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Little stress however can be laid on these details. The length of the apocryphal Barnabas absolutely excludes it; and the exact agreement of the length of the book named with the Epistle to the Hebrews leaves no room for doubt as to their identification.

Wherever the nature of the book is defined by early writers it is called an ‘Epistle.’ The description is substantially correct, though the construction of the writing is irregular. It opens without any address or salutation (comp. 1 John 1:1), but it closes with salutations (Heb. 13:24 f.). There are indeed personal references throughout, and in the course of the book there is a gradual transition from the form of an ‘essay’ to that of a ‘letter’: 2:1; 3:1, 12; 4:1, 14; 5:11; 6:9; 10:19; 13:7, 22 ff.

The writer himself characterises his composition as lovgo" paraklhvsew" (13:22 note); and the verb which he uses of his communication ( dia; bracevwn ejpevsteila l.c. ), while it does not necessarily describe a letter (in Acts 21:25 the true reading is ajpesteivlamen , and ejpistei'lai in Acts 15:20 is probably to enjoin ), yet presupposes a direct personal address ( ejpistevllein is used of the Epistle by Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. 6.14; comp. Clem. R. 1 Cor. 7, 47, [62]), though personal relationships are kept in the background till the end.


The conjecture that the salutation at the opening of the Epistle has been removed cannot be regarded as worthy of serious discussion. An ‘editor’ who had mutilated the beginning of the book (to say no more) would not have left ch. 13 as it stands.

It is of interest to notice the delicate shades of feeling marked by the transition from ‘we’ to ‘ye’ as the writer speaks of the hopes and trials and duties of Christians, e.g., Heb. 3:12, 13, 14; 10:22 ff., 25 f.; 36, 39; 12:1, 2, 3; 8-12; 25, 28 f.; 13:5, 6; 9, 10; 15, 16.

For the most part he identifies himself with those to whom he writes, unless there is some special point in the direct address: 1:2; 2:1, 3; 8 f.; 3:19; 4:1 ff.; 11, 13 ff.; 6:1; 18 ff.; 7:26; 8:1; 9:24; 10:10; 11:3,
40.

III. POSITION

The places occupied by the Epistle in different authorities indicate the variety of opinions which were entertained in early times as to its authorship.

In the oldest Greek MSS. ( a ABC) it comes immediately before the

Pastoral Epistles following 2 Thess.; and this is the position which it generally occupies in MSS. of the Memphitic Version (Woide, App. Cod. Alex. N.T. p. 19; Lightfoot ap. Scrivener, Introd. 386 f., 390). This order is followed also by many later MSS. (H 2P 217 & c.), and by many Greek Fathers.

In Cod. Vat. B there is important evidence that it occupied a different position in an early collection of Pauline Epistles. In this MS. there is a marginal numeration which shews that the whole collection of Pauline Epistles was divided, either in its archetype or in some earlier copy, into a


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