Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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688 APPENDIX.
ture of Festus, and before the arrival of his successor Albinus, the
Apostle James, the son of Alphaeus, was stoned at the instigation
of tlio liigh priest, Annas the younger.
the signal for something further.
This murder was certainly
Accordingly in the year G2, the difficulties of the Christians in
Jerusalem began to increase, and in the harvest of 64 there was a
second and still greater aggravation of them. We can suppose,
therefore, that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written cither late in
the summer of 64—in which case the passage chap. xiii. 7 will refer
to the death of the Apostles Peter and Paul, which, as we have
seen, is not absolutely impossible,—or it might have been written in
the year 62 or 63, after the death of James the son of Alphaeus
in which case the passage chap. xiii. 7 would have to be referred
chiefly to James the son of Alphaeus, whose mere name must of
itself, however, have reminded the readers of the carher death of
James the son of Zebedee. We may, in the meantime, choose either
of these two dates, although the passage chap. xiii. 7 is certainly
capable of a simpler explanation according to the latter supposition,
for then the author would allude to the martyrdom of men who had
actually suffered death hefore the eyes of the readers, and were therefore
patterns to them of faith in the proper sense of the term, and
who also in the strictest sense had been leaders (yyovfievoi) in the
church at Jerusalem. (The readers might thus have witnessed the
death even of James the son of Zebedee, although they were still at
that time Jews. And he, too, might be reckoned among the
i]yovntvoL vndv because he had laboured in the church with which
the readers had since become connected, and as one of the Apostles
whose divine calling they acknowledged since their conversion).
Let us see, now, whether the passage chap. xiii. 23 gives any
more definite information as to the time when the epistle to the
Hebrews was written. Timothy had been in prison, and had just
recovered his freedom when the Epistle was written, or at least when
it was sent off. At the same time we have gathered from the passage
chap. xiii. 23, 24 that the person who ivrote or tvorked out the
Epistle was free, was in Italy, in a different place, however, from
Timothy (if Timothy, who has just been set free, comes to him soon
he will set out with him to the cast), that, on the other hand, the
proper author of the epistle frgm whom the material (but not the
diction, corap. chap. xiii. 22) emanates, and in whose name the
epistle on to chap. xiii. 21 is written, was by no means so independent
as to be able to sot out as soon as he might please to Jerusalem,
but was so restrained by the circumstances of some kind or other in
which he was involuntarily placed, that he exhorted his readers
(chap. xiii. 19) to pray God that he might be again restored to
them.