The Biblical Illustrator, or Anecdotes, Similes, Emblems, Illustrations, Vol 1 Expository, Scientific, Georgraphical, Historical, and Homiletic, on the Verses of the Bible Hebrews

Excerpt from The Biblical Illustrator, or Anecdotes, Similes, Emblems, Illustrations, Vol. 1: Expository, Scientific, Georgraphical, Historical, and Homiletic, Gathered From a Wide Range of Home and Foreign Literature, on the Verses of the Bible; Hebrews

Objection to this theory that the Church of Alexandria retained no tradition that this E pistle was written by their brilliant fellow-countryman. But although Apollos was an Alexandrian by birth and training, it does not follow that he had lived in his native city, and as he had left the ci before he became a Christian, he might have been a stranger to the Alexan °an Christians. We do not hear a word about the Epistle in that Church until a century after it was written. At any rate, this difficulty is not so great as that which arises from the supposition that the Epistle was the work of St. Paul, and yet was not recog nised as such for some centuries by the Western Church, and only partially and hesitatingly by the Eastern. For there would be every temptation to attri bute the work to the apostle, and none to associate it with the name of Apollos, which, except in one or two Churches, seems to have been but little known. It is not a decisive objection to the Apollonian authorship that no one is known to have suggested it before Luther. In the early centuries the Epistle was only assigned to this or that author by a process of tentative guesswork. Those who saw that St. Paul could not have been the actual author often adapted one of the arbitrary hypotheses, that it is a translation, or that the sentiments and the language were supplied by different persons. The self-suppression of Apollos resulted in the comparative obscurity of his work, and the Fathers, having nothing but conjecture to deal with, fixed upon names every one of which was more generally familiar than that of the eloquent Alexandrian. And it it be strange that the name of Apollos should not have been preserved by the Church to which the letter was despatched, we may account for this by the absence of superscription, and by the fact that it was only addressed to the Jewish section of that Church. This much may be said with certainty, that if it were not written by Apollos, at any rate the evidence which points to him as its author is more various and more conclusive than that which can be adduced to support the claims of any one else. (archdeacon Farrar.) May we not say that this Epistle resembles, in these respects, the great Melchisedec of sacred story, of whom its central portion treats? Like him, it marches forth in lonely, royal, and sacerdotal dignity, and like him is without genealogy. We know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. (f. Delitzsch, D.D.) Whoever is the author of this Epistle, its value and authority remain the same. We may compare it, says Thiersch, to a painting of perfect beauty, which had been regarded as a work of Raphael. If it should be proved that it was not painted by flagged, Ii: have thereby not lost a classical piece of art, but gained another master 0 t ta.

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