his fate and that of his companions.  Chap. 14.  This brief epistle is marked by a fervor and simplicity worthy of an apostolic man.  The writer commends the Philippians for the love manifested by them towards the suffering servants of Christ, exhorts them to steadfastness, reminds them of Paul’s precepts in his epistle to them, and proceeds to unfold and inculcate the duties belonging to the officers and several classes of members in the church.  The immediate occasion of the letter seems to have been his transmission to the Philippians, in compliance with their request, of Ignatius’ epistle to himself, with such others of his epistles as had come into his hands.  Chap. 13.  The preservation of the present epistle is probably due to this its connection with the epistles of Ignatius forwarded by him to the Philippians.

IV.  THE WRITINGS OF BARNABAS AND HERMAS.

9.  The writings current under the names of Barnabas and Hermas have by no means the outward testimony in their favor by which the preceding epistles of Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp are supported; nor the inward evidence arising from the consideration of their contents.  We will consider them briefly in the order abovenamed.

10.  Until recently the first part of the Epistle of Barnabas existed only in a Latin version.  But in 1859 Tischendorf discovered at Mount Sinai the Sinai Codex (Chap. 26, No. 5), which contains the entire epistle in the original Greek.  That the writer was the Barnabas mentioned in the New Testament as the companion of Paul in preaching the gospel, cannot be maintained on any firm basis of evidence.  As to the date of its composition learned men differ.  Hefele places it between the years 107 and 120.  Apostolic Fathers, Prolegomena, p. 15.

The writer was apparently a Hellenistic Jew of the Alexandrine school, and he wrote for the purpose of convincing his brethren, mainly from the Old Testament, that Jesus is the Messiah, and that in him the rites of the Mosaic law are done away.  His quotations from the Old Testament are numerous, and his method of interpretation is allegorical and sometimes very fanciful, as in the following passage, for the right understanding of which the reader should know that the two Greek letters [Greek:  IE], which stand first in the name [Greek:  IESOUS], JESUS, and represent that name by abbreviation, signify as numerals, the first ten, the second, eight; also that the Greek letter [Greek:  T] (the sign of the cross) denotes as a numeral, three hundred.  “The Scripture says,” argues Barnabas, “that Abraham circumcised of his house three hundred and eighteen men.  What was the knowledge communicated to him [in this fact]?  Learn first the meaning of the eighteen, then of the three hundred.  Now the numeral letters [Greek:  I], ten, [Greek:  E], eight, make eighteen.  Here you have Jesus (Greek [Greek:  IESOUN], of which the abbreviation is [Greek:  IE]).  And because the cross, which lies in the letter [Greek:  T], was that which should bring grace, he says also three hundred.”  Chap. 9.  The Rabbinic system of interpretation in which the writer was educated furnishes an explanation, indeed, of this and other like puerilities, but no vindication of them.