Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/636

602 By the epoch-making labours of Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), which first placed Oriental learning and especially Semitic grammar on a broad and thoroughly scientific footing, a new impulse was given to Hebrew philology, which since that time has moved with the advance of general Semitic studies, and can hardly again fall into devious paths. The great teachers of Hebrew in the present century have been two Germans, Gesenius and Ewald,—the former excelling in method and lucidity of exposition, the latter in range of view and creative fertility of ideas. Among the direct or indirect disciples of these great scholars may be reckoned almost every Hebraist in Europe, and to them is mainly due the revival in Eng- land of a branch of learning which had almost become extinct through the prevailing dilettantism of last century.

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1em 1em 1em 1em  HEBREWS,. The New Testament writing usually known under this name, or less correctly as the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, bears in the oldest MSS. no other title than the words IIpds ‘EBpaious, “To the Hebrews.” This brief heading embraces the whole information as to the origin of the epistle on which Christian tradition is unanimous. Everything else—the authorship, the address, the date—was unknown or disputed in the early church, and continues to form matter of dispute in the present day. But as far back as the the destination of the epistle “to the Hebrews” was acknowledged alike in Alexandria, where it was ascribed to Paul, and in Carthage, where it passed by the name of Barnabas, and no indication exists that it ever circulated under another title. At the same time we must not suppose, as has sometimes been done, that the author prefixed these words to his original manuscript. The title says no more than that the readers addressed were Christians of Jewish extraction, and this would be no sufficient address for an epistolary writing (xii. 22) directed to a definite circle of readers, a local church or group of churches to whose history repeated reference is made, and to which the author had personal relations (xiii. 19, 23). The original address, which according to custom must have stood on the outside of the folded letter, was probably never copied, and the early and universal prevalence of the present title, which tells no more than can be readily gathered from the epistle itself, seems to indicate that when the book first passed from local into general circulation its history had already been forgotten. With this it agrees that the early Roman Church, where the epistle was known about the, and where indeed the first traces of the use of it occur (Clement, and Shepherd of Hermas), had nothing to contribute to the question of authorship and origin except the negative opinion that the book is not by Paul. Caius and the Muratorian fragment reckon but thirteen epistles of Paul; Hippolytus (like his master Treneeus of Lyons) knew our book and declared that it was not Pauline. These facts can hardly be explained by supposing that at Rome during the the book had dropped out of notice, and its history had been forgotten. Clement, Hermas, Hippolytus form a tolerably continuous chain, and the central Church of Rome was in constant connexion with provincial churches where, as we shall presently see, the epistle had currency and reputation. Under these circum- stances an original trustworthy tradition could hardly have been lost, and it must appear highly questionable whether the author and address of the book were known at Rome even in the time of Clement. The earliest positive tradi- tions of authorship to which we cau point belong to Africa and Egypt, where, as we have already seen, divergent views were current by the. The African tradition preserved by Tertullian (De Pudicitia, c. 20), but certainly not invented by him, ascribes the epistle to Barnabas. Direct apostolic authority is not therefore claimed for it; but it has the weight due to one who “learned from and taught with the apostles,” and we are told that it had more currency among the churches than