<- Previous   First   Next ->

authorship of the Book are for the most part simple repetitions of sentences of Jerome. Here and there a writer of exceptional power uses his materials with independence, but without real knowledge. Thomas Aquinas, for example, marshals the objections to the Pauline authorship and the answers to them in a true scholastic form, and decides in favour of the Pauline authorship on the ground of ancient authority and because ‘Jerome receives it among the Epistles of Paul.’


As the contrary has been lately stated, it may be well to say that Leo the Great quotes the Epistle as St Paul's ( Serm. xliv. § 2; comp. Serm. iii. (ii.) 1; xxiv.
(xxiii.) 6; lxviii. (lxvi.) 3; lxix. (lxvii.) 2; [
Ep. lxv. § 11]). He quotes it indeed, as Bleek justly observed, comparatively rarely.

At the revival of Greek learning in Europe, when ‘the Grammarians’ ventured to reopen questions of Biblical criticism, the authorship and, in part, the authority of the Epistle was called in question. On this, as on other similar subjects, Card. Caietan [Th. de Vio] spoke with unusual freedom. Erasmus, with fuller knowledge, expressed his doubts ‘not as to the authority but as to the author of the Epistle, doubts’ he adds characteristically ‘which would remain till he saw a distinct judgment of the Church upon the point.’ Luther denied the Pauline authorship of the Book without hesitation, and, referring to the earlier traditions, conjectured that it was more likely to have been written by Apollos (comp. Bleek, 249 n. ). Calvin, while maintaining the full apostolical authority of the Epistle, professed that he ‘could not be brought to think that it was St Paul's.’ He thought that it might be a work of St Luke or of Clement. Beza also held that it was written by a disciple of St Paul. At first he inclined to adopt Luther's conjecture as to the authorship, but this opinion he afterwards withdrew silently.


The judgment of Card. Caietan is worth noticing more in detail, for even Bleek had not seen his Commentary. He first quotes the statements of Jerome at some length, and concludes from these that St Paul cannot be confidently held to be the author of the Epistle. He then goes on to argue that doubt as to the authorship of the Book involves doubt as to its authority. This doubt as to the authority of the Epistle he justifies by reference to what he regards as false arguments in 1:5 b, 9:15 ff. He regards 2:3 as inconsistent with a belief in the Pauline authorship, but adds, that following common custom he, like Jerome, will call it St Paul's.

He explains the stress which he lays on the evidence of Jerome by a significant sentence: quos [libros] ille canonicos tradidit, canonicos habemus; et quos ille a canonicis discreuit, extra canonem habemus.


<- Previous   First   Next ->