viil, LmATION of FII:st Hk.mikks, — Where the Heb, conmninity, to which the Epistle wiisaddres.scd, Wivs hn-ated, is a much debated (|Ucstion of inferior inoment to that ju.st disposed of. I'alesline, Alexanilria, Rome are the rival liypotheses, and weighty authorities can be cited for each of them. §
• So in elfect I'llelderer In I'rchrhtfnlhiim, p. fi'.'ll.
t 1.11 Tluitlinlir lit l.'t.lHire iiiir ll'lirtiix, pp, '.'li, i'.
^ Thf Ejiindf to t/if //ehieirt. Introduction, h. xxxv.
it One of the most recent and able contributions in support of the Koine hvpotliesls inav be found iD If^ville's Orif/int« i/« VEj'it.fojiitl. ls'J4.
VOL. II. — 22
It is not neces.sarv here to go into details on the subject, as the topic has no vital bearing on the theology of the Epistle. If we attach weight to the in.scription To the Hebrews as indicating, not merely Jewi.sh nationality, but a section of the .lewi.sh people distinguished by the epithet ' Hebrew,' it points to P.alestine or Syria as the locality of the first readers. ' Hebrews ' means Jews speaking Hebrew. But as the Epistle was written in (Jrcek, these 'Hebrews' mu.st have been bilinguals aci|uainted with Greek as well as their mother-tongue. Such bilingual Jews would be found more readily in a Syrian city like Antioch than ill Jerusalem. Other '.hings point in the .same direction, e.ij. the statement in 2' that the persons adilressed had heard the gosjiel, not from the lips of the apostles, but at .second baud. This would apply to the Syrian Churches, which were founded by the scattered members of the Jerusalem Church after the death of Stephen.*
ix. D.ni:. — The date of the Epistle has more than curious interest. The solemn earnest tone of the hortatory parts speaks to a great crisis, such as that of the destruction of Jerus. and of the Jewish stale, impendiiKj. All seems to say : a judgment- day is approaching (10-»). The Epistle is a supreme effort to avert apostasy at a time of extreme peril. A general overturn is at hand, when all things that can be shaken — cities, walls, temples, hoary religion.s — will be shaken to make room for the kingdom that cannot be shaken (I'J-'"'-"). There is therefore a high degree of probability in the suggestion that the Epistle was written when the war. which issued so dis.T-strously for the Jewish people, was raging and drawing near to its awful crisis. 'The fatal year A.li. 70 had arrived, and the Koman armies had gathered round Jerus. ; if the daily sacrifice had not already ceased, the siege had at all events begun ; for until Jerus. was " conipa.s.sed with armies" no Hebrew Chris- tian would have ventured to address to his Heb. brethren so unsparing a cundemnalion of the national religion.' t The last statement in this quotation may be doubtful, for the prophetic men of Scri])ture always had the courage to utter their convictions at the proper time, but the selection of the perioii most suitable to the message de- livered is otherwise appropriate. And the date called for by the solemnity of the message is bonte out by minute hints occasionally dropi)ed, c.</. by the allusion to the 40 years during which the people of Israel saw (lod's works (3"). The mere circumstance that the writer connects the 40 years with the seeing of God's works, rather than with the trying of God's patience, as in the psalm quoted from, is significant. He does it intention- ally, and as one aware of the original coiniexion, as is evident from 3'". where he returns tt> the original connexion. What is his intention ? To suggest a iiarallel between the case of Israel in the wilderness and the liel). Church to this effect: ' Your fathers saw God's wonderful works, which ought to have kept them true to Him, for 40 years, yet they perished through unbelief. You liave seen the wonders of God's grace in the Chris- tian Church for the same period of time ; see that ye jierish not likewise on Israel's judgment-day,' Reckoning the 40 years from the beginning of the Church, corresponding to the Exodus, the period would take iis down to the fateful year 70 or thereby.
That the Epistle was not written at a later dale has been argued from the fad that throughout the writer seems to speak of the Eevilical ritual ns if it were still in force. This, liowever, it is
•See on this Kendall, KpinlU lo thf //tbreirt, .\ppendix, |>. fk.. t lU'ndall, Appendix, p. 74.
338
HEBRON
HEBRON
i\o\v •.•eiiiTally adiiiilted, is not conclusive, iis the auilior appears tu write nf tliat ritual from an ideal puiiit of view. It may have been a tliin;; of ihe i)ast as an actual fact, yet present for his iiiiiiil as an object of tliousjhl. The possibility of tills must be admitted in view of the fact that it is not the temple but the old tabernacle the writer has iu view as the scene of Levitical worship (see !>-•"■').
X. AfriloR. — The Epistle is anonymous, and the author has remained unknown. A|iollos. as de- scribed in Ac IS^*-**, is the k-hul of man wanted — a Hellenistic .Jew of Alexandrian culture, ac- quainted both with the OT Scriiitures (in the fir. viision) and with contemporary philo.^ophy. With this we mu.st be content, t )tlier conjertures thrown out from time to time have comparatively little to conniiend them. The most iutere.stiiiir, and one of the most ancient, is that which ascribed to ],nke the Kvanjjelist a share in the production of the work, at least to the extent of translating into iiooil Greek a supposed Heb. original from the hand of the Apostle I'aul. Clement of Alexandria entcTtaiued this ojiinion. and through Ku.sebius {JIK in. 38) it became the prevailing view that the Kpistle was. in thought, the work of St. Paul, anil in a tir. version the literary work of St. Luke or Clement of Home. A number of resemblances between the style of St. Luke in the Gospel and in Ac lud that of our Epistle have been pointed out, so afe to lend at lea-st plausibility to the hypothesis that the evangelist is responsible for the Ejiistle in its Gr. dress. But if Luke might have been the translator (on the improbable hypothesis of a Heb. original), he certainly could not have been the author. The striking contrast between his account of the agony in the garden and that given '.n the Ei)istle is surticient to settle that (piestion.