to seek the God of the Old Testament revelation, would be to fall back from a living to a dead God.
Again, it is claimed that the words at the beginning of Chapter VI. could not be properly addressed to Jewish Christ- ians: that only a heathen would need to lay such a founda- tion on his first acceptance of Christ. On the contrary, all the points here enumerated would have had to be expounded to a Jew on becoming a Christian. See notes on that passage.
A still more difficult question is the local destination of the epistle. By those who supposed it to be the work of Paul, attempts were made to place this destination within the circle of Paul’s recorded missionary labours; and it was accordingly assigned to almost every place visited or supposed to have been visited by him, — Macedonia, Corinth, Antioch, Spain, etc.
A plausible hypothesis assigned its destination to Jewish Christians in Alexandria. This was based on the fact that the Muratorian Canon (170-210), while omitting Hebrews, notes an Epistle to the Alexandrians (Ad Alexandrinos). It was argued that, since the Canon contains a list both of Paul’s genuine epistles and of those falsely ascribed to him, and since Hebrews is not mentioned, the Alexandrian epistle can mean only the Epistle to the Hebrews. It was further urged that Alexandria had, next to Jerusalem, the largest resident Jewish population in the world, and that at Leontopolis in Egypt was another temple, with the arrangements of which the notices in Hebrews corresponded more nearly than with those of the Jerusalem temple.* Moreover, the Alexandrian character of the phraseology of the epistle was supposed to point to Alexandrian readers.
But, (@) We have no positive history of the church in Egypt in apostolic times. (+) Although there are numerous notices of the epistle by early Alexandrian writers, there is no hint of its having been addressed to their own church. (ec) In the Muratorian Canon the Epistle to the Alexandri- ans is distinctly stated to be a forgery in the name of Paul.
* This temple was founded s.c. 180-145 by Onias, one of the high-priestly family. The building was a deserted temple of Pasht, the cat-goddess. A. description is given by Josephus B. J. vii. 10,3; Cont. Ap. ii. 2.