Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX. 595
CHAPTEE FOUETH.
THE WRITER. a) EXTERNAL TESTIMONIES.
On directing our view, first of all, to the external testimonies
respecting the Epistle to the Hebrews, we encounter the striking
phenomenon, that the entire Eastern Church decidedly and from
the very first holds the epistle to he Pauline, while the Western
either makes no use of it until the time of the Arian controversy,
or, if it uses it, does not reckon it among the Pauline epistles, or,
finally, declares it to be decidedly un-Pauline. The Eastern Church
had no other opinion than that Paul ivas the author of the Epistle to
the Hehreivs. As the first witness Clemens Eomanus (a.d. 96) is
wont to be adduced, who has certainly a greater number of allusions
to the Epistle to the Hebrews than to any other epistle of the
New Testament. (In the 36th chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians
he gives pretty large and literal extracts from Heb. i. 4,
seq. ; more than once he repeats the words Heb. iii. 2, etc., etc.
See the passages in Kirchhofer's " Quellensammlung zur Geschichte
der neutestamentlichen Kanons," p. 233-238). But nowhere does
Clement name the Epistle to the Hebrews, nowhere does he name
Paul as its author. Now, as there is no necessity for supposing
that his partiality for this epistle was occasioned by his partiality
for the person of its author, seeing that the contents of the epistle
might quite as well account for this partiality—further, as the person
of the author might have been especially dear to Clement even
although he had not been Paul himself, but one of those fellowlahourers
mentioned in Phil. iv. 3, it follows that no certain conclusion
can be drawn from Clement's partiality for the Epistle to
the Hebrews, that he recognized this epistle as Pauline.
Still less,
indeed, can any inference be drawn against its having been written
by Paul from the fact that Clement does not name the title and
author. For, in his allusions to the Epistle of the Thessalonians
(Clem. 1 Cor. xxxviii.), Galatians (1 Cor. xlix.), Eomans (chap,
xxxiii.—XXXV.—xxxviii.—xlvi.), Colossians (chap, xxi.), Ephesians
(chap, xlvi.), Timothy (chap, xxix.), etc., he also names not the
title and author ; only (in chap, xlvii.) when he cites the first of
Paul's epistles to the Corinthians does he remind the Corinthians
—having special occasion to do so—of that which Paul had already
written to them.
The series of properly Oriental witnesses for the Pauline authorship
of the Epistle to the Hebrews begins with Pantaenus. Clement
of Alexandria appeals to him, the fiandpiog npeaftvrepog, for the information
that Paul had put no inscription to the Epistle to the