Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX. 585
But again, it cannot have been the entire church in Jerusalem
for which the epistle was intended. Already do the passages chap,
vi. 10 and chap. x. 32, seq. forbid this ; for it is scarcely conceivable
that a church, the number of whose members extended at all events
to thousands, should formerly have been together as one man bold
and true to their profession, and should afterwards have collectively
as one man become weak and fainthearted. Besides, the passage
chap. ii. 3 leads us to think only of such readers as had been converted
subsequent to the time of Christ's ascension, who in general,
lived at a later period, and who therefore had not themselves been
witnesses of the public labours of Jesus. Moreover, the passage
chap. V. 12, in particular, forbids our supposing that the epistle was
addressed to that entire church which was the mother church of
all, which numbered among its members at all events many who
had grown grey in Christianity, many who had been the personal
disciples of Jesus, and again
many who had been added at a later
period from year to year. How could it be said to such a church :
" According to the time ye ought already to be teachers, but yourselves
need again to be instructed ?" As regards the time, the
members of this church were not like each other in respect to the
time of their conversion, but different to the extent of perhaps
thirty years ; then it could not be presupposed of several thousands
that they ought to be teachers ; still less would this be said of a
church in whose bosom there existed in reality many teachers ; least
of all can it be supposed, that such a church should as a body have
so retrograded that it again needed milk. All these circumstances,
taken together with the whole style of representation which
characterizes the epistle, must induce us to understand the words
chap. V. 12, ye have need that one teach you, as implying that the
readers were in reality again taJcen under instruction,'^ i. e., that the
epistle ivas intended/or a limited circle of neophytes in Jerusalem,
who had become timorous lest they shoidd he excluded from the
temple worship, threatened to withdraiu themselves from Christianity
(chap. x. 25), therefore were taken anew under instruction,
andfor whose instruction the Epistle to the Hehreivs was to form a
sort of guide.
CHAPTER SECOND.
TIME OP COMPOSITION.
When this epistle was written can be determined only indirectly
and by approximation, and this too only by the most careful con-
* This teaching cannot be referred to the doctrines contained in the Epistle to the
Hebrews itself. For it has for its object the aroLxela, which are not taught in the Epistle
to the Hebrews.