with an effectual power of exhortation (Acts xi. 23, 24),—he may, for aught we know, have been a fit and capable person to be inspired for the writing of such an Epistle as this is. Nor does the breach at one time between him and St. Paul (Acts xv.), or his temporary vacillation at Antioch (Gal. ii. 13), preclude his having become again the associate of the great apostle, and the exponent of his teaching. We have, however, no knowledge of this, or of St. Barnabas' style and natural powers as a writer, none of his genuine utterances, written or spoken, being on record. Thus the only real ground for the supposition of Barnabas is the assertion of Tertullian, which is certainly remarkable as being made positively, and not as a conjecture only. It would carry more weight than it does, did we know that he had any real ground for it except his own opinion or that of others in his day, or if writers after him had seemed to attach importance to it. 4. APOLLOS. First suggested by Luther, and since taken up with considerable confidence by many. This is certainly a very tempting hypothesis; the main, and this very serious, objection to it being, that none of the ancients seem to have thought of him at all. Apollos is described (Acts xviii. 24) as a Jew, an Alexandrian by race, an eloquent man” (λóyɩos; which may mean either " eloquent " or " learned"—either meaning suits the writer of the Epistle), "and mighty in the Scriptures," and one who "mightily convinced the Jews, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." Every word here is applicable to such a man as the writer seems to have been. Further, the relation of Apollos and his teaching to St. Paul and his teaching, as alluded to by St. Paul himself, corresponds to the relation of this Epistle to St. Paul's undoubted ones. It appears, from the first three chapters of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that the party at Corinth which called itself that of Apollos depreciated St. Paul's preaching in comparison with his, as being too simple and rude, and deficient in "the wisdom of this world"; and yet it is evident from what St. Paul says that the teaching of Apollos, though different in form, was essentially the same as his: "I planted, Apollos watered." What is thus said of the preaching of Apollos in relation to the preaching of St. Paul, is just what might be said of the Epistle to the Hebrews in relation to the Epistles which we know to have been written by St. Paul. Such are the very plausible reasons for assigning the epistle to Apollos. But, on the other hand, the fact that none of the ancients, who may be supposed to have known more of the probabilities than we do, seem even to have named him, remains a strong argument against a view which Luther was the first to broach. On the whole, with regard to the actual author of the language and arrangement of our Epistle (while we may accept it without hesitation as an essentially Pauline one, and rightly accepted as canonical), more or less probable conjecture is all we have to go on, so that we can but fall back on the words of Origen," the truth God knows." J. BARMBY. The Dean of Wells. The Epistle to Philemon, INDEX. Rev. George Matheson, D.D. Christ's Exaltation in the Epistle to the Hebrews, The Continuity of the Sermon on the Mount, PAGE 12 1 270 369 The Three Christian Sympathies, . Rev. James Morison, D.D. The First Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, 23, 98, 364 Rev. Professor H. R. Reynolds, D.D. The Omission from the Fourth Gospel of the Temptation of Christ, 49, 282 57 |