o.s it were, intorpreted [or 'wrote a commentary on,' uxo.\ioypa,f,~uaVTo~] what had been spoken by his master. If, then, any Chnrch receives this Epistle as Paul's, let it be well esteemed, even e.lso on this account [i.e. let it not on this account lose the credit due to it as a witness to the truth J; for not without good reason (ou yap 1:lKv) have the men of old banded it down as Paul's. But as to who wrote the Epistle, the truth God knows. The account that has reached us is, on the part of some, that Clement, who became Bishop of the Romans, wrote the Epistle ; on the part of others, that Luke, who wrote the Gospel and the Acts, did so'" (Eusebius, 'Hist. Eccl.,' vi. 25 ). Now, let us here observe that Origen does not, any more than bis pre- decessors, dispute the essentially Pauline origin of the Epistle. Of this he is satisfied, both on the ground of the ancient tradition to which be properly attaches great importance, and also on the ground of the ideas of the Epistle being so entirely worthy of the great apostle. He only feels himself convinced, in view of the Greek idiom, and the general style, that Paul could not have been the actual writer. His theory is com- patible with the Epistle having beeu written either during the apostle's life and with his knowledge aud sanction, or after his death by a disciple who had taken notes of his teaching, or at any rate retained it in his mind. Further, he evidently attaches no value to the opinions which had become current in his.time as to one person rather than another having been the actual writer. He was too sound a. critic to consider (as Clement seems to have done) mere coincidences of phraseology cogent evidences in favour of St. Luke. All he can be sure of is that the Epistle had not been written by St. Paul himself, though he has no doubt of its beiug Pauline, i.e. a true embodiment of St. Paul's teaching. Now, the opinion of Origen, thus expressed, is of peculiar value; not only on acconnt of the early age in which he lived, with all the facts that could be then known before him, but also because of his competence to form a sound judgment on such a subject; and the fact of his having been an original and somewhat free thinker adds to, rather than detracts from, the value of his verdict. His well-considered words express, in faot, the state of the case as it remains to the present day, subsequent inquiries having thrown little further light upon it. After Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria. ( ob. A.D. 26-1-5), the bishops who succeeded him, and all the ecclesiastical writers of Egypt, Sy1ia, and the East generally, cite the Epistle without hesitation as St. Paul's. Ariu1:1, too, and the early Arians so accepted it; and if some of the later Arians rejected it as such, it appears to have been only on controversial grounds. See Epiphanius, 'Heres.,' 69; and Theodoret, in the preface to his commen- tary on the Epistle, who says, "It is no wonder that those who are infected with the Arian malady should rage against the apostolic writings, separating the Epistle to the Hebrews from the rest, and calling it spurious." Euse- bius also, expressing the unanimous judgment of the East, places it (though INTRODUCTION TO
not without allusion to the doubts, to be noticed presently, entertained by the Church of Rome) among the indisputable Pauline writings (' Hist. Eool.,' iii. 3; iii. 25). He is aware, however, of the difficulties attending the supposition that the Greek Epistle as it stands was written by St. Paul, and gives the translation theory (which, as we have seen, was held by Clement of Alexandria) as the current oue in his day, or at auy rate as what he had himself got hold of: "For Paul having written to the Hebrews in their native Janguage, some say that Luke the evangelist, and others that this same Clement (i.e. of Rome), translated the writing." He adds 1'is own opinion in favour of Clement having been the translator, on the ground of resemb1ance, in diction and thought, between his undoubted epistle to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Hebrews. What he thus says is only of value as testimony to tho acceptance of the Epistle throughout the East as essentially Pauline. His own notions, as to its being a translation, and Clement the translator, need carry little weight with us; those of Origen (which, though he himself records them, he does not seem to have appreciated) of course outweigh them greatly. In the West, however, there was not for some centuries any such general acceptance of the Epistle as Pauline. Though Clement's use of it, above referred. to, shows that it was certainly known at Rome at the end of the first century, yet it is plain that the later W estem Fathers, till the fourth century, did not recognize it as having the authority of St. Paul. In the Muratorian Fragment, composed probably not long after A.D. 170,1 though we cannot conclude, the document being so defective, that the Epistle was not originally mentioned, yet it cannot have been included among St. Paul's ; for in the extant passage which refers to these we read, "Cum ipse bea.tus apostolus Paulus, sequens prodecessoris sui Johannis ordinem nonnisi nominatim septem ecclesiis scribat ordine tali; ad Corinthios prime., ad Ephesias secunda, ad Philippenses tertia, ad Colossenses quarts., ad Galatas quint.a, ad Thessalonicenses sexta, ad Romanos septima. . . , Vernm ad Philemonem unam, et ad Titum unam, et ad Timotheum duas pro a.ffectu et dilectione. . . . Fertur etiam ad Laodicenses [alia], alia ad Alexandrinos, Pauli nomine finctie ad hmresim Marcionis, et alia plura qum in ca.tholicam ecclesiam recipi non potest." Thus, if it was mentioned at all in some part of the Fragment now missing, it cannot have been ranked among the real or reputed Epistles of St. Paul.1 Further, Photius (' Bihl. Cod.,' 121) quotes Hippolytus (A.D. 200) as denying the Epistle to be by St. l'aul ; and (' Bihl. Cod.,' 232) he gives an extract from the tritheist Steph.anus (surnamed o ro/3apo~), in which the same is said of Irenreus 1 On the Muratorian Fragment, see Westcott's • Ca.non of the New Testoment,' pt. i. § 12, o.nd Appendix C. • It ho.s been suggested that the spurious Epislle to the Alexe.ndrie.ns mentioned in the Fragment might be our Epistle to the Hebrews, which he.d been, perhaps, addressed to the Jews of Alexondrie.; in which ce.se the ee.rly familiarity with it in the.t pince would bo u.ccounted for. But our e.nonymouij Epil!Jtlc could hardly be apokon or e.s "Pauli nomine fincta," or described o.s bearing on the heresy of Me.rcion. 'l'llE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. vii