Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to the Hebrews

NPNF (V1-14)St. Chrysostom344When we come to details, there are two passages which have been thought to favor a Paulineauthorship. There is a quotation in Heb. x. 30 , which, it is alleged, agrees precisely with the samequotation in Rom. xii. 19 , but differs from either the Hebrew or the Greek of Deut. xxxii. 35 .The A.V. makes a slight variation in language between Romans and Hebrews, but the TextusReceptus of the original is the same: “Vengeance is mine; I will recompense, saith the Lord.” Nowthe LXX reads, “In the day of vengeance I will recompense”; the Hebrew, “mine [are] vengeanceand recompense.” If, however, we examine any critical text, we shall find that the clause “saith theLord,” is rejected as a gloss in this Epistle, while undisputed in Romans, thus constituting a differencebetween them. It is still true, however, that they both differ in the same way from the Hebrew andthe LXX. This might be a difficulty were it not that the quotation as it is in this Epistle is foundexactly in the Targum, and from that had probably passed into familiar use. Everywhere else theauthor of Hebrews quotes very closely from the LXX, and from that in what is known as itsAlexandrine form, while St. Paul uses the Vatican text, quotes far more loosely, and often followsthe Hebrew rather than the Greek.The other passage really gives no clear indication at all, and as far as it goes, is rather at variancewith Pauline authorship. In xii. 23 the writer says, “Know ye that our brother Timothy is set atliberty; with whom, (if he come shortly,) I will see you.” It is of course possible that Timothy mayhave been imprisoned, at Rome or elsewhere, when St. Paul was with him; but as far as we knowthe history of the two, it seems unlikely. The passage might quite as well have been written byalmost any of the companions of St. Paul who were also associated with Timothy.When now, enquiry is made as to the indications to be found in the choice of words andconstruction of sentences, there is certainly room for some difference of opinion. Delitzsch hasendeavored throughout his commentary on this Epistle to show that there is such a striking similaritybetween it and the writings of St. Luke as to favor decidedly the view that it was written by him;Lünemann, on the other hand, in the introduction to his commentary, has collected the instancesof Delitzsch and remarks upon them, “So soon as we separate therefrom that which is not exclusivelypeculiar to Luke and the Epistle to the Hebrews; so soon as we also put out of the account thatwhich Luke has only taken up out of the sources employed by him, and cease to lay any weightupon isolated expressions and turns of discourse which were the common property either of theGreek language in general, or of the later Greek in particular, and are only accidentally present inLuke and the Epistle to the Hebrews,—there is nothing whatever left of an actual affinity, such asmust of necessity admit of being traced out between the works of the same author.” The fact seemsto be that there is between these two writers as compared with the other New Testament writers acertain similarity, not so much of particular words and constructions, as of the general cast, bothof the phraseology and the structure of the sentences; but that this similarity arises, not from theidentity of the writers, but from the fact that both wrote in somewhat better Greek than is found inthe rest of the New Testament. The grammars of the New Testament Greek continually refer to thefact, that certain classical constructions are found only, or at least more frequently, in these writersthan elsewhere. But this does not prove more than that the author of this Epistle, as might easilyhave been the case with several of the companions of St. Paul, like St. Luke, was more accustomedto classical Greek usage than most of the earliest Christian writers.An examination of the vocabulary of this Epistle in comparison with that of St. Paul, St. Luke,and the other New Testament writers will throw some light upon the question. In another place 26552655Journal of the Soc. of Bibl. Literature and Exegesis for June, 1887, pp. 1–27.508