the assumption of its Pauline authorship; but the influ- ence of the earlier suspicion remained, and Jerome declared that the custom of the Latins did not receive it as St. Paul’s. Augustine agreed substantially with Jerome. It was author- ised as canonical by two councils of Carthage (397, 419 A.D.); but the language of the former council was peculiar: “ Thir- teen Epistles of Paul, and one of the same to the Hebrews.” The decree of the latter council was “fourteen Epistles of Paul.”
From this time the canonical authority and authorship of the epistle were generally accepted until the age of the Reformation, when the old doubts were revived by Cajetan and Erasmus. The council of Trent (1545-1563) decreed fourteen Pauline Epistles; yet different views have been current among Roman Catholic theologians, as Bellarmine, Estius, and others. Luther denied the Pauline authorship, and placed the epistle along with James, Jude, and the Apoc- alypse, after “the right-certain, main books of the New Testament.” Melanchthon treated it as anonymous. The Magdeburg Centuriators (1559-1574) denied that it was Paul’s, as did Calvin. Under Beza’s influence it was separ- ated from the Pauline letters in the Gallican Confession (1571). The Belgic and Helvetic Confessions declared it Pauline. The hypothesis of the Pauline authorship was con- clusively overthrown by Bleek in 1868.
The conclusion of modern scholarship rests upon: °
(1) THe Styte anp Dicrion.— While Paul’s style is marked by frequent irregularities, anacolutha, unclosed par- entheses, and mixed metaphors, this epistle is written in a flowing, symmetrical, and artistically elaborated style. The difference is as marked as that between a chapter of Gibbon and one of Sartor Resartus. The rhetorical art of Hebrews appears in the careful arrangement of the words, the rhyth- mical structure of sentences, and the sonorous compounds. The paragraphs are sometimes arranged in a regular series of premises and conclusions, with parentheses which do not lose their connection with the main topic, while the whole is developed in regular sequence, without anacolutha.