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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 13:24 - 13:24
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24. ἀσπάσασθε. This salutation to all their spiritual leaders implies the condition of Churches, which was normal at that period—namely, little communities, sometimes composed separately of Jews and Gentiles, who in default of one large central building, met for worship in each other’s houses.
οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας. This merely means “the Italians in the place from which I write,” just as “they of Asia” means Asiatic Jews (Act 21:27. Comp. Act 17:13, Heb 6:9, &c.). The phrase therefore gives no clue whatever to the place from which, or the persons to whom, the Epistle was written. It merely shews that some Christians from Italy—perhaps Christians who had fled from Italy during the Neronian persecution—formed a part of the writer’s community; but it suggests a not unnatural inference that it was written to some Italian community from some other town out of Italy. Had he been writing from Italy he would perhaps have been more likely to write “those in Italy” (comp. 1Pe 5:13), and some have explained the phrase as a constr. praegnans for οἱ ἐν τῇ Ἰταλίᾳ ἀσπ. ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας. But this is quite needless, and as Winer says (p. 784) “a critical argument as to the place where the Epistle was written should never have been founded on these words.”