MESSAGES FROM THE EPISTLE
TO THE HEBREWS
MESSAGES FROM
THE EPISTLE TO
THE HEBREWS
By HANDLEY C.G. MOULE, D.D.
BISHOP OF DURHAM
LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK
62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1909
The Bible is the Sky in which
God has set Christ the Sun.
John Ker, D.D.
First Edition May 1909
Second Impression July 1909
PREFACE
The following chapters are the work ofintervals of leisure scattered over a longtime. The exposition had advanced some waywhen an unexpected call to new and exactingduties compelled me to put it aside for severalyears. Accordingly a certain difference of treatmentin the later chapters as compared withthe earlier will probably be seen by thereader, particularly a rather fuller detail in theexposition. But purpose and plan are essentiallythe same throughout.
No attempt whatever is made, here or in thecourse of the work, to deal with those literaryand historical problems which so conspicuouslyattach themselves to this Epistle. Who the"Hebrews" were is nowhere discussed. Nor isany positive answer offered to a question towhich assuredly no such answer can be given,the question, namely, of the authorship. Inmy opinion, in face of all that I have read[Pg vi]to the contrary, it still seems at least possiblethat the ultimate human author was St. Paul.All, or very nearly all, the objections to hisname which the phenomena of the Epistleprimâ facie present, and some of which lieunquestionably deep, seem to be capable ofa provisional answer if we assume, what isso conceivable, that the Apostle committedhis message and its argument, on purpose,to a colleague so gifted, mentally and bythe Spirit, that he might be trusted tocast the work into his own style. The well-knownremark of Origen that only God knowswho "wrote" the Epistle appears to me topoint (if we look at its context) this way.Origen surely means by the "writer" whatis meant in Rom. xvi. 22. Only, on thehypothesis, the amanuensis of our Epistle was,for a special purpose presumably, a Christianprophet in his own right.
In any case the author, if not an apostle,was a prophet. And he carries to us a prophet's"burthen" of unspeakable import, and in wordsto which all through the Christian ages the soulhas responded as to the words of the Holy Spirit.
HANDLEY DUNELM.
Easter, 1909.
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