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and the internal evidence gives no valid result.

The superficial resemblances between the Epistle and the Letter of Clement, both in vocabulary and form, are very striking. It would be easy to draw up a list of parallelisms in words and manner sufficient to justify the judgment of Eusebius (comp. pp. lxii., lxx.). But these parallelisms are more than counterbalanced by differences in both respects. Clement has an unusually large number of peculiar words; and his heaping together of coordinate clauses (as 1, 3, 20, 35, 36, 45, 55), his frequent doxologies (20, 38, 43, 45, 50, 58, 59), and to a certain extent (comp. p. 476) his method of quotation, sharply distinguish his writing from the Epistle to the Hebrews. Moreover a closer examination of the parallelisms with the Epistle makes it clear that they are due to a use of it, like the use which is made of Epistles of St Paul (e.g., c. 49). And, what is of far greater moment, the wide difference between the two works in range of thought, in dogmatic depth, in prophetic insight, makes it impossible to suppose that the Epistle to the Corinthians could have been written after the Epistle to the Hebrews by the same writer. Clement is essentially receptive and imitative. He combines but he does not create. Even if the external evidence for connecting him with the Epistle were greater than it is, the internal evidence would be incompatible with any other connexion than that of a simple translator (comp. Lightfoot, Clement 1.101f.).

Some differences in style between the Epistle and the writings of St Paul have been already noticed. A more detailed inquiry shews that these cannot be adequately explained by differences of subject or of circumstances. They characterise two men, and not only two moods or two discussions. The student will feel the subtle force of the contrast if he compares the Epistle to the Hebrews with the Epistle to the Ephesians, to which it has the closest affinity. But it is as difficult to represent the contrast by an enumeration of details as it is to analyse an effect. It must be felt for a right appreciation of its force. So it is also with the dogmatic differences between the writer and St Paul.

There is unquestionably a sense in which Origen is right in saying that ‘the thoughts’ of the Epistle are the thoughts of St Paul. The writer shews the same broad conception of the universality of the Gospel as the Apostle of the Gentiles, the same grasp of the age-long purpose of God wrought out through Israel, the same trust in the atoning work of Christ, and in His present sovereignty. He speaks with the same conscious mastery of the Divine Counsel. But he approaches each topic from a different side. He looks at all as from within Israel, and not as from without. He speaks as one who step by step had read the fulfilment of the Old Covenant in the New without any rude crisis of awakening or any sharp struggle with traditional errors. His Judaism has been all along the Judaism of the prophets and not of the Pharisees, of the O. T. and not of the schools (comp. § x.).

The differences between the Epistle and the Epistle which bears the name of Barnabas involve a contrast of principles and will be considered separately (see § xii.).

We are left then with a negative conclusion. The Epistle cannot be the work of St Paul, and still less the work of Clement. It may have been written by St Luke. It may have been written by Barnabas, if the ‘Epistle of Barnabas’ is apocryphal. The scanty evidence which is accessible to us supports no more definite judgment.


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