since reference is made to that event (chap, xvi.), but how long after is matter of much dispute. The general opinion is, that its date is not later than the middle of the second century, and that it cannot be placed earlier than some twenty or thirty years before. In point of style, both as respects thought and expression, a very low place must be assigned it. We know nothing certain of the region in which the author lived, or where the first readers were to be found. The inten- tion of the 'writer, as he himself states (chap, i.), was "to perfect the knowledge" of those to whom he wrote. Hilgenfeld, who has devoted much attention to this Epistle, holds that " it was written at the close of the first century by a Gentile Christian of the school of Alexandria, with the view of winning back, or guarding firom a Judaic form of Christianity, those Christians belong- ing to the same class as himself."