written in the dialect of the Mishna, the language of the schools in the apostolic age, into which he has again rendered the Greek.
The words of Widmanstadt are: Ex quibus omnibus coniecturam non
leve4
capi posse arbitror, et
Mathaeu4 Eua4gelium suu4
, et
Paulu4
ad Hebraeos Epistolam sermone Syro, Hebraici populi vulgari usu trito, ut a Iudeis passim omnibus intelligerentur, scripsisse, eaq; in Syrorum Ecclesiis iam usq; a temporibus Apostolorum
co4servata
fuisse (Nov. Test. Syr.
Praef.
a xxxxxx. 3, 1555). There is a small commentary based on the Syriac, published not many years afterwards, in which it is argued that: in Syro Paulo multa sunt quae non tantum lucem adferunt obscurioribus sed etiam interpretum discussiones bellissime componunt, ex graecanicarum vocum ambiguitate prognatas (
Enarratio Ep. ad Heb. B. Pauli Apost.
a Syro sermone in Latinum conversae, ex
M. Galeni Vestcappellii praelectionibus concinnata opera ac studio Fr. Andreae Crocquetii...Duaci, 1578).
The words of the Glossa Ordinaria are instructive as shewing how a statement grows precise by lapse of time: Hanc...epistolam ad Hebraeos conscriptam Hebraica lingua fertur apostolus misisse; cujus sensum et ordinem retinens Lucas evangelista post excessum beati apostoli Pauli Graeco sermone composuit (Migne, P. L. cxiv. p. 643).
Card. Caietan, writing in 1529, says that one of the two preliminary points which he must discuss is: an haec epistola fuerit condita Hebraico sermone ut communiter supponitur. He decides without hesitation against the common opinion.
Not to dwell on the insufficiency of the statement of Clement, in the absence of all collateral external testimony, to justify the belief that the Epistle was written in Hebrew, internal evidence appears to establish absolutely beyond question that the Greek text is original and not a translation from any form of Aramaic. The vocabulary, the style, the rhetorical characteristics of the work all lead to the same conclusion. It is (for example) impossible to imagine any Aramaic phrase which could have suggested to a translator the opening clause of the Epistle,
polumerw'" kai; polutrovpw"
; and similar difficulties offer themselves throughout the book in the free and masterly use of compound words which have no Aramaic equivalents (e.g.,
metriopaqei'n
Heb. 5:2;
eujperivstato"
12:1). The structure of the periods is bold and complicated, and the arrangement of the words is often singularly expressive
(e.g., 2:9). Paronomasias (e.g., 1:1; 2:10; 5:8; 7:23 f.; 9:28; 10:34, 38 f.) are at least more likely to have been due to the writer than to have been introduced or imitated by a translator. But on the other hand stress must not be laid on a (falsely) assumed change in the meaning of
diaqhvkh
in 9:15 ff., or the obviously fortuitous hexameter in the common text of 12:13.
A still more decisive proof that the Greek text is original lies in the fact that the quotations from the O. T. are all (except 10:30 || Deut. 32:35) taken from the LXX, even when the LXX differs from the Hebrew (e.g., Heb. 2:7 parj