Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

12 INTKODUCTION.
have- been written before the farewell address at Miletus to the
Ephesian presbyters, in which the apostle warns against a danger,
not that was already present, but which threatened the future ;
before the epistle to the Ephesians, which contains no trace of the
errors here pourtrayed, while the apostle himself represents these
errors as the beginning of a falling away from the faith which was
progressively to develop itself ? We would here further recall to
mind what has been said in the General Introduction, namely, that
what the epistle contains respecting the prevailing errors, as well as
the ecclesiastical institutions, .indicates its place to be in the midst
of the earlier appearances of this kind, and the latest within the
apostolic era ; that we find everywhere the marks of Christianity
having been in existence for some length of time, and its presence
having become familiar, as, for example, in the disappearance of the
charismata, and the qualification of aptness to teach being required
in the presbyter—although the total impression made by the epistle
in this respect is much more striking when we compare it with the
epistles to the Corinthians, or with that to the Romans, in proximity
to which some would place it.
Meanwhile we proceed to consider those hypotheses which attempt
to bring our epistle within the period comprehended by the
Acts of the Apostles, without the supposition of the apostle's liberation
from his imprisonment at Rome, to which we feel ourselves
driven. We pass over Calvin's conjecture, who transfers its composition
even to the period following the apostle's first stay in Ephesus
(Acts xviii. 19 ;
compare against it Wieseler, p. 290) ; we omit also
that of Dr. Paulus, that it was written from the apostle's imprisonment
at Cassarea, an hypothesis which creates for itself the necessary
facts, and can be maintained only by an arbitrary exegesis
(comp. against it Bcihl, p. 202, seq.; Matthies, p. 449, seq.; Wieseler,
p. 302 ; Huther, p. 15, seq). Nor shall we do more than mention
Schneckenburger and Bottger's view, which rests on the change
of TTpoaiielvat to rrpoouetvag^ as we deny at the very outset their right
to such an emendation against the unanimity of the codd. and the
clear sense of the words (comp. Wieseler, p. 303). There remain
for more particular examination, three hypotheses, of which the
first fixes the date of the epistle to the period described in Acts xx.
1, 2 (held by many ancient and modern commentators as Theodoret,
Hug, Hemsen, etc.), the second makes it to have been written during
a journey undertaken by the apostle from Ephesus, in the period
of his from two to three years' stay there (so Mosheim, who supposes
the journey in question to have taken place at the commencement of
this stay, Schrader, and last of all Wieseler, who place it at the
end); finally, the third finds in the circumstances mentioned in Acts
XX. 3-5, the most appropriate period for its composition (so Bertholdt
and Matthies).
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