Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

622 APPENDIX.
had been obviated long before in Italy by the Epistle to the Romans.
What wonder, then, that the Epistle to the Hebrews should
have spread there late and slowly ;
and if it did not spread there
until after tlic Church of the West had closed its caqon (in the beginning
of the second century), if it did not spread until the period
when every Church carefully adhered to ancient tradition, it is then
easy to comprehend, how hesitation should have been shown in
opening again the closed door of the canon for the Epistle to the
Hebrews, till then unknown ; it is perfectly conceivable how this
epistle, which had no inscription, and was un-Paulinc in its style,
should not have been acknowledged as Pauline ; and if, now, there
had actually been preserved, say in Rome, from the time of Clement
onwards, a notice of the existence of this epistle, but at the same
time also a notice that Paul had not composed it himself—does not
the opposition of the Western Church to the Pauline authorship
become doubly intelligible ?
In the third place, the conclusion to which we have come respecting
the circle of readers for whom this epistle was intended,
beautifully harmonizes with our hypothesis, that Paul was, at least
indirectly, the author of it. The question indeed has been asked,
why precisely the apostle of the Gentiles should have come to write
to Jewish Christians in Palestine, We know, however, that the
epistle was not written to churches, not even to a church, not to
the Church of Jerusalem, but to a limited circle of individual Jexoish
Christians in Jerusalem, whose conversion had taken place not
very lonrj before. May it not have been such Jewish Cinistians as
had been converted just about the time when Paul was taken prisoner
in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. seq.), who perhaps were first awakened
by Paul himself, during those seven days when as yet he went
out and in in freedom (Acts xxi. 27), and were brought to embrace
Christianity by his powerful address (Acts xxii.) ? What a great
and profound crisis arose in those days among the Jews themselves,
is evident from Acts xxiii. 9 ; even in the company of Paul's bitterest
enemies there were those who sought to frustrate the plot
which was formed to murder him, by betraying it to the nephew of
Paul (Acts xxiii. 16). But, be this as it may, Paul was from that
period so firndy rooted in his love for the Church in Jerusalem
(Acts xxi. 17), and he so identifies his cause with that of this
Church, thut this of itself already suffices to explain, how he may
have adtlressed a treatise to individuals among the Jewish Christians
of Jerusalem. For, let it be granted, also, that these individuals
were not gained over to Christianity precisely through
Paul's personal infiuencc, still Luke remained those two years in
Jerusalem (Acts x.xi. 15, seq. ; xxvii. 1, seq. ; comp. Luke i. 3,
TTapqKaAovOijKort ~dmv a«pf JaJr), and thus the readers were certainly