Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/640

606 HEBREWS far higher measure than the Pauline epistles, and in a sense which thoroughly well agrees with the position of the author as no apostle but an apostolic convert, the book presents the marks of theological reflexion on the established data of the faith. Yet it is impossible to ignore the fact that a special and practical motive runs through the whole book. The author never loses sight of a definite circle of readers, and the vast scope of his argument, which is at once felt in the dignity of the opening verses, so unlike the commencement of an ordinary letter, appears to be directly suggested by some historical circumstance affecting his readers and himself, but nowhere explicitly set forth in the epistle, which brought the trial of their faith into close connexion with the question of the permanence of the temple and its ritual. Now we have seen reason to believe that these Jewish Christians were not Palestinians of an Ebionite type but men of the Hellenistic dispersion, with a possible tendency to ascetic mysticism, and almost certainly of such a habit of thought as enabled them readily to sympathize with the typological method of our author. Among men of this type there was no great danger of a relapse into practical ceremonialism. They would rather be akin to the school of Judaism characterized by Philo (DeMigr. Abr., c. xvi.; ed. Mangey, i. 450), who neglected the observance of the ceremonial laws because they took them as symbols of ideal things. Occupying this position before their conversion, their adoption of the Christian faith would not have forced upon them any close examina tion of the relation of the new dispensation to the old law. But it appears from Philo that the men who spiritualized away the Sabbath, the great feists, even circumcision itself, were not prepared to think lightly of the sacred ritual of the temple. The holy hill of God, the meeting-place of heaven and earth, with its stately service and its ancient memories, had too central a place in the religion of the old covenant to seem indifferent to the freest thinker. And so our Hebrews, whose acceptance of Christ had not shaken thair sense of the continuity of the people of God and their Old Testament privileges, might readily retain the feeling that the ritual of the temple was still what it was of old a visible and necessary pledge of God s approach to His people and His acceptance of their worship. So long as things ran their old course such a feeling would hardly affect the even tenor of their Christian life. But when the death struggle of Judea against Rome drew the sympathy of every Hebrew heart, when the abomination of desolation stood in the holy place, when the holy and beautiful house was burned up with fire, and when, with all this, terror and distress filled the whole Roman empire and still the Lord delayed His coming, it was not strange that something like despair of God s help should assail our Hebrews, and that all the hopes of the people of God should seem threatened in the overthrow of the ancient pledge of Jehovah s near ness to Israel. Now it has generally been argued that the epistle to the Hebrews, which describes the temple services in the present tense, must necessarily have been written before they ceased to be performed. But it has been shown in the most con clusive manner, from the use of similar presents in Rabbi nical writers as well as in Josephus and elsewhere, that this argument goes for nothing ; and the most recent writers, since Holtzmann s discussion of the subject in Schenkel s ftibel-Lexikon, ii. G23 seq., generally admit that the epistle may have been written after the fall of the temple. And if this be so it can hardly be questioned that the most natural view of the apostle s argument, as it comes to a point in such passages as viii. 13, ix. 9, is that the disap pearance of the obsolete ritual of the old covenant is no blow to Christian faith, because in Christ ascended into glory the church possesses in heavenly verity all that the j old ritual presented in mere earthly symbol. It was the j ruin of the Jewish state and worship which compelled j Christianity to find what is offered in our epistle a theory of the disappearance of the old dispensation in the new. Many attempts have been made to determine which of | the centres of the Diaspora was the seat of our Hebrews. I Hofmann suggests Antioch ; Ewald, Ravenna j 1 but Rome | and Alexandria are the places for and against which most has been said. One argument for Alexandria on which great stress has been laid must certainly be dismissed. Wieseler (Untersuclnuig ubcr den Hebrcierbrief, ii te Halfte, Kiel, 1861), combining the arguments against a Palestinian address with the impression, which we have seen to be without sufficient foundation, that the readers lived in the neighbourhood of a Jewish temple, seeks them among the Egyptian Jews who frequented the schismatical temple of Leontopolis (Tel-el-Yahudia) in the upper Delta. And he tries to show that in his description of the temple and the functions of the high priests our author diverges from the Judaean pattern and follows peculiarities of the Egyptian temple. But this argument rests on a series of improbable assumptions. The supposed peculiarities of Onias s temple are proved by arbitrary exegesis from passages of Philo, who apparently never thought of that temple at all. Nor can it be shown that it had ever such a reputation as to play the part which Wieseler assigns to it. And our author s supposed ignorance of the Jerusalem ritual is not made out. In the true text of x. 11 the high priest is not mentioned, and in vii. 27 what is asserted of the high priest is, not that he offered daily sacrifice, but that he was in daily need of atonement. It is more difficult to under stand why in ix. 4 the golden Ov^Lanqpiov, that is, the censer or incense-altar, for the usage of the word does not determine which is meant, is assigned to the Holy of Holies. But a passage from the almost contemporary Apocalypse of Baruch, to which Harnack has directed atten tion (Stud. u. Krit., 1876, p. 572 seq.), similarly connects the censer with the Holy of Holies, and seems to show that our author here proceeds on a current opinion and has not simply made a slip. 2 Apart from Wieseler s arguments, there is still something to be said for Alexandria. The use in ch. xi. of 2 Maccabees, an Egyptian Apocryphon, 3 the general sympathy of the argument with Alexandrian thought, the apparent analogy between our Hebrews aud the free- thinking Jews of whom Philo speaks, are all in favour of this address, though we do not know enough about the early history of the Egyptian Church to ?peak with positiveness either for or against this view of the epistle. Among Continental scholars the disposition at present is to favour the Roman address ; upon which view, since that church was a mixed one, we must suppose that the letter was originally directed to a Jewish section of the Roman Christians, This is not quite plausible, especially since we find in the epistle no trace of the division of parties alluded to by Paul in his epistle from Rome to the Philippians. It is argued, however, that there is an analogy between the way of thinking of our Hebrews and the dis position of the majority of the Roman Church as it appears in Rom. ix. seq. The persecution x. 32 is supposed to be that of Nero, in which case ^earpt^o/xevot may literally mean " exposed as a public spectacle "; and xiii. 7 is taken as an allusion to the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. In working 1 T)as Scndschreiben an die Ifelrder und Jakolos 1 Rundschreilen , ubersetzt und erkliirt von, H. Ewald, Gott., 1870. 2 The Syriac word in Baruch is Pinna. To the passages cited by Harnack to establish for this word the sense of censer, not incense altar, may be added Bar AH ed. Hoffmann, No. 2578; Barhebr., Chron. Eccl., p. 507; Ezek. viii. 11 (Pesh. and Syr. Hex.). 3 Professor Plumptre, in the Expositor, vol. i., has also traced

analogies with the book of Wisdom.