604 NEW TESTAMENT 



toward such an understanding of the book as will make it a most 

 important source for the history of the early days of Christianity. 

 That much remains to be done in determining with greater definite- 

 ness the influences under which the writer worked, the sources from 

 which he drew, the extent of his own contributions, and the ends 

 that he sought to achieve, cannot obscure the fact that now at 

 length the New Testament student is in a position to make substantial 

 progress in his task of understanding this book, and of deriving from 

 it its contribution to the story of the rise of Christianity. 



The epistle to the Hebrews. Of the many questions which the 

 epistle to the Hebrews raises, several may safely be reckoned as no 

 longer in the category of the unanswered. That the letter was writ- 

 ten, not by Paul, but by a Christian who on the one side shared in 

 general the Alexandrian-Jewish view of the Old Testament, and on 

 the other side held, though with much independence of thought, 

 substantially the Pauline conception of Christianity; that it is a letter, 

 not simply an essay under the mask of a letter; and that the danger 

 to which its readers were exposed was not that of a return to Judaism, 

 but of apostasy from Christianity in the direction of irreligion and 

 worldliness these may be considered as established propositions. 



The search for the identity of the author is certainly one of legiti- 

 mate curiosity. But in view of the negative results so far achieved, 

 and the apparent impossibility of connecting the book with any one 

 the connection with whom would facilitate the understanding of the 

 letter itself, it can scarcely be reckoned as other than one of curiosity. 

 That which is at the same time practicable and necessary for the 

 interpretation of the book is the definition of the writer's intellectual 

 and religious position, and this must be accomplished through the 

 study of the book itself. To such a knowledge of the author it is 

 scarcely less important to add the determination of the position of the 

 reader. And here it is of importance, first, for the understanding of 

 the letter to define the intellectual and moral status of the com- 

 munity addressed; and, second, for the most effective use of the 

 results of interpretation in the construction of the history of early 

 Christianity, to locate the community geographically and the writing 

 of the letter chronologically. These are to-day the open questions 

 respecting the epistle to the Hebrews. Strong as is the tendency to 

 displace the older view that the readers were Jewish Christians with 

 the judgment that they were gentiles, or that they were, in the view 

 of the writer, neither Jews nor gentiles, but simply Christians, the 

 newer view can hardly be said fully to have established itself or com- 

 pletely to have explained the strong indications that the writer had 

 in mind chiefly men who like himself had grown up under Jewish 

 influence. If Jerusalem has been abandoned as the home of those 

 addressed, and if the strong preponderance of opinion is toward 



