Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/637

HEBREWS 603 " that apocryphal shepherd of the adulterers " (the Shepherd of Hernias). This tradition of the African Church holds a singularly isolated position. Later writers appear to know it only from Tertullian, and it soon became obsolete, to be revived -for amomeni after the Reformation by the Scottish theologian Cameron, and then again in our own century by the German critics, among whom at present it is the favour ite view. Very different is the history of the Egyptian tradition, which can bo traced back as far as a teacher of the Alexandrian Clement, presumably Pantaenus (Euseb., Hist. EccL, vi. 14). This "blessed presbyter," as Clement calls him, sought to explain why Paul did not name himself as usual at the head of the epistle, and found the reason in the modesty of the author, who, in addressing the Hebrews, was going beyond his commission as apostle to the Gentiles. Clement himself takes it for granted that an epistle to the Hebrews must have been written in Hebrew, and supposes that Luke translated it for the Greeks. Thus far there is no sign that the Pauline authorship was ever questioned in Alexandria. Origen rests on the same tradition, which he refers to "the ancient men." But he knows that the tradition is not common to all churches. He feels that the language is un-Pauline, though the admirable thoughts are not second to those of the unquestioned apostolic writings. And thus he is led to the view that the ideas were orally set forth by Paul, but that the language, arrangement, and some features of the exposition are the work of a disciple. According to some this disciple was Clement of Rome ; others named Luke ; but the truth, says Origen, is known to God alone (Euseb., vi. 25, cf. iii. 38). It is not surpris ing that these limitations of the tradition had less influence than the broad fact that Origen accepted the book as of Pauline authority. From the time of Origen the opinion that Paul wrote the epistle became more and more prevalent in the East. In the West this view was still far from established in the 4th century. But it gained ground steadily ; even those who, Uke Jerome and Augustine, knew the variations of tradition were unwilling to press an opposite view ; and in the 5th century the Pauline author ship was accepted at Rome, and practically throughout Christendom, not to be again disputed till the revival of letters and the rise of a more critical spirit. That the received view called for revision could not indeed be questioned when men began to look at the facts of the case. The vacillation of tradition and the dissimi larity of the epistle from the style and thoughts of Paul were brought out with great force by Erasmus in his con cluding annotation on the book, where he ventures the conjecture based on a passage of his favourite Jerome, that Clement of Rome was the real author. Luther (who suggests Apollos) and Calvin (who thinks of Luke or Clement) followed with the decisive argument that Paul, who lays such stress on the fact that his gospel was not taught to him by man but by direct revelation (Gal. i.), could not have written Heb. ii. 3, 4, where the author classes himself among those who received the message of salvation from the personal disciples of the Lord on the evidence of the miracles with which God confirmed their word. The force of tradition seemed already broken, but the wave of reaction which so soon overwhelmed the freer tendencies of the first reformers brought back the old view. Protestant orthodoxy again accepted Paul as the author, and dissentient voices were seldom heard till the revival of free Biblical criticism in last century. As criticism strengthened ^ its arguments, theologians began to learn that the denial of tradition involves no danger to faith, and at the present moment, in spite of the ingenious special pleading of Hofmann (Die Heilige Schrift N. Ts., vol. v., Nordlingen, 1873), scarcely any sound scholar will be found to accept Paul as the direct author of the epistle, though such a modified view as was suggested by Origen still claims adherents among the lovers of compromise with tradition. The arguments against the Alexandrian tradition are in fact conclusive. It is probably unfair to hamper that tradition with Clement s notion that the book is a trans lation from the Hebrew, a monstrous hypothesis which has received its redudio ad absurdum in the recent attempt of J. H. R. Biesenthal to reconstruct the Hebrew text (Das Trostschreiben des Apostels Pauhts an die Ifcbraer, kritisch wiederheryestellt, &c., Leipsic, 1878). But just as little can the Greek be from Paul s pen. The un-Fauline character of the style, alike in the words used and in the structure of the sentences, strikes every scholar as it struck Origen and Erasmus. The type of thought is quite unique. The theological ideas are cast in a different mould; and the leading conception of the high priesthood of Christ, which is no mere occasional thought but a central point in the author s conception of Christianity, finds its nearest analogy not in the Pauline epistles but in John xvii. 19. The Old Testament is cited after the Alexandrian translation more exactly and exclusively than is the custom of Paul, and that even where the Hebrew original is divergent. Nor is this an accidental circumstance. There is every appearance that the author was a Hellenist whose learning did not embrace a knowledge of the Hebrew text, and who derived his metaphysic and allegorical method from the Alexandrian rather than the Palestinian schools. 1 The force of these arguments can be brought out only by the accumulation of a multitude of details too tedious for this place, but the evidence from the few personal indica tions contained in the epistle is easily grasped and not less powerful. The argument from ii. 3, 4, which appeared decisive to Luther and Calvin, has already been referred to. Again, we read in xiii. 19 that the writer is absent from the church which he addresses, but hopes to be speedily restored to them. This expression is not to be understood as im. plying that the epistle was written in prison, for xiii. 23 shows that the author is master of his own movements. 2 The plain sense is that his home is with them, but that he is at present absent, and begs their prayers for a speedy return. But Paul, if he could say that he had a home at all, had it not in a community of Jewish Christians. The external authority of the Alexandrian tradition can have- no weight against such difficulties. If that tradition was original and continuous, the long ignorance of the Roman Church and the opposite tradition of Africa are inexplicable. But no tradition was more likely to arise in circles where the epistle was valued and its origin forgotten. In spite of its divergencies from the standard of Pauline authorship, the book has manifest Pauline affinities, and can hardly have originated beyond the Pauline circle, to which it is referred, not only by the author s friendship with Timothy (xiii. 23), but by many unquestionable echoes of the Pauline theology, and even by distinct allusions to passages in Paul s epistles. 3 In an uncritical age these features might easily suggest Paul as the author of a book which was read in MSS. 1 For the Alexandrian elements in the epistle consult the list of passages in Hilgenfeld s Einleitung(Le^c, 1 875), p. 384, note. Alarge mass of valuable material is collected in J. B. Carpzov s Sacra; Exer- dto.tiones in Ep. a>l Heb. ex Philone Alexandrino (Helmstadt, 1750). 2 In x. 34 the true reading is not " of me in my bonds," but " on them that were in bonds," TO?S $Tfj.tois awfirae^ffart. The false reading, which was that of Clement of Alexandria, is probably con nected with the tradition that Paul is author. 3 An unambiguous proof that our author had read the epistle^to the Romans seems to lie in x. 30. This is the one Old Testament citation of the epistle which does not follow the Septuagint (Deut. xxxii. 35); but it is word for word from Rom. xii. 19. Further signs of depend ence on Romans and Corinthians (which require sifting) have been collected by Holtzmann in Schenkel s Bibel-Lexik&n, ii. 620, and Hil

genfeld s Zeitschrift, ix. 4 seq.