Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

404 APPENDIX.
authority from them to send their salutations. The sahitation,
chap. xiii. 24, is in so vague and general a form as to lead to the
supposition, that the author ventured to wnrite it at his own hand.
Let it be granted, however, that in the author's immediate neighbourhood
the notice would be spread that he was writing to Christians
in Jerusalem, this notice would be forgotten in the next
months, years, decades. The Western Church did not happen at
first to see the epistle itself. Very natural ! The epistle, in respect
of its import, had an interest only where there were Jewish Christians
who from piety observed the Levitical law ; such there were
in Palestine, Syria, Alexandria, doubtless also in Lesser Asia. In
Italy the Jewish Christians were small in point of numbers, and
gradually decreasing ; there they were from the commencement
more mixed with Gentile Christians. The Epistle to the Hebrews
came also into the Western Chm-ch, but late and slowly ; it was not,
so to speak, waited for and read with avidity as a practically important
writing. It came thither slowly, by means of copies. No Paul
had named himself in the inscription ; it was therefore not at all
imagined that the epistle was Pauline. In the beginning of the
second century it was not yet received into the ecclesiastical collection
of books prescribed to be read (the canon) of the Western
Church ; now as from the beginning of the second century, from the
death of the last apostle, the Church clung with tenacity to all old
tradition, the Western Church also made no change in its canon ;
the Epistle to the Hebrews indeed gradually spread, but the old
tradition of the West had not reckoned it among the canonical e^is'
ties; consequently it was allowed to stand outside the canon, and,
least of all, was there any inclination to acknowledge it as Pauline.
Now, that in the fourth century the Western Church followed the
oriental tradition so soon as that Church came into more lively contact
with it, can only be explained from the fact, that the Eastern
Church must have had lucijhty positive reasons in support of it. In
general, the Eastern dilfers from the Western tradition as regards
the Epistle to the Hebrews in this, that the former bears a positive,
the latter a negative character. The former starts from the knowledge
that the epistle was Pauline, and only afterwards were doubts
awakened (in the Alexandrians) on account of the style, which,
however, could not overthrow that tradition, but only led to attempts
to reconcile them with it. Nor was there any doubt in Alexandria
as to who was the first and proper author, but only as to who was
the translator, or who had elaborated it, whether Clement of Kome
or Luke. It was a settled point, that Paul was the proper author.
The tradition of the Western Church, on the contrary, starts from
an ignorance of the epistle, an ignorance of the author, and we meet
nowhere any positive statement respecting the person of this author,