into personal allusions, substituting the syllogism of passion for the syllogism of logic. This writer is never ungrammatical, he is never irregular, he is never personal, he never struggles for expression ; he never loses himself in a parenthesis; he is never hurried into an anacoluthon. His style is the style of a man who thinks as well as writes in Greek; whereas St. Paul wrote in Greek but thought in Syriac.” The same difference was felt by those who themselves used the Greek language. Thus Origen! says: ‘That the verbal style of the Epistle entitled ‘to the Hebrews’ is not rude like the language of the Apostle who acknowledged himself ‘ rude in speech,” that is, in expression ; but that its diction is purer Greek, any one who has the power to discern differences of phraseology will ac- knowledge.” ?
But if the style puts it beyond question that Paul cannot have been the immediate author of the Epistle is it not possible to believe with Origen that “the thoughts are those of the Apostle”? This also must be answered in the negative. There is in the Epistle no- thing discordant with Pauline doctrine, but its argument moves on different lines and in a different atmosphere from those with which the Apostle to the Gentiles makes us familiar. This is most readily discerned when we consider the attitude held by the two authors re- spectively to the fundamental idea of Jewish religion, the Law. Paul views the Mosaic economy mainly as a law commanding and threatening. The writer to the Hebrews views it rather as a vast congeries of institutions, observances and promises. To the one writer the Law is mainly juridical; to the other it is ceremonial. To the ardent spirit of Paul athirst for righteousness, the Law with its impracticable precepts had become a nightmare, the embodiment of all that barred access to God and life. The grace of Christianity throwing open the gates of righteousness was the antithesis and
1Euseb., H. E., vi. 25.
4“ Diversity of style is more easily felt by the reader than expressed by the critic, without at least a tedious analysis of language; one simple and tangible test presents itself, however, in the use of connecting particles, inas- much as these determine the structure of sentences. A minute comparison of these possesses therefore real importance in the differentiation of language. Now in the Epistles of St. Paul εἴ τις occurs fifty times, εἴτε sixty-three, ποτε (in affimative clauses) nineteen, εἶτα (in enumerations) six, εἰ δὲ καὶ, four, εἴπερ five, ἐκτὸς εἰ μὴ three, εἴγε four, μήπως twelve, μηκέτι ten, μενοῦνγε three, ἐάν eighty-eight times, while none of them are found in the Epistle except ἐάν and that only once (or twice), except in quotations. On the other hand, ὅθεν which occurs six times and ἐάνπερ which occurs three times in the Epistle are never used by St. Paul.” Rendall’s Theol. of Hebrew Christianity, p. 27.