the Jewish Christians, how comes it, that when an Apostle of the circum- cision is to be named, over against St. Paul, St. Peter, and not he, is dignified by that title ? 10. There is another more general consideration, which, however much it may be disallowed by some, yet seems to me not without weight. It hardly consists with the mission of the Twelve, that any of them should be settled in a particular spot, as the president or Bishop of a local church. Even granting the exceptional character of the Jeru- salem church, it does not seem likely that the chief presbyter there would be one of those to whom it was said, " Go into all the ivorld, and preach the Gospel to every creature:" and of whom all that we read in the Acts of the Apostles, and all that primitive tradition relates to us, assures us that they fulfilled this command. IL If we compare this hypothesis with early tradition, its first notices present us with a diflaculty. Speaking of James the brother of the Lord, Eusebius quotes Hegesippus, an immediate successor of the Apostles, as saying that " James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the church of Jerusalem with the Apostles, and was of all men named the Just from the Lord's time even to our own ; for there were many who bore this name of James." 12. This passage seems most plainly to preclude all idea of James the Lord's brother being one of the Twelve. However we understand the 2 See lutrod. Vol. I. ch. iii. § iv. 210 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. not very perspicuous words " loith the ^joos/Zes;" whether wo boldly suppose with Jerome, on account of the verb " succeeded to" that they are a mistake for *' after the Apostles" or take them as they stand, and as is most likely from comparison with St. Paul's narrative in Gal. ii., — of joint superintendence with the Apostles ; on either, or any view, they expressly exclude James from the number of the Apostles them- selves. 13. And entirely consistent with this is the frequently misunderstood other testimony from Hegesippus, cited by Eusebius : the straight- forward interpretation of which passage is, that " after James the Just had been martyred, as was the Lord also for the same cause, next was appointed bishop Symeon, the son of Clopas, the offspring of his (James's, not the Lord's, as Lauge and others have most unfairly attempted to make it mean) uncle, whom all agreed in preferring, being, as he was, second of the cousins of the Lord." That is, Joseph and Clopas (Alphseus) being brothers, and one son of AlphjBus, James, being an Apostle, his next brother Symeon (Joses may have been dead ere this) being thus "second of the cousins of our Lord" and born of his (James's) Pinole, succeeded James the Just in the bishopric of Jerusalem. I submit that on the hypothesis of Symeon being James's own brother, such a sentence is simply unaccountable. 14. It is true that in this, as in so many other matters, ancient tradi- tion is not consistent with itself. For Euseb., H. E. ii. 1, quotes from Clement of Alexandria, " The Lord delivered the (traditional) know- ledge to James the Just and John and Peter after the Resurrection. These delivered it to the other Apostles : and the rest of the Apostles to the Seventy, of whom was also Barnabas. Now there were two named James, one the Just, who was thrown from the pinnacle, and struck to death by a fuller with his club, and the other the one who was beheaded." And in the same chapter he speaks of Clement as reporting that Stephen was the first martyr, ** and then James, who was called the brother of the Lord, whom men of old called the Just, first bishop of Jerusalem." 15. Compare with this Eusebius: "And then they say He appeared to James, who was one of those commonly reputed disciples of the Lord, yea, and His brothers :" and the Apostolical Constitutions, where after the enumeration of the Twelve Apostles, we have named " James the brother of the Lord and bishop of Jerusalem, and Paul the teacher of the Gentiles." Thus it appears, that the assumption of the identity encoun- ters several diflficulties, both from Scripture itself (even supposing the crowning one of John vii. 5 got over), and from primitive tradition. It nevertheless became very prevalent, as soon as the setting in of asceticism suggested the hypothesis of the perpetual virginity of the Mother of our Lord. This is found from Jerome downwards ; and all kinds of 211 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xvi. artificial explanations of the relationship of the brethren to our Lord have been given, to escape the inference from the simple testimony of Holy Scripture, that they were veritably children of Joseph and Mary, younger than our Lord. 16. Let us now follow the other hypothesis, that James the brother of the Lord and James the son of Alphoeus were different jyersons. Against this many objections have been brought, tlie principal of which seems to be, that thus we have so considerable a repetition of names among the family and disciples of our Lord. But this cannot on any hypothesis be got rid of. The undoubted facts of the Gospel history give us the following repetitions of names : a) we have under the name Simon, 1) Simon Peter : 2) Simon the Cananasan or Zelotes, the Apostle : 3) Simon, the brother of the Lord, Matt. xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3 : 4) Simon, the father of Judas Iscariot, John vi. 71 and elsewhere: 5) Simon the leper, in Bethany, Matt. xxvi. 6 ; Mark xiv. 3: 6) Simon of Gyrene, who bore the cross after our Lord, Matt, xxvii. 32 and parallels : 7) Simon Magus : 8) Simon the tanner : besides 9) Simon the Pharisee, in whose house our Lord was anointed by the woman who was a sinner, Luke vii.40. b) Under the name Judas, 1) Judas Lebbaeus or " of James," the Apostle: 2) (?) Judas, the brother of the Lord: 3) Judas Iscariot: 4) Judas Barsabas, Acts xv. 22 : if not also 5) the Apostle Thomas, " the twin" ("Thomas who was also called Judas,'' 'Easeh'ms), so called by way of distinction from the two other Judases among the Twelve. c) Under the name Mart, 1) the Mother of our Lord: 2) the mother of James and Joses, Matt, xxvii. 56 : 3) Mary Magdalene : 4) Mary, the sister of Lazarus : 5) Mary, the mother of John Mark. 17. Besides these, we have d) at least four under the name Joseph, viz. 1 ) the reputed father of our Lord : 2) Joseph of Arimathea : 3) Joseph Barnabas, Acts iv. 36 : 4) Joseph Barsabas, Acts i. 23 : if not two more, a brother of our Lord, Matt. xiii. 55, and according to some MSS., a son of Mary and brother of James, Matt, xxvii. 56. This being so, it really is somewhat out of place to cry out upon the supposed multiplication of persons bearing the same name in the New Testament. 18. The improbability of there being in each family, that of Joseph and that of Alphajus (Clopas), two sets of four brothers bearing the same names, is created by assuming the supplement of " Judas of James,'* Luke vi. 16 ; Acts i. 13, to be " brother," which, to say the least, is not necessary. The sons of Alphaius (except Levi [Matthew] who appears to have been the son of another Alphseus, but has been most unaccount- ably omitted from all consideration by those who object to the multi- plication of those bearing the same name) are but two, James the less the Apostle, and Joses. We have not the least trace in Scripture, or even in tradition rightly understood, indicating that Simon Zelotes was 212 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. Tintroduction. a son of Alphneus. What is the improbability, in two brethren of our Lord bearing the same names as two of their cousins ? Cannot almost every widely-spread family even among ourselves, where names are not so frequently repeated, furnish examples of the same and like coin- cidences ? 19. No safe objection can be brought against the present hypothesis from St. Paul's words, " Other of the apostles saw I none, save James the LonTs h-other" GaL i. 19. For 1) the usage of the word ^^ apostle" by St. Paul is not confined to the Twelve, and Christian antiquity I'ecognized in Paul himself and this very James, two supplementary Apostles besides the Twelve' ; and 2) it has been shewn by Fritzsche, Neander, and Winer, and must be evident to any one accustomed to the usage of "some" or "except" in the New Test., that it need not neces- sarily qualify "other" here, but may just as well refer to the whole preceding clause. 20. The objection of Lange that it is impossible to imagine the growth of an apocryphal Apostleship, by the side of that founded by our Lord, entirely vanishes under a right view of the circumstances of the case. There would be no possibility, on Lange's postulates, of including St. Paul himself among the Apostles. There was nothing in the divine pro- ceeding towards him, which indicated that he was to bear that name : still less was there any thing designating Barnabas as another apostle, properly so called. These two, on account of their importance and use- fulness in the apostolic work, were received among the apostles as of apostolic dignity. Why may the same not have been the case, with a person so universally noted for holiness and justice as James the brother of the Lord ? 21. Again, Lange objects, that " real Apostles thus altogether vanish from the field of action, and are superseded by other Apostles introduced afterwards." I would simply ask, what can be a more accurate descrip- tion, than these words furnish, of the character of the history of the book which is entitled the Acts of the Apostles ? Is it not, in the main, the record of the journeyings and acts of a later introduced Apostle, before whom the work of the other Apostles is cast into the shade ? Besides, what do we know of the actions of any of the Apostles, except (taking even Lange's hypothesis) of Peter, James, John, and James the son of Alphaeus ? Where shall we seek any record of the doings of St. Matthew, St. Thomas, St. Philip, St. Jude, St. Bartholomew, St. Andrew, St. Simon, St. Matthias ? In Acts xv. 22, a certain Judas appears as a " man of note," or "a leading person among the brethren:" but he is not St. Jude the Apostle. In Acts viii. we hear much of the missionary work of Philip : but he is not St. Philip the Apostle. ' See the citation from the Apostolic Constitutions, above, par. 15. 213 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xvi. 22. It seems to me ffom the above considerations, far the more pro- bable inference from Scriptural and traditional data, that James the brother of the Lord, the Bishop of Jerusalem, the presumed Author of our Epistle, was distinct from James the son of Alphoeus, one of the Twelve Apostles. And assuming this, I shall now gather up the notices which we find of this remarkable person. 23. It is certain, from John vii. 3 — 5, that he was not a believer in the Messiahship of Jesus at the period of His ministry there indicated. And from our Lord, when on the Cross, commending His mother to the care of St. John, the son of Zebedee, and probably His cousin after the flesh, we may infer that neither then did his brethren believe on Him. It would appear, however, from our finding them expressly mentioned in Acts i. 13, as assembled in the upper room with the Apostles and with the Mother of our Lord, and the believing women, that they were then believers, having probably been, from a half-persuaded and wavering faith, fixed, by the great events of the Passion and Resurrection, in a conviction of the divine mission of Jesus. 24. And of these the Lord's brethren, let us now fix our attention on James, who seems, from his being placed first in the enumeration, Matt, xiii. 55 and the parallel place in Mark, to have been the eldest among them. 25. The character which we have of him, as a just and holy man, must in all probability be dated from before his conversion. And those who believe him to have been not by adoption only, but by actual birth a son of our Lord's parents, will trace in the appellation of him as " the Just," the character of his father (Matt. i. 19), and the humble faith and obedience of his mother (Luke i. 38). That the members of such a family should have grown up just and holy men, is the result which might be hoped from the teaching of such parents, and above all from the presence ever among them of the spotless and bright example of Him, of whom his cousin according to the flesh, yet not knowing Him to be the Messiah, could say, " I have need to be baptized of Thee" (Matt. iii. 14). 26. The absence in the Holy Family of that pseudo-asceticism which has so much confused the traditions respecting them, is strikingly proved by the notice, furnished by St. Paul in 1 Cor. ix. 5, that " the brethren of the Lord " were married men. At the same time there can be no doubt from the general character of St. James's Epistle, and from the notices of tradition, confirmed as they are by the narrative in the Acts, ch. xxi. 17 ff"., and by Gal. ii. 11 ff., that he was in other matters a strong ascetic, and a rigid observer of the ceremonial Jewish customs. In the testimony of Hegesippus, quoted by Ens. H. E. ii. 23, we read, " This man was holy from his mother's womb. He drank no wine nor strong drink, and ate no animal food. No razor came upon his head, he anointed not himself with 214 § I] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. oil, and never used a bath. Ho only was licensed to enter into the holy places, for he wore not woollen, but linen only. And ho was wont to enter alone into the temple, and was often found on his knees suppli- cating forgiveness for the people ; so that his knees grew hard like those of a camel, on account of his evermore kneeling in worship to God askino- remission for the people ; and because of the abundance of his righteous- ness he was called the Just, and Oblias *." And without taking all this as literal fact, it at least shows us the character which ho bore, and the estimation in which he was held. 27. That such a person, when converted to the faith of Jesus, should have very soon been placed in high dignity in the Jerusalem church, is not to be wondered at. The very fact of that church being in some measure a continuation of the apostolic company, would, in the absence of Him who had been its centre be foretime, naturally incline their thoughts towards one who was the most eminent of His nearest relatives according to the flesh : and the strong Judaistic tendencies of that church would naturally group it around one who was so zealous a fautor of the Law. 28. This his pre-eminence seems to have been fully established as early as the imprisonment of St. Peter, Acts xii. * : i. e. about a.d. 44 : which would allow ample time for the reasonable growth in estimation and authority of one whose career as a disciple did not begin till the Ascen- sion of our Lord, i.e. 14 years before^. 29. From this time onward, James is introduced, and simply by this name, as the president, or bishop, of the church at Jerusalem. In the apostolic council in Acts xv. (a.d. 50), we find him speaking last, after the rest had done, and delivering, with his ^^I,for my part, adjudge . . ." (ver. 19), that opinion, on which the act of the assembly was grounded. On St. Paul reaching Jerusalem in Acts xxi. (a.d. 58), we find him, on the day after his arrival, entering in " to James,^^ and it is added, " and all the elders were present :" shewing that the visit was a formal one, to a man in authority. 30. Thenceforward we have no more mention of James in the Acts. In Gal. i. 19, St. Paul relates, that at his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion he saw "James the brother of the Lord:" but without any * The interpretation of this word is quite uncertain. 5 Thus— for we can hardly suppose it to have been a sudden thing — we should have it already subsisting during the lifetime of the greater James, the son of Zebedee : one additional argument for distinguishing this James from James the less, the son of Alphffius. " For these dates, see the Chronological Table in the Introduction to the Acts. It has been objected, that it would be unlikely that one who at the Ascension was not a believer, should so soon after be found in the dignity of an Apostle. But the ob- jectors forget, that less than half the time sufficed to raise one, who long after the Ascension was a persecutor and injurious, to the same dignity. Vol. II. Part II.— 215 p INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xn. mark, unless the title " apostle," there given him, is to be taken as such, that he had then the pre-eminence which he afterwards enjoyed. The date of this visit I have set down elsewhere as a.d. 40 '. 31. In the same apologetic narrative in the Epistle to the Galatians, ^A. Paul recounts the events, as far as they were germane to his pur- pose, of the apostolic council in Acts xv. And there we find James ranked with Cephas and John as ^'pillars" of the church. At some shortly subsequent time, probably in the end of a.d. 50 or the be- ginning of 51, we find, from the same narrative of St. Paul, that " certain Jrom James" came down to Antioch, of whose Judaistic strictness Peter being afraid, prevaricated, and shrunk back from asserting his Christian liberty. This speaks for the influence of James, as it does also for its tendency. 32. At the time when we lose sight of James in the Acts of the Apostles, he would be, supposing him to have been next in the Holy Family to our Blessed Lord, and proceeding on the necessarily somewhat uncertain * inference deducible from the plain sense of Matt. i. 25, about sixty years of age. 33. From this time we are left to seek his history in tradition. We possess an account in Josephus of his character and martyrdom : "Ana- nus (the high priest) thinking that he had a convenient opportunity, Festus being dead and Albinus not yet arrived, summons an assembly of the judges : and bringing before it the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, James by name, and some others, he accused them of having broken the laws, and delivered them over to be stoned." 34. Further particulars of his death are given us from Hegesippus, by Eusebius : but they do not seem to tally with the above account in Jose- phus. According to Hegesippus, whose narrative is full of strange ex- pressions, and savours largely of the fabulous, some of the seven sects of the people (see Eus. H. E. iv. 22) asked James, " what was the door of Jesus * ? " And by his preaching to them Jesus as the Christ, so many of them believed on Him, that " many even of the rulers believing, there was a tumult of the Jews and Scribes and Pharisees, saying that the whole people was in danger of receiving Jesus as the Christ." On this they invited James to deter the people from being thus deceived, stand- ing on the "pinnacle of the temple" at the Passover, that he might be seen and heard by all. But, the story proceeds, when he was set there, 1 See the Chronological Table, as above. 8 Because there were also sisters of our Lord, and more than two, or the word " all " could not have been used of them, Matt. xiii. 55. 9 On this expression, Valesius says, "Door, in this place, means, introduction or institution and initiation. Thus the door of Christ is nothing else than faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, &c." But this seems doubtful, and the expression enigmatical. 216 § I.] ITS AUTHORSHIP. [introduction. and appealed to by them to undeceive the people, he " answered with a loud voice, 'Why ask ye me concerning Jesus the Son of man? For He sitteth at the right hand of the Supreme Power, and will one day come on the clouds of heaven.'" On this, many were confirmed in their belief, and glorified God for his testimony, and cried Ilosanna to the Son of David. Whereat the Scribes and Pharisees said to one another, " ' We did foolishly in giving occasion for such a testimony to Jesus : but let us go up and cast him down, that the people may be struck with fear and not believe him.' And they cried out, saying, ' O, O, the Just one is de- ceived.' " So they went up, and cast him down : and said to one another, " ' Let us stone James the Just.' And they began to stone him : for the fall had not killed him, but he turned and knelt and said, * I pray Thee, O Lord God the Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.' " And while they were stoning him, a priest, one of the sons of Rechab, cried out, " ' What are ye doing ? the Just one is praying for you.' And one of them from among the fullers taking the club with which he beat clothes, with it struck the Just one on the head. And thus he suffered martyrdom. And they buried him on the spot, and his pillar yet remains by the temple." 35. This last sentence seems wholly inexplicable, considering that long before it was ^Titten both city and temple were destroyed. And the more so, as Hegesippus proceeds to say, that immediately upon St. James's martyrdom, Vespasian formed the siege of the city. He adds, " James was so wonderful a man, and so renowned for his righteous- ness among all men, that the thoughtful among the Jews believed that this was the cause of the siege of Jerusalem immediately after his martyrdom, and that this happened to them for no other reason than the crime which was perpetrated against him." And he quotes from Jose- phus, " Now these things happened to the Jews in vengeance for James the Just, who was brothei- to Jesus which was called Christ : because he was a very righteous man, and was slain by the Jews :" but no such passage as this latter is now found in Josephus. 36. The character of St. James is sufficiently indicated in the fore- going notices. He appears to have been a strong observer of the law, moral and ceremonial : and though willing to recognize the hand of God in the Gentile ministry of Paul and Barnabas, to have remained himself attached to the purely Judaistic form of Christianity. " Had not," observes Schaff, in his Church History, " a Peter, and above all a Paul, arisen as supplementary to James, Christianity would perhaps never have become entirely emancipated from the veil of Judaism and asserted its own independence. Still there was a necessity for the ministry of James. If any could win over the ancient covenant people, it was he. It pleased God to set so high an example of Old Test, piety in its purest form among the Jews, to make conversion to the Gospel, 217 p2 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xvi. even at the eleventh hour, as easy as possible for them. But when they would not listen to the voice of this last messenger of peace, then was the measure of the divine patience exhausted, and the fearful and long- threatened judgment broke forth. And thus was the mission of James fulfilled. He was not to outlive the destruction of the holy city and the temple. According to Hegesippus, he was martyred in the year before that event, viz. a.d. 69." 37. If we adopt the above hypothetical calculation (par. 32), he would be, at the date of his martyrdom, about 71 years of age. The various particulars of his connexion with our present Epistle will be found in the following sections. SECTION IL FOR WHAT READERS THE EPISTLE WAS WRITTEN. 1. It is evident from the contents of the Epistle, that it was written for Christian readers. The Writer calls himself " a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ," and addresses the readers throughout as his " brethren." In ch, i. 18 he says that God has begotten us by the word of truth : in ch. ii. 1 he addresses them as having the faith of Jesus Christ the Lord of glory: in id. ver. 7, he speaks of the " ivorthy Name" by which they were called : and in ch. v. 7, he exhorts them to patience on the ground that the coming of the Lord was near. Besides which, the whole passage, ch. ii. 14, proceeds on the manifest supposition that wi'iter and readers had one and the same faith. 2. At the same time, the address of the Epistle, " to the twelve tribes ivhich are in the dispersion," which will not bear a spiritual meaning, but only the strictly national one, quite forbids us from supposing that Christians in general were in the Writer's view. Believing Jews, and they only, were the recipients of the Epistle. Not the words of the address, but the circumstances of the case, and the language of the Epistle, exclude those who did not believe. 3. This Judaistic direction of the letter is evident from ch. ii. 2, where the word " synagogue " is used to denote the place of assembly : fi'om ib. 19, where monotheism is brought forward as the central point of faith : from ch. v. 12, where in the prohibition of swearing, the formulai common among the Jews are introduced : from ib. ver. 14, where anointing with oil is mentioned. And not only so, but all the ethical errors which St. James combats, are of that kind which may be referred to carnal Judaism as their root. 4. Iluther, from whom I have taken the foregoing paragraphs of this section, remarks that the argument against faith alone without works is no objection to the last-mentioned vicAV, but is rather in refutation 218 § II.] FOR WHAT READERS WRITTEN, [introduction. of this same Jcwi-sh error, which was the successor of the Phaiisaical confidence in the fact of possessing the law, without a holy life : seo Rom. ii. 1 7 ff. Justin Martyr says of the Jews : " They say that even if they be sinners, but know God, He will never impute sin to them." There is indeed no trace in the Epistle of an anxious and scrupulous observance of the Mosaic ritual on the part of the readers : but this may be because in the main on this point the Writer and his readers were agreed. And we do find in it traces of an erroneous estimate of the value of mere " religious service " (ch. i. 22 flf.) : and a trace of fanatical zeal venting itself by " wrath." 5. The situation of these Judteo-Christian churches or congregations, as discernible in the Epistle, was this. They were tried by manifold trials, ch. i. 2. We are hardly justified in assuming that they Avere entirely made up of poor, on account of ch. ii. 6, 7 : indeed, the former verses of that chapter seem to shew, that rich men were also found among them. However, this probably was so for the most part, and they Avere oppressed and dragged before the judgment-seats by the rich, Avhich trials they did not bear Avith that patience and humility which might have been expected of them as Christians, nor did they in faith seek Avisdom from God concerning them : but regarded Him as their tempter, and their loAvliness as shame, paying carnal court to the rich, and despising the poor. 6. As might have been expected, such worldliness of spirit gave rise to strifes and dissensions among them, and to a neglect of self-preserva- tion from the evil in the world, imagining that their Christian faith Avould suffice to save them, without a holy life. 7. There is some little difficulty in assigning a proper place to the rich men who are addressed in ch. v. 1 ff". They can hardly have been altogether out of the pale of the Christian body, or the denunciations would never have reached them at all : but it is fair to suppose that they were uuAvorthy professing members of the churches. 8. It must be OAvned that the general state of the churches addressed, as indicated by this Epistle, is not such as any Christian teacher could look on Avith satisfaction. And it is extremely interesting to enquire, how far this unsatisfactoiy state furnishes us with any clue to the date of our Epistle : an enquiry which we shall follow out in our next section. 9. The designation " in the dispersion" need not necessarily limit the readers to the JeAvish churches out of Palestine : but the greater cir- cumference may include the lesser ; the teim " dispersion " may be vaguely used, regarding Jerusalem as the centre ; and as in Acts viii. 1, Avhere aa'C read " and they all were dispersed throughout the lands of Judcea and Samaria," — the exception being the Apostles, who remained in Jerusalem, — ^may comprehend Palestine itself. 219 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xvi. SECTION III. THE PLACE AND TIME OF WRITING. 1. As regards the place of writing, if the general opinion as to the author be assunied, there can be but one view. His fixed residence, and centre of influence, was Jerusalem. There we find him, at every date in the apostolic period. If he wrote the Epistle, it was written from the holy city. 2. And with this the character of the Epistle very well agrees. Most of the Judieo-Christians addressed in it would be in the habit of coming up to Jerusalem from time to time to the feasts. There St. James, though at a distance, might become well acquainted with their state and temptations, and exercise superintendence over them, 3. It has been pointed out also S that the physical notices inserted in the Epistle are very suitable to this supposition. The writer appears to have written not far from the sea, ch, i, 6, iii. 4 : it was a land blessed with figs, oil, and wine, iii, 12, Wide as these notices may be, we have others which seem to come nearer to Palestine, Salt and bitter springs are familiar to him, iii, 11, 12: tlie land was exposed to drought, and was under anxiety for fear of failure of crops for want of rain, v, 1 7, 1 8 : it was burnt up quickly by a hot wind {Kauson, i, 11), w^hich is a name not only belonging to West Asia, but especially known in Palestine. " Another phaenomenon," says Hug, " which was found where the Writer was, decides for that locality : it is, the former and latter rain, which he names, ch, v, 7, as they were known in Palestine." 4. With regard to the date of the Epistle, opinions are more divided. That it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, will follow as matter of course from what has already been said. But there are two other termini, with reference to which it is important that its place should be assigned. These are, 1) the publication of the doctrine of St. Paul respecting justification by faith only : and 2) the Apostolic council in Jerusalem of Acts xv. 5. A superficial view will suggest, that it cannot be till after the doctrine of justification by faith had been spread abroad, that ch. ii, 14 fif. can have been written. And this has been held even by some whose treatment of the Epistle has been far from superficial ^, But I believe that a thorough and unbiassed weighing of probabilities will lead us to an opposite conclusion. It seems most improbable that, supposing ch, ii, 14 ff, to have been written after St, Paul's teaching on the point was known, St, James should have made no allusion either to St. Paul ' By Hug, EinleituDg, edn. 4, p. 438 f. 2 g. g. Wiesinger, 220 § III] PLACE AND TIME OF WHITING, [intuoduction. riij^litly undei-slood, or to St. Paul wrongly understood. Surely such a method of proceeding, considering what strong words he uses, would be, to say the least, very ill-judged, or very careless : the former, if he only wished to prevent an erroneous conception of the great Apostle's doctrine, — the latter, if he wished to put himself into dh'ect antagonism with it. 6. It is much more probable, that all which St. James says respecting works and fjxitli has respect to a former and difierent state and period of the controversy ; when, as was explained above ^, the Jewish Pharisaic notions were being carried into the adopted belief in Christianity, and the danger was not, as afterwards, of a Jewish law-righteousness being set up, antagonistic to the righteousness which is by the faith of Christ, but of a Jewish reliance on exclusive purity of faith superseding the necessity of a holy life, which is inseparably bound up with any worthy holding of the Christian faith. 7. The objection bi'ought against this view is, that the examples adduced by St. James ai'e identical with those which we find in the Epistles of St. Paul, and even in that to the Hebi-ews : and that they presuppose acquaintance with those writings. But we may well answer, what right have we to make this, any more than the converse assumption ? Or rather, for I do not believe the converse to be any more probable, why should not the occurrence of these common examples have been due in both cases to their having been the ordinary ones cited on the subject ? What more certain, than that Abraham, the father of the faithful, would be cited in any dispute on the validity of faith ? What more probable than that Rahab, a Canaanite, and a Avoman of loose life, who became sharer of the security of God's people simply because she believed God's threatenings, should be exalted into an instance on the one hand that even a contact with Israel's faith sufficed to save, and that the Apostle on the other should shew that such faith was not mere assent, but fruitful in practical con- sequences ? 8. Again it is urged that, owing to several expressions and passages in our Epistle, we are obliged to believe that St. James had read and used the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. Wiesinger says that any unbiassed reader will see in ch. i. 3, iv. 1, 12, allusions to Rom. v. 3, vi. 13, vii. 23, viii. 7, xiv. 4. Of these certainly the first is a close resemblance : but that in the others is faint, and the connecting of them together is quite fanciful. And even where close resemblance exists, if the nature of the expressions be considered, we shall see how little ground there is for ascribing to the one writer any necessary knowledge of the other. The expressions are, " the proof of your faith ivorketh 3 Section li. par. 4. 221 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xti. patience," James i. 3 : " tribulation worJceth patience" Rom. v. 3. Now what could be more likely than that a ''faithful saying " like this, tend- ing to console the primitive believers under afflictions which were coeval with their fii'st profession of the Gospel, should have been a common- place in the mouths of their teachers ? And accordingly we find a portion of St. James's expression, viz. " the proof of your faith " again occurring in 1 Pet. i. 7 : a circumstance which may or may not indicate an acquaintance with the contents of our Epistle. 9. A similar inference has been drawn from the use by St. James of such terms as "to he justified" " hy faith " ''by works:" which, it is urged, no New Test, writer except St. Paul, or, in the case of the verb, St. Luke, under influence of St. Paul, has used. But here again it is manifest that the inference will not hold. The subject, as argued by St. Paul, was no new one, but had long been in the thoughts and disputes of the primitive believers *. 10. "With regard to the other question, as to whether our Epistle must be dated before or after the council in Acts xv., one consideration is, to my mind, decisive. We have no mention in it of any controversy re- specting the ceremonial observance of the Jewish law, nor any allusion to the duties of the Judteo-Christian believers in this respect. Now this certainly could not have been, after the dispute of Acts xv. 1 ff. If we compare what St. Paul relates in Gal. ii. 1 1 ff. (see the last note) of the influence of certain from James, and the narrative of Acts xxi. 18 — 25, with the entire absence in this Epistle of all notice of the subjects iu question, we must, I think, determine that, at the time of writing the Epistle, no such question had arisen. The obligation of observing the Jewish ceremonial law was as yet confessed among Jewish Christians, and therefore needed no enforcing. 11. But here again various objections are brought against assigning so early a date to our Epistle as before the Jerusalem council, principally derived from the supposed difficulty of imagining so much development at that time in the Judajo-Christian congregations. We find, it is alleged, elders or presbyters of an assembly (ecclesia), which is not the mere Jewish synagogue used in common by both, but a regularly organized congregation. 12. Now we may fairly say, that this objection is unfounded. The Christian "ecclesia" is mentioned by our Lord Himself in Matt, xviii. 17, and was so easy and matter-of-course a successor of the synagogue, that it would be sure to be established, wherever there was a Christian community. We find that the difierent varieties of Jews had their separate synagogues. Acts vi. 9 : and the establishment of a separate ■* As a proof of this, see Gal. ii. 16, a speech which was made certainly a very short time after the council in A.D. 50, and in consequence of a message from James. 222 § III.] PLACE AND TIME OF WRITING, [intuoduction. organization and place of worship would be the obvious and immediate consequence of the recognition of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. In such a congregation, elders (^presbyters) would be a matter of course. 13. It is also objected, that in the Epistle the readers are ti-cated as mature in the belief and doctrines of the Gospel : that it exhorts, but does not teach \ Witness, it is said, the allusions to their knowledge, and exhortations to perfection, ch. i. 3; iii. 1 ; iv. 1. But in those passages there is nothing which might not well apply to the primitive Jewish believers : nothing which, fi'om their knowledge of the O. T., and of the moral teaching of our Lord, tliey might not well have been aware of. 14. Yet again it is said, that the character of the faults here stigma- tized in the Christian congregations is such as to require a considerable period for their development": that they are those which arise from relaxation of the moral energy with which we must suppose the first Jewish converts to have received the Gospel. In answer to this, we may point to the length of time which may well be allowed as having elapsed between the first Pentecost sermon and the time of writing the Epistle, and to the rapidity of the dissemination of practical error, and the progress of moral deterioration, when once set in. We may also remind the reader of the state of the Jewish church and the heathen Avorld around, as shewing that it must not be supposed that all these evils sprung up within the Christian communities themselves : rather we may say, that the seed fell on soil in which these thorns were already sown, — and that, even conceding the position above assumed, § i. 1, a very short time, — less than the 20 years which elapsed between the first Pentecost and the Jerusalem council, — would have sufficed for the growth of any such errors as we find stigmatized in this Epistle. 15. *' Where," asks Wiesiuger, " shall we look for the Judajo-Christian churches out of Palestine, which will satisfy the postulates of the Epistle?" I answer, in the notice of Acts ii. 5—11, in following out which, we must believe that Christian churches of the dispersion were very widely founded at a date immediately following the great outpour- ing of the Spirit. Such a persuasion does not compel us to believe that our Epistle was addressed principally to the church at Antioch, or to those in Syria and Cilicia, but leaves the address of it in all the extent of its own w^ords, " to the twelve tribes lohich are in the dispersion." 16. The notice of Acts xi. 19 flf., will amply provide for such Chris- tian congregations, consisting mainly or entirely of Jewish believers, as the purposes of this Epistle require. And that notice may surely be regarded as a record of that taking place with increased energy nearer home, which must have been long going on far and Avide, owing to the agency of the first Pentecostal believers. We find traces of this in the 5 Wiesinger, p. 38. • Wicsinger, as above. 223 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xvi. first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas, where in several cases we have, besides the new converts made, an implied background of " disciples,'" naturally consisting mainly of Jews ; and it appears to have been at and by this visit chiefly that the enmity of the Jews every where against the Gentile converts, and against the Gospel as admitting them, was first stirred up. 17. These things being considered, I cannot agree with Wiesinger and Schmid in placing our Epistle late in the first age of the church ; but should, with the majority of recent Commentators, and historians, including Schneckenburger, Theile, Neander, Thiersch, Hofmann, and Schafi; place it before, perhaps not long before, the Jerusalem council : somewhere, it may be, about the year 45 a.d. SECTION IV. OBJECT, CONTENTS, AND STYLE. 1. The object of the Epistle has been already partially indicated, in treating of its readers. It was ethical, rather than didactic. They had fallen into many faults incident to their character and position. Their outward trials were not producing in them that confirmation of faith, and that stedfastness, for which they were sent, but they were deteriorating, instead of improving, under them. St. James therefore wrote his hortatory and minatory Epistle, to bring them to a sense of their Christian state under the Father of wisdom and the Lord of glory, subjects as they were of the perfect law of liberty, new-begotten by the divine word, married unto Christ, and waiting in patience for His advent to judgment. 2. The letter is full of earnestness, plain speaking, holy severity. The brother of Him who opened His teaching with the Sermon on the Mount, seems to have deeply imbibed the words and maxims of it, as the law of Christian morals. The characteristic of his readers was the lack of living faith : the falling asunder, as it has been well called, of knowledge and action, of head and heart. And no portion of the divine teaching could be better calculated to sound the depths of the treacherous and disloyal heart, than this first exposition by our Lo) d, who knew the heart, of the difference between the old law, in its exter- nality, and the searching spiritual law of the GospeF. 3. The main theme of the Epistle may be described as being the 7 The connexion between our Epistle and the Sermon on the Mount has often been noticed : and the principal parallels will be found pointed out in the reff. and com- mentary. I subjoin a list of them : ch. i. 2, Matt. v. 10-12; ch. i. 4, Matt. v. 48; ch. i. 5, V. 15, Matt. vii. 7 ff.; ch. i. 9, Matt. v. 3; ch. i. 20, Matt. v. 22; ch. ii. 13, Matt. vi. 14, 15, v. 7 ; ch. ii. 14 ff., Matt. vii. 21 ff. j ch. iii. 17, 18, Matt. v. 9 ; ch. iv. 4, 224 § iv.] OBJECT, CONTENTS, STYLE, [introduction. '^'^ -perfect man" in the perfection of the Christian life : the " doer of the perfect law .-" and his state and duties are described and enforced, not in the abstract, but in a multitude of living connexions and circum- stances of actual life, as might suit the temptations and necessities of the readers. 4. St. James begins by a reference to their " temptations" exhorting them to consider them matter of joy, as sent for the trial of their faith and accomplisbment of their perfection, wbich must be carried on in faith, and prayer to God for wisdom, without doubt and wavering. The worldly rich are in fact not the happy, but the subjects of God's judgment: the humble and enduring is he to whom the crown of life is promised (ch. i. 1—12). 5. Then he comes to treat of a ^^ tempting" which is not from God, but from their own lusts. God on the contrary is the Author of every good and perfect gift, as especially of their new birth by the word of His truth. The inference from this is that, seeing they have their evil from themselves, but their good from Him, they should be eager to hear, but slow to speak and slow to wrath, receiving the word in meek- ness, being thoroughly penetrated with its influence, in deed and word, not paying to God the vain ^^ religious service" of outward conformity only, but that of acts of holy charity and a spotless life. 6. The second chapter introduces the mention of their special faults : and as intimately connected with eh. i. 27, first that of respect of per- sons in regard of worldly wealth (ii. 1 — \Z) ; and then that of supposing a bare asseusive faith sufficient for salvation without its living fruits in a holy life (ii. 14—26). Next, the exhortation of ch. i. 19, " slow to speak, slow to wrath," is again taken up, and in ch. iii. 1 — 18, these two particulars are treated, in the duties of curbing the tongue and the contentious temper. 7. This last leads naturally on in ch. iv. 1 — 12 to the detection of the real source of all contention and strife, viz. in their lusts, inflamed by the solicitations of the devil. These solicitations they are to resist, by penitence before God, and by curbing their proud and uncharitable judgments. Then he turns (iv. 13 — v. 6) to those who live in their pride and worldliuess, in assumed independence on God, and severely reproves the rich for their oppression and defrauding of the poor, warn- ing them of a day of retribution at hand. 8. Then, after an earnest exhortation to patient endurance (ch. v. 7 — 11) and to abstain from words of hasty profanity (v. 12), he takes occasion in prescribing to them what to do in adversity, prosperity and Matt. vi. 24; ch. iv. 10, Matt. v. 3, 4; ch. iv. 11, Matt. vii. 1 f.; ch. v. 2, Matt. vi. 19; ch. V. 10, Matt. V. 12; ch. v. 12, Matt. v. 33 fF. ; and from other discourses of our Lord, ch. i. 14, Matt. xv. 19 ; ch. iv. 12, Matt. x. 28. Compare also the places where the rich are denounced with Luke vi. 24 ff. 225 INTRODUCTION.] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES, [ch. xvi. sickness, and as to mutual confes!