Introduction 229

We may put aside the idea that it was not addressed to any particular Church but was a homily written for all whom it might concern. This idea has been plausibly stated by Reuss. “The Epistle to the Hebrews,” he says, “is not a letter properly so called written in view of a local necessity; and the few personal and cir- cumstantial details added on the last page were certainly not the reasons which prompted the author to write. This book may have been already penned and actually concluded when occasion offered to make it useful to a particular circle of Christians and _in reference to whom he may have added the 13th chapter. The ‘ Hebrews whose name is inserted by the care of a later reader (also truly in- spired) are not, as has been imagined, the members of some isolated community, as e.g., the Church at Jerusalem; they are Jewish Christians in general, considered from a theoretical point of view.” This view has been adopted by Lipsius and others, and at the first blush it may seem to have something to say for itself, for letters do not usually begin without giving the name of the writer and of his correspondents. But the idea that the entire document is a treatise written in the study without definite reference to any particular group of Christians, is contradicted not merely by the personal references of the 13th chapter, but by the occurrence throughout the Epistle of expressions which have no meaning if not so addressed. Indeed, no Epistle more exclusively concentrates itself upon a definite and actual condition, nor more definitely recognises that its readers have passed through and are passing through well-marked experiences.