Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

INTEODUCTION. 179
it too widely from the two others to which it is allied in character,
and yet not bring it too near the first to Timothy, as it makes no
allusion to the special commission with which the first shews Timothy
as charged. The common hypothesis, as given also by Neander
(Vide sup. p. 547, seq.), is that this imprisonment and, of course, the
composition of our epistle, belongs to the period after the conflagration
of Kome, and the consequent persecution of the Christians (summer
of 64), the apostle being apprehended either in Spain or on
his return thence to Eome. Huther, however, would date his second
arrest and this epistle before this persecution, assuming that he was
liberated in the spring of 63 (perhaps more correctly than in 64, as
assumed p. 229), that in this and the beginning of the following year
he made his journey to the east, in the same year visited Spain and
returned, submitted to his trial a short time before the persecution,
aud soon after it broke out yielded up his life. This hypothesis renders,
indeed, more explicable the favorable treatment of the imprisoned
apostle and his silence regarding the persecution (which it doubtless
was originated to explain) ; but it brings the second epistle to Timothy
into altogether too close proximity to the first, and crowds too
much into the narrow space between the spring of 63 and July 64.
For if the apostle went back, as Huther supposes, from Nicopolis to
Ephesus, he must (1 Tim. iii. 14) have lingered there a considerable
time : and apart from this, he cannot surely from the close of the
winter in the beginning of 64 to May or June of that year, have
travelled from Nicopolis by Ephesus, Miletus, and Corinth to Spain,
and thence to Kome. This view is inconsistent also with the tradition
regarding the mode of the apostle's death, and it is specially incomprehensible
how those Asiatics (2 Tim. i. 15-18) should have been
in Rome during his imprisonment, and Timothy been already informed
of it when the epistle was written.
§ 4. G-ENUINENESS.
The special critical objections raised against this epistle are
stated comprehensively by De Wette (Ex. Hand., p. 23, seq.). They
relate (ver. 1) to its historical discrepancies. His arguments against
its composition in the early part of Paul's imprisonment at Rome,
need no further attention. Beside the points already answered,
he urges against our view, ii. 9, iv. 17, etc., comp. with Acts
xxviii. 31, regarding the repetition of this circumstance as incredible.
But ii. 9 refers by no means to the personal preaching of the
gospel by the apostle (comp. the Exposition), and iv. 17 is to be differently
taken. He further deems it surprising that Paul expresses
distrust regarding Timothy's resolution and capability of suffering.