The Epistle to the Hebrews: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays 9781463229030

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The Epistle to the Hebrews

Gorgias Occasional Historical Commentaries

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Gorgias Occasional Historical Commentaries is a series that seeks to reprint historically important biblical commentaries. Rather than seeking to cover each book of the Bible as a standard commentary series would do, this series strives to bring back to the community of biblical scholars works that have had impact on subsequent biblical studies but which have been difficult to locate for decades or more because they have gone out of print.

The Epistle to the Hebrews

The Greek Text with Notes and Essays

Edited with an Introduction by

Brooke Foss Westcott

1 gorgias press 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in 1920 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2010

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ISBN 978-1-61719-680-5

ISSN 1935-4398

Reprinted from the 1920 London edition.

Printed in the United States of America

V E R Y student of t h e Epistle to t h e Hebrews m u s t feel t h a t it deals in a peculiar degree with t h e thoughts and trials of our own time. T h e situation of Jewish converts on the eve of the destruction of Jerusalem was necessarily marked by the sorest distress.

They had looked with unhesitating confidence for the

redemption of Israel and for the restoration of t he Kingdom to the people of God; and in proportion as their hope had been bright, their disappointment was overwhelming when these expectations, as they had fashioned them, were finally dispelled. They were deprived of t h e consolations of their ancestral ritual:

they

were

excluded

from

the

fellowship

of

their

countrymen: t h e letter of Scripture had failed t h e m :

the

Christ remained outwardly unvindicated from the j u d g m e n t of high-priests and scribes; and a storm was g a t h e r i n g round t h e Holy City which to calm eyes boded u t t e r desolation without any prospect of relief.

The writer of t h e Epistle enters with

t h e tenderest sympathy into every cause of t h e grief and dejection which troubled his countrymen, and transfigures each sorrow into an occasion for a larger hope through a new revelation of the glory of Christ.

So it will bo still, I cannot

doubt, in this day of our own visitation if we look, as he directs us, to t h e Ascended Lord.

T h e difficulties which come

to us through physical facts and theories, through criticism, through wider views of h u m a n history, correspond with those which came to Jewish Christians at t h e close of the Apostolic age, and they will find their solution also in fuller views of the Person and Work of Christ.

The promise of the Lord awaits

fulfilment for us in this present day, as it found fulfilment for t h e m : In your patience ye shall win your souls. w. H.5

b

VI

This conviction has been constantly present to me in commenting on the Epistle. I have endeavoured to suggest in the notes lines of thought which I have found to open light upon problems which we are required to face. In doing this it has throughout been my desire to induce my readers to become my fellow-students, and I have aimed at encouraging sustained reflection rather than at entering on the field of controversy. No conclusion is of real value to us till we have made it our own by serious work; and controversy tends no less to narrow our vision than to give to forms of language or conception that rigidity of outline which is fatal to the presentation of life. Some perhaps will think that in the interpretation of the text undue stress is laid upon details of expression; that it is unreasonable to insist upon points of order, upon variations of tenses and words, upon subtleties of composition, upon indications of meaning conveyed by minute variations of language in a book written for popular use in a dialect largely affected by foreign elements. The work of forty years has brought to me the surest conviction that such criticism is wholly at fault. Every day's study of the Apostolic writings confirms me in the belief that we do not commonly attend with sufficient care to their exact meaning. The Greek of the How Testament is not indeed the Greek of the Classical writers, but it is not less precise or less powerful. I should not of course maintain that the fulness of meaning which can be recognised in the phrases of a book like the Epistle to the Hebrews was consciously apprehended by the author, though he seems to have used the resources of literary art with more distinct design than any other of the Apostles; but clearness of spiritual vision brings with it a corresponding precision and force of expression through which the patient interpreter can attain little by little to that which the prophet saw. No one would limit the teaching of a poet's words to that which was definitely present to his mind. Still less can we suppose that he who is inspired to give a

Vll

message of GOD to all ages sees himself the completeness of the truth which all life serves to illuminate. I have not attempted to summarise in the notes the opinions of modern commentators. detail by Liinemann.

This has been done fairly and in

Where I feel real doubt, 1 have given the

various views which seem to me to claim consideration: in other cases I have, for the most part, simply stated the conclusions which I have gained.

I have however freely quoted patristic

comments, and that in the original texts.

Every quotation

which 1" have given has, I believe, some feature of interest; and the trouble of mastering the writer's own words will bo more than compensated by a sense of their force and beauty. It did not appear to fall within my scope to discuss the authorship of the Commentary which I have quoted under the name of Primasius (Migne, P. L. lxviii).

The Commentary is

printed also under the name of Haymo (Migne, P. L. cxvii) with some variations, and in this text the lacuna in the notes on c. iv. is filled up. As far as I have observed the Commentary of Herveius Burgidolensis ('of Bourg-Dieu or Bourg-Deols in Berry' f 1149, Migne, P. L. clxxxi) has not been used before.

The passages

which I have given will shew that for vigour and independence and sobriety and depth he is second to 110 rnediieval expositor. I regret that I have not given notes from Atto of Yercelli ( t c. 960, Migne, P.L. exxxiv).

His commentary also will repay

examination 1 . 1

Tlie following

summary

enume-

ration of the chief patristic Commentaries m a y be of some use : i.

ORIGEX.

THEODORE

GREEK.

ou

the

OF

MOPSUESTIA.

The

Greek fragments have been printed by Migne, P.O.

Of h i s xviii H o m i l i e s and

B o o k s (rofioi)

L a t i n C o m m e n t a r i e s is greatly to be desired.

Epistle

lxvi, pp. 651 ff.

C11HYSOSTO.M.

XXX.LV

Homilies.

only

T h e s e were translated i n t o L a t i n by

meagre fragments remain ; but it is not

M u t i a n u s Scliolasticus at the request

unlikely that m a n y of h i s

thoughts

of Cassiodorus (c. 500), and this trans-

have been incorporated b y o t h e r w r i t e r s .

lation was largely used by

A n investigation into the sources of the

writers.

Western

b 2

Vili I t would bo impossible

for me

determine m y debts to other writers.

to estimate

or even

to

I cannot however b u t

acknowledge gratefully how much I owe both to D e l i t z s c h and to Riehm.

T h e latter writer appears to me to have

seized

more truly t h a n any one the general character and t e a c h i n g of t h e Epistle. For illustrations from Philo I a m largely indebted to t h e Exercitationes unnoticed. Trommius

of J. B. Carpzov (1750), who has left few parallels But

I have always

and Bruder.

seemed

I f to these

to learn most from

Concordances—till

the

former is superseded by the promised Oxford C o n c o r d a n c e — t h e student adds D r Moulton's edition of Winer's G r a m m a r

and

D r Thayer's edition of Grimm's Lexicon, he will find that he has at

his command a

fruitful field of investigation

yields to every effort fresh signs of the inexhaustible of the W r i t t e n

JOHN

OF

Word 1 .

Migne,

THEODORET.

DAMASCUS.

G. lxxxii. Migne, P . G.

P.

xev. Migne,

CECUMENITJS.

P.

G. cxix.

EUTHYMIUS ZIGABENUS, e d . N . C a l o -

geras, Athens 1887. TBEOPHYLACT. Migne, P . G. exxv. ii.

which wealth

LATIN.

Migne, P . L. lxviii. Also under the name of H A Y S I O . Migne, P . L. cxvii. C A S S I O D O B L ' S (a few notes). Migne, P. L. lxx. ALULFUS. Migne, P. L . lxxix. (a collection of passages from Gregory the Great). ALCUIN. Migne, P.L. c. (on cc. i— x. chiefly from Clirysostom [Primasius]). SEDULIUS SCOTUS. Migne, P . L . ciii. RABANUS MAURUS. Migne, P.L. cxii. (chiefly extracts from Chrysostom). WALAFRID STRABO. Migne, P . L , PRIMASIUS.

cxiv. (Glossa Ordinaria).

FiiOitcs D I A C O N U S . Migne, P . P . cxix. (a collection of passages from Augustine). Assigned also to Bede and Bobertus de Torreneio (Migne, P. L. ccii). A T T O OF Y E E C E L L I . Migne, P. X. exxxiv. Old materials are used with independence and thought. BRUNO. Migne, P . L. cliii. LANFRANC. Migne, P. P . cl. HUGO DE S . VICTOKE. Migne, P. L. clxxv. (Interesting discussions on. special points.) HERVEIUS BURGIDOLENSIS. Migne, P . L. clxxxi. (of the highest interest). PETER LOMBARD. Migne, P . L .

cxcii. (Collectanea). THOMAS

AQUINAS.

It

would

be

of

considerable interest to compare the Latin translation of Chrysostom with the notes of Primasius (Haymo), Alcuin and Atto. 1 For the Index I am indebted to my son, the Rev. G. H. Westcotfc, M.A., now of the S.P.G. Mission, Cawnpore.

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No work in which I have ever been allowed, to spend mam years of continuous labour has had for me the same intense human interest as the study of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

If

this feeling, which must shew itself in what I have written, moves others to work upon the book with frank and confident reverence, to listen to the voice which speaks to us ' to-day' from its pages, to bring to the doubts, the controversies, the apparent losses, which distress us, the spirit of absolute selfsurrender to our King-priest, the living and glorified Christ, which it inspires, my end will be fully gained.

Such students

will join with me in offering a devout thanksgiving to G o d that H e has made a little plainer to us, through lessons which have seemed to be a stern discipline, words which express the manifold experience of life and its final interpretation : n o A y M e p a i c ka'i n o A Y T p o n o x ttaA