with the similar problem of the authorship of the Book of Job: ‘There are some minds that cannot put up with uncertainty, and are under the necessity of deluding themselves into quietude by fixing on some known name. There are others to whom it is a comfort to think that in this omniscient age a few things still remain mysterious. Uncertainty is to them more suggestive than exact knowledge. No literature has so many great anonymous works as that of Israel. The religious life of this people was at certain periods very intense, and at these periods the spiritual energy of the nation expressed itself almost impersonally, through men who forgot themselves and were speedily forgotten in name by others.”’ And if we cannot name, we can at least partially describe the author. For his letter reveals a man who was not an Apostle but a scholar of the Apostles; a man of the second Christian generation (genea- logisch nicht chronologisch, as Harnack says); a Hellenist yet a member and teacher of a Jewish Christian church; a Paulinist with some tincture of Alexandrian culture, though his treatment of Scripture differs toto coelo from Philo’s; a friend of Timothy and at the time of writing in the company of Italian Christians.
Aim. But it is not the locality so much as the condition of the readers that chiefly concerns us. And as we read the Epistle it be- comes apparent that the danger which roused the writer to inter- pose was not such definite and grave heresy as evoked the Epistle to the Galatians or that to the Colossians, nor such entangling heathen vices and difficult questions of casuistry as imperilled the Corinthian Church, but rather a gradual, almost unconscious admission of doubt which dulled hope and slackened energy. They had professed Christianity for some time (v. 12); and the sincerity of their profes- sion had been proved by the manner in which they had borne severe persecution (x. 33, 34). They had taken joyfully the spoiling of their possessions; they had endured a great conflict of sufferings. But they found the long-sustained conflict with sin (xli. 4) and the day-by-day contempt and derision they experienced as Christians (xiii. 13), more wearing to the spirit than sharper persecution. Consequently their knees had become feeble to pursue the path of righteous endurance and activity, their hands hung limply by their side as if they were defeated men (xii. 12. They had ceased to make progress and were in danger of falling away (vi. 1-4, iii, 12) and were allowing an evil heart of unbelief to grow in them. No doubt this listless, semi-believing condition laid them open to the incursion of “ divers and strange teachings ” (xiii. 9) and in itself was full of peril.
To restore in them the freshness of faith the writer at every