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

NPNF (V1-14)St. Chrysostom357probably the young Timothy received his first knowledge of Christianity. On St. Paul’s secondvisit to these cities he is spoken of as already “a disciple.” Barnabas must, therefore, have knownhim from the very beginning of his Christian life, and it is, therefore, entirely natural that he shouldspeak of him in the way recorded in Heb. xiii. 23 . After Barnabas and Paul returned from this,when disputes arose between the Jews and Gentiles, they were sent to Jerusalem together, andhaving obtained a favorable hearing before the Council again returned to Antioch. Here are yearsof closest companionship between Barnabas and St. Paul, during all the earlier part of whichBarnabas appears as the leader, Paul as the assistant. They had often stood together in the synagogueto tell to their fellow-countrymen the story of the cross, and probably had often discussed with oneanother the numerous Jewish converts. Barnabas must have been a man of dignity, for when thepeople of Lystra took them for gods, they selected Barnabas as Jupiter ( Acts xiv. 11, 12 ). Thecompanionship was broken up at the entrance upon another missionary journey, by a difference ofopinion about taking Mark with them. In this case Barnabas, although doubtless influenced by hiskinship, appears to have been the better judge of character, since at a later day St. Paul writes fromRome to Timothy, “Take Mark and bring him with thee; for he is profitable to me in the minis try”( 2 Tim. iv. 11 ); but however this may be, Barnabas showed in the matter independence anddetermination. He is called by the name of “Apostle” ( Acts xiv. 14 ), and altogether held such aposition in the Christian community as would make his writing such an Epistle a proper act. In allthat is related of him there is but one faulty act, and even this points him out as especially interestedin the Hebrews. When St. Peter behaved so ill at Antioch and received the sharp reproof of St. Paul,in his account of the matter St. Paul says, “the other Jews dissembled likewise with him”; and addsas evidence of the strength and danger of the defection, “insomuch that Barnabas also was carriedaway with their dissimulation” ( Gal. ii. 13, 14 ). Barnabas then was not only a Jew by birth, buthad strong sympathies with his race.More than this: he was a Levite. The particular line of argument adopted in the main part ofthe Epistle to the Hebrews is one which would have occurred to few, and scarcely to any who wasnot familiar with the temple ritual. There is no evidence that this was the case with Apollos; butwith Barnabas the temple service was a matter of professional duty, as well as the prompting ofhis devout heart. Indeed, an objection to the authorship of Barnabas has been based on this verypoint;—it is said that the author does not show that nicely accurate precision in his statements whichmight be expected from one personally familiar with the temple. The points referred to admit ofeasy explanation on other grounds; but were they better taken, considering that the service of theLevites was altogether subordinate to that of the priests, and did not lead them into the itself,the objection seems hypercritical. But one of the actual duties of the Levites, and a very prominentone, was that of chanting in the Levitical choirs in the courts of the temple. This would have ledto a special familiarity with the Psalms. Now it is a curious fact that about one-half of all thequotations from the Old Testament in the Epistle to the Hebrews are taken from the Psalms, andthat the author cites that book, relatively, nearly four times as often as St. Paul, and eight times asoften as St. Luke or the other writers. This fact is at once explained by the supposition that theauthor of the Epistle was a Levite. 2663 It is not unlikely that when that “great company of the priests2663The large proportion of quotations from the Psalms in this Epistle is noticed in the article upon it in Smith’s BibleDictionary (where the proportion is stated as 16 out of 32); but my attention was first called to the bearing of this upon thequestion of authorship by the quick observation of Rev. Hermann Lilienthal. It is not easy to give a precise numerical statement522