Hebrews, Epistle to the

Hebrews Epistle To The

1. Form and object.-Of all the NT writings which bear the name Epistle, that which is commonly called the Epistle to the Hebrews presents the nearest approximation to the form of an ordered treatise. The writer pays great attention to style. His well-balanced periods appeal to the ear as well as to the intellect, and his argument is arranged with extreme care. We do not find, as is sometimes the case in the Pauline letters, several distinct ideas all struggling for expression at the same time. Each fresh notion comes in its logical order, and the mind of the reader is first carefully prepared to expect it.

The whole argument is in view from the beginning. Whether in the purely argumentative passages or in those which are in form hortatory, we are constantly meeting phrases which are to be taken up again and to have their full meaning given to them later on. The plan itself develops. While the figures to some extent change and take fresh colour, there is growing through all, in trait on trait, the picture which the writer designs to leave before his readers minds (E. C. Wickham, The Epistle to the Hebrews, p. xxi).

Yet, notwithstanding these general characteristics and the absence of any opening salutation, the Epistle is not to be regarded as a theological essay addressed to Christendom in general. It is a real letter, written to meet the needs of a definite and limited circle of readers. Such a circle is presupposed by the personal touches of Heb 13:19; Heb 13:23 and by the repeated exhortations (Heb 2:1-4; Heb 3:12-14; Heb 4:1; Heb 4:11-16; Heb 5:11 to Heb 6:12; Heb 10:19 to Heb 12:29), in which the writer displays too much personal feeling and too exact a knowledge of the spiritual condition of his readers to permit the supposition that he is speaking to the Church at large. But even if these passages could be struck out of the Epistle, the remaining doctrinal portions would still point to the same conclusion. The pains taken by the writer to prove that the sufferings and death of Christ were not only intelligible but also a necessary part of His human experience, or again that the Levitical order was a temporary, imperfect arrangement, imply that the readers were doubtful about these things. Such doubts may well have arisen in a small band of Christians, but they were never characteristic of the Church as a whole.

The readers for whom the Epistle was intended were Christians (Heb 2:3-4), who at the first had shown whole-hearted devotion to the faith (Heb 10:32-34). But their minds were dull. They seemed incapable of understanding anything beyond the merest rudiments of their profession (Heb 5:11-12; Heb 6:1). The earthly humiliation of Jesus, His sufferings and temptations, seemed to them unworthy of Messiah. To them, as to the Jews, the Cross was a stumbling-block, a suffering Christ no true Christ at all. Nor was that their only difficulty. They felt the novelty of Christianity. They found it hard to believe that the new religion could really supersede the ancient Divinely-given religion of the Jews. They were conscious also of its lack of outward aids to faith and worship. Christianity had, as it seemed to them, no visible priesthood or sacrifice. By these perplexities their faith in Christ was being gradually undermined. Their minds began to turn from their Christian inheritance, which contained so much that was new and strange, to the familiar splendours of the Temple and the teaching of Judaism. But it was impossible for them to remain in a state of hesitation. A crisis was rapidly approaching which must determine their course of action (Heb 9:28; Heb 10:25). The Epistle to the Hebrews was written as a word of exhortation (Heb 13:22) to nerve them to meet that crisis. The writer tries to explain their difficulties and to make them realize the meaning of the earthly life and death of Christ. He urges them to make the venture of faith and take their stand by the Masters side (Heb 13:13), for there is no other place where eternal salvation can be found (Heb 6:4-8). His argument takes the form of a systematic contrast between Christianity and Leviticalism. Yet its logical conclusion is not simply that Christianity is the better of the two, but that Christianity is the best religion conceivable, the final, eternal revelation of God to men.

2. Summary of contents

(1) The theme: the old dispensation and the new.-God has made two revelations to men-the first partial and incomplete, the second perfect and therefore final. The prophets at best could merely proclaim the will of God, and that only so far as human limitations allowed them to perceive it. In One who is Son the very essence of the Father is revealed. Levitical priests could only call attention to the sins of man; the Son has washed them away. In Him human nature is raised to the right hand of God (Heb 1:1-4).

(2) The mediators of the old covenant (angels, Moses, Joshua, Aaron) inferior to the one Mediator of the new.-The Law was spoken through angels. The Son is greater than any angel, not only in His Divine glory, but also in the glory of His humiliation. For, as perfect man, He was the first to achieve the high destiny of mankind set forth in Genesis and in the Psalms (Heb 1:5 to Heb 2:18). Jesus is the Moses of the new dispensation, but greater than Moses, as a son is greater than a servant. He wrought a greater deliverance than that of Moses, and led the way to a more perfect rest than that which Joshua won for his people. To that rest He will bring us, if only we remain constant. The story of those who fell of old in the wilderness is a solemn warning of the fatal consequences of apostasy. Let us press on, remembering that the Leader who has suffered with us is also our High Priest who will bring us to the throne of grace (Heb 3:1 to Heb 4:16).

(3) The Son revealed as Priest after the eternal order of Melchizedek.-The essential conditions for all priesthood are two-perfect sympathy with sinful men, and a Divine call to the office of priest. These conditions are perfectly fulfilled in Christ. He is Priest not after the order of Aaron, but after the eternal order of Melchizedek (Heb 5:1-10). Throw off your dullness and lay hold on the meaning of Christs Priesthood, for therein lies the Christian hope. Christ is man and one with us. We can therefore follow Him into the inner sanctuary of Gods own presence whither as Priest He has gone on our behalf (Heb 5:11 to Heb 6:20). The Psalmist declared that the Christ should be Priest after the order of Melchizedek. Notice that the promise of this new priesthood, spoken while the Aaronic priests were in possession, shows that the order of Melchizedek is better than that of Aaron. Its superiority is emphasized by the Divine oath with which the promise is introduced. The account of Melchizedek given in Genesis declares both by its statements and by what it leaves unsaid what are the marks of this priesthood. It is royal, righteous, peace-bringing, personal, dependent not on lineal descent, but on the inherent fitness of the priest; it is eternal. Abraham, and by implication Levi, did homage to this priesthood when they paid tithes and received a blessing, thereby acknowledging the presence of something greater than themselves. These marks of the eternal priesthood find their perfect fulfilment in Jesus. Perfect kingship is manifested in the royal condescension of His earthly humiliation, and righteousness in His sinless life as man; abiding peace is the result of His cleansing of mans sin. He was not born of the tribe of Levi. His Priesthood is inherent in Himself, working according to the power of an endless life (Heb 7:16). It can never be superseded because it has perfectly fulfilled the object for which all priesthood exists (7).

(4) The priestly ministrations of Aaron and of Christ: their sanctuaries, their basal covenants, their sacrifices.-We have, then, a High Priest who has entered upon His regal state of Priesthood in heaven, the true sanctuary. But priesthood implies sacrifice. He must therefore have something to offer; but what and where? Not in the earthly Holy of Holies-that is already occupied. Besides, the Bible warns us that the earthly sanctuary is only a shadow of the heavenly reality. Christs priestly ministry and sacrifice belong to the realm of realties, just as He is the Mediator of a new and better covenant than that of the Jews. For we must face the fact already realized by Jeremiah-the old covenant was imperfect and must pass away when the new and perfect covenant is established (8). The Levitical service of the old covenant was not lacking in outward splendour, but its magnificence served only to emphasize its ineffectiveness. The structure of its sanctuary was specially designed to illustrate its weakness. The entrance to the Holy of Holies was covered by a veil beyond which not even priests might pass. One man alone could ever enter there, and for him the way was beset with danger and open only once in the year. Even so his annual sacrifice was no real atonement. The material offerings-blood of bulls and goats-professed to deal only with ritual errors (, Heb 9:7). They could not cleanse the conscience or take away real sin. All these things-the inaccessible sanctuary, the sin-stained high priest, the annual ineffective sacrifices-clearly indicated that the true atonement was not yet found (Heb 9:1-10). Christ our High Priest, on the other hand, has found for men eternal salvation. For He entered into no material sanctuary but into the very presence of God once for all. His sacrifice was no mere symbolical cleansing of ritual errors. It effected the actual taking away of the accumulated sins of men, and opened the way of free access to God. For it was not material but spiritual, not annual but offered once for all; it was the offering of His own life (Heb 9:11-15).

Thus the new covenant rests on the death of its Mediator. Does this idea seem strange? The following analogies may help you to understand: (a) a testament is a covenant, but it has no value unless the testator die; (b) the old covenant was inaugurated with the offering of the life of bulls and goats; (c) in the Levitical Law every atonement is symbolized by the offering of the life of beasts. By such offerings the earthly sanctuary was cleansed. But nothing short of the most perfect conceivable offering is sufficient for the perfect heavenly sanctuary, and what offering could be more complete than the voluntary laying down of the High Priests own life? Such a spiritual sacrifice has eternal validity. It can never be repeated because by the taking away of sins it has established for ever that perfect union with God which all sacrifice symbolizes. When Christ next appears it will be as Deliverer of those who are expecting Him (Heb 9:15-28).

(5) Summing up of the argument: the shadow and the substance.-The Law was only an outline sketch of good things to come; its repeated sacrifices were symbols, calling attention to mans sins, but incapable of cleansing, for blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins. Christ long ago declared this by the mouth of the Psalmist, and added that the only valid offering in Gods sight is the surrender of the will in complete obedience to Him. Such an offering Christ has now made. That is why, in contrast to the Levitical priest ever offering, never atoning, He sits enthroned at the right hand of God, waiting till his enemies become his footstool. He has set up the perfect covenant (Heb 10:1-18).

(6) Practical applications to present difficulties: appeal to the example of the Fathers: renewed exhortation and final greeting.-Jesus has rent the veil and opened for all the way to the heavenly sanctuary over which as Priest He presides. Where He is, we too may go. Let us then imitate His priestly consecration and press on in His foot-steps, for our hope is certain. We must urge each other on and not isolate ourselves, for the crisis is very near (Heb 10:19-25). Under the Law of Moses apostasy involved terrible consequences. How much worse to reject the perfect sacrifice, to wound the personal Saviour (Heb 10:26-31)! Remember your former steadfastness under trial. Do not throw away your boldness. To receive the promises, all that is needed is patience. Think of the words in which Habakkuk speaks of the promise. They who shrink back forfeit Gods favour. His righteous ones live by faith (Heb 10:32-39). The faith he means is unshaken confidence in the certainty of Gods promises, even though their realization seems far off. It was such faith as this that inspired the long roll of Jewish heroes (11). Wherever we turn in the sacred records we meet these examples of faith in the unseen, and the chief of them all is Jesus. Let us fix our eyes on Him, and, stripping off everything that encumbers, run boldly the race He has run before us (Heb 12:1-4). Be not discouraged at the prospect of suffering. Suffering sent by God is a means of discipline; it proves that we are really His sons (Heb 12:5-13). Seek peace and sanctification; never give up your eternal birthright for mere present enjoyment (Heb 12:14-17). As the glories of the heavenly Sion eclipse the terrors of Sinai, so is our responsibility greater than that of Israel of old. Sion too has its earthquake and its fire which shatter and consume all that is unreal (Heb 12:18-29). Do not forget your mutual responsibilities as brethren. Gods help is sufficient for all (Heb 13:1-6). Follow the example of your old leaders now departed (Heb 13:7). Be constant in your belief, for Jesus Christ is eternally the same. Break loose from the associations which would draw you away from Him. He suffered as our atoning sacrifice outside the city gate. We must be content to bear the same reproach and take our place by His side. The only abiding city is where He is. Let us then offer to God through Him the spiritual sacrifices He loves (Heb 13:8-16). Obey your rulers; pray for us that we may be restored to you, even as we pray for you that God may make you perfect in obedience and every good thing (Heb 13:17-21). Have patience with my letter of exhortation. Timothy has been released. He and I may visit you together. Greet your rulers and all the saints. They of Italy send their greeting to you. The Grace be with you (Heb 13:22-25).

3. Doctrine

(1) Conception of Christianity.-The writer of the Epistle thinks of religion as a covenant. The religion of Jesus Christ is the new eternal covenant (Heb 13:20) of which the prophet spoke (Heb 8:8-13), for He alone has established a perfect covenant relation between God and man. He has opened for man the way of free and unrestricted access to God. He has removed the great obstacle-sin. The symbolism of the old covenant pointed to this ideal. But what was there set forth symbolically as an unrealized hope, Christ has made actual. In Him God and man are perfectly united; His one sacrifice takes away sin, not in symbol but in deed; as High Priest He is not simply the representative of the people but their (Heb 6:20)-where He has entered they too may go; and the sanctuary to which He leads them is no material Holy of Holies but the eternal presence of God (Heb 9:24). A covenant of this kind leaves nothing to be added. It has eternal validity, and must therefore supersede all the imperfect religions which have gone before.

(2) Christology.-The finality of the new covenant rests on the perfection of Him who is its Mediator (Heb 8:6; Heb 9:15; Heb 12:24) and Surety (Heb 7:22). It is natural therefore that the main theme of the Epistle should be the person and work of Christ.

(a) Christ the Eternal Son.-Christs perfection may be expressed in one sentence-He is the Son of God (Heb 1:2; Heb 4:14; Heb 5:8; Heb 6:6; Heb 7:3; Heb 7:28; Heb 10:29). Others have been described in the Scriptures as sons of God (cf. Heb 1:5; Heb 1:8; Heb 1:13; Heb 2:10), but His Sonship is different in kind from theirs. He is the Son of God, inseparable from the Father as the ray is inseparable from the light, revealing the essence of the Father as completely as the device engraved upon a seal is revealed by its impress on wax ( , Heb 1:3). As Son He is the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Heir of all things (Heb 1:2-3). His Sonship raises Him far above angels (Heb 1:5-13), above Moses (Heb 3:6), and above Aaron (Heb 7:28). It gives Him the right, now that His earthly task is completed, to sit enthroned at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb 1:3).

(b) The Incarnation.-Having once clearly stated at the outset the eternal Divinity of the Son, the Epistle dwells almost entirely on His life, work, and exaltation as man. The reason for this is to be found in the apologetic aim of the writer. His readers perplexities centred round Christs earthly life of suffering and temptation, which they regarded as unworthy of one who occupied His nigh position. The Epistle declares that such humiliation was not only in the highest degree worthy of Him who bore it and of God who sent Him (, Heb 2:10; cf. Heb 7:26), it was a necessary part of the experience of one who fulfilled the office of universal High Priest. It was the ground of His subsequent exaltation (cf. , Heb 2:9).

Nowhere in the NT is more emphasis laid on the reality of His human nature and human experience. He who bore the simple human name Jesus (Heb 2:9; Heb 3:1; Heb 4:14; Heb 6:20; Heb 7:22; Heb 10:19; Heb 13:12) was made like His human brethren in all things (Heb 2:11; Heb 2:17). He partook of flesh and blood as they do (Heb 2:14); He could sympathize with their sufferings and temptations, for He too, as man, suffered and was tempted (Heb 2:18; Heb 4:15); like them He had to conquer human weakness before He could learn the hard lesson of obedience to Gods will (Heb 5:7-8). The only difference between their struggle and His lay in the issue. They sometimes fail, but He always conquered, for He was sinless (Heb 4:15). By His participation in human weakness and suffering and temptation Christ was made perfect (, Heb 5:9; cf. Heb 2:10). By experiencing them in His own human life He gained the perfect sympathy with mankind which fits Him to be their High Priest. By overcoming them He realized in Himself as man the high destiny of the race. He became the first-born of many sons who shall be led to glory (Heb 2:10).

(c) The Priesthood and Sacrifice of Christ.-(i.) The sufferings and death of Christ find their final explanation in the thought of His High-Priestly office. They are the necessary condition of His call to that office. Any priest who is called to be the representative of men must himself be man, capable of sympathy with human weakness and error (Heb 5:2). The Levitical priests possessed sympathy with human weakness, but they were also tainted with human sin (Heb 5:3). The ideal priest must combine perfect sympathy with the sinner with complete freedom from sin (Heb 4:15). These qualifications were united in Christ. He was therefore called by God to be Priest, not after the order of Aaron, but after the eternal order of Melchizedek (Heb 5:4-6). The Aaronic order was only the shadow, not the reality of priesthood. Only by way of contrast could it set forth the character of the eternal Priesthood. For the members of that order held office by virtue of mere physical descent (Heb 7:16); their ministry could call sins to mind but could not cleanse them (Heb 10:1-3); they could not unite the people to God-even into the earthly symbol of His presence the high priest himself could enter only once a year alone (Heb 9:7); lastly, the Aaronic priests were mortal-their work was confined to one generation (Heb 7:23).

By contrast with the Aaronic priesthood, it follows that the perfect priest must be really, not ritually, holy, his office resting on his own perfect fitness to perform it; he must be able to take away sin and to unite men to God; lastly, he must be eternal-placed beyond the reach of sin and death. The essential features of this perfect priesthood are set forth, as in a parable, in the biblical portrait of the priest-king Melchizedek. The name Melchizedek, which means king of righteousness, indicates the personal, not merely official, holiness of the true priest; his connexion with Salem, which means peace, points to the abiding union between God and man which he effects; the absence from the record of any mention of Melchizedeks parentage and of any references to his birth or his death suggests that the perfect priesthood is eternal and exercised by right of the personal qualification of the priest (Heb 7:1-3). Abraham, the father of Levi, acknowledged the superiority of the eternal priesthood when he paid tithes to Melchizedek and received his blessing (Heb 7:4-10). The eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, as the Psalm foretold, is perfectly realized in Christ. His office rests not on the law of a carnal commandment (Heb 7:16)-for according to the flesh He was not born of a priestly family (Heb 7:13)-but on the power of an indissoluble life (Heb 7:16). He has perfect sympathy with human weakness and temptation, for He has felt them (Heb 2:18; Heb 4:15), yet He is not tainted with human sin (Heb 4:15; Heb 7:27). He is really, not ritually, holy and without blemish, blameless in His relation to God and to man (Heb 7:26). In His own Person He has inseparably united man with God, and opened a way of access into the Divine presence which can never again be closed (Heb 6:20; Heb 10:19-20). For His Priesthood is inviolable and eternal (Heb 7:25). He has passed into the world of eternal realities, far beyond the reach of sin and death (Heb 1:3; Heb 6:20; Heb 7:26; Heb 9:24). There He ever liveth to make intercession for us (Heb 7:25).

(ii.) The central function of priesthood is to offer sacrifice. If Christ be perfect Priest, what has He to offer (Heb 8:3)?-The eternal Sacrifice which corresponds to the eternal Priesthood. Once more the idea is worked out by means of a contrast with Levitical institutions and the exposition of a verse from the Psalter. Levitical sacrifices were material and frequently repeated. Frequent repetition was necessary because they had no efficacy in the spiritual sphere; they could not take away sin or cleanse the conscience (Heb 9:9; Heb 10:1-4). Long ago the Psalmist recognized their futility and indicated the nature of valid sacrifice. True sacrifice, he declared, is spiritual; its essence consists in self-sacrifice-the complete surrender of the will in voluntary obedience to God (Heb 10:5-10). Christs oblation was a sacrifice of self, the complete surrender of a perfect self in willing obedience (Heb 7:27; Heb 9:14). The days of His flesh were one long period of self-dedication, and in the culminating moment on the Cross His sacrifice was made complete (Heb 5:7-8; Heb 9:12; Heb 10:10; Heb 10:20). Self-sacrifice could be carried no further. Christs perfect spiritual Sacrifice-the entire devotion of a perfect will-although its manifestation took place on earth, belongs in all its stages to the world of eternal realities (cf. , Heb 9:14). It has the power to cleanse the conscience from dead works (Heb 9:14) and to make perfect for ever them that are sanctified (Heb 10:14). Because it possesses eternal validity it can never be repeated (Heb 7:27; Heb 9:24-28). The indissoluble life (Heb 7:16) of the Priest-Victim is made available for all men by the one offering. The new covenant-relation between God and man is established (Heb 9:24). Henceforth Christ sits enthroned in the heavenly sanctuary in token that His task is done, waiting until His enemies become His footstool (Heb 10:12-14).

(d) The Death of Christ.-The supposition that the death of Christ was a real stumbling-block to the first readers of the Epistle is justified by the evident pains taken by the writer to find reasons for that death. Firstly, Christ died by the grace of God (Heb 2:9); God willed that it should be so. Secondly, Christ died as true man. To did once and once only is part of the common lot of men (Heb 9:27). Thirdly, Christ died as testator, that we might enter into the inheritance He has bequeathed to us (Heb 9:16). Fourthly, the death of Christ was the necessary climax of the experience of human suffering which qualified Him to be captain of salvation (Heb 2:10). Fifthly, Christ died to free us from the fear of death. From the time of the Fall, death was terrible because it was regarded as the penalty of human sin. Jesus Christ, by dying though He was sinless, broke the connexion between death and sin, and so robbed death of its enslaving terrors (Heb 2:14-15), Finally, Christs death was the foundation of the new covenant, the priestly act of self-sacrifice by which he hath perfected for ever them that ore sanctified (Heb 9:15; Heb 10:14).

That the voluntary laying down of Christs life was a sacrificial act is regarded as self-evident, and no direct answer is given to the question, How does His sacrifice make perfect His followers? Yet the writer provides the material for an answer when he dwells on the principle of Christs solidarity with sinners. He that sanctifieth and they that are to be sanctified are all of one (Heb 2:11, sc. one piece, one whole; cf. Davidson, Hebrews, p. 66, n. [Note: . note.] 2). Christs High-Priestly acts were not the acts of an individual but of the representative man. It was human nature which in Him was perfected through obedience, entered the heavenly sanctuary, and sat down on the throne of majesty. What was actually effected in Him, was effected potentially in those who follow Him (cf. Heb 10:10). Christians are included in that purpose of love which Christ has realised (Westcott, Ep. to the Hebrews 3, p. 314). The High Priest is also the (Heb 6:20), one of many sons who are being brought to glory (Heb 2:10), who becomes the cause of salvation to His human brethren because in Him the perfection of human nature has been realized (Heb 5:9).

(e) The Parousia.-The Epistle speaks of the day which is approaching (Heb 10:25), when God will shake not the earth only but also the heavens (Heb 12:26), and the glorified Christ shall appear unto salvation for them that await him (Heb 9:28). The day is unquestionably the prophetic Day of Jahweh, but the idea of the day intended by the writer seems to be that of the older OT prophets (cf. Amo 5:18, Isa 2:12), rather than that of the later apocalyptists. It is a coming rather than the Coming of the Christ. About the final Coming the Epistle has nothing to say. But a crisis is at hand; the readers can already see its approach. To the writer it is a real coming of Christ.

The Master had said that He might come at even or at midnight or at cock-crowing or in the morning (Mar 13:35). To the writer of this letter the thought has occurred that those hours may be not merely alternative but successive. And now that the first of them has sounded warning, he bids his friends be ready (Nairne, The Epistle of Priesthood, p. 210).

(3) The Christian Life.-The great salvation (Heb 2:3) wrought by Christ is variously described in the Epistle as the realization of mans lordship over creation (Heb 2:8-9), deliverance from the fear of death (Heb 2:14-15), entrance into the perfect Sabbath-rest of God (Heb 4:9). But its essence consists in cleansing and consecration, the taking away of sin (Heb 9:14), and the opening of a way of free access into the Divine presence (Heb 10:20), or, as it is expressed in one passage, the perfecting for ever of them that are sanctified by the one offering of Christ (Heb 10:14). In one sense this perfecting is already accomplished (, Heb 10:14). From another point of view it is regarded as a hope yet to be realized. For there is nothing mechanical about its working. Each individual Christian must make it his own. If we are to be perfected, our will must be united with the will of Christ in perfect surrender to God (Heb 5:9; Heb 10:10). Seen from this standpoint, the Christian life is a progressive sanctification (Heb 2:11; Heb 10:14; Heb 12:14), which may be figuratively represented as a race or a pilgrimage. Hence arises the need of solemn warnings. It is possible to drop out of the Christian race before the goal is reached, or to set out on the pilgrimage and yet never arrive at the heavenly city. The great danger which besets the Christian is faint-heartedness (, Heb 3:12), the loss of the vision of the land of eternal things, and want of confidence in Him who leads us to that land. The Christian safeguard is faith. Faith is the power which helps us to grasp the abiding realities which lie behind the world of sense, and to test the existence and character of things which are for us as yet unrealized (Heb 11:1). It is the faculty by which, for example, we recognize the eternal issues which were decided by the earthly life and humiliation of Christ, and the futility of all hopes that stand apart from Him. The practical result of such faith will be unswerving devotion and obedience to our Captain in the face of all trouble and difficulty (Heb 5:9), for He Himself has run the race before us and stands waiting for us at the goal (Heb 12:2). If our eyes are fixed on Him, and all things which might impede our progress are thrown aside, He will make perfect the faith which He has given (Heb 12:2), He will grant us the full assurance of hope (Heb 6:11), which will bring us safely along the path which He has trodden to the end, where the fullness of His salvation is revealed in the eternal sanctuary, the very presence of God (cf. Heb 6:19-20).

4. Date.-The first generation of Christians had passed away (Heb 2:3; Heb 13:7); members of the Church had already suffered persecution, imprisonment, and loss of property (Heb 10:32-34); the relation of Gentile and Jewish Christians was no longer a burning question of the day. The Epistle cannot therefore have been written long before a.d. 70. On the other hand, it cannot be placed much later than a.d. 90, for it was extensively used by Clement of Rome in his Epistle to the Corinthians, c. [Note: . circa, about.] a.d. 95-96 (cf. ad Cor. 9, 12, 17, 36, 45).

Any more precise determination of the date must rest chiefly on the view taken of the crisis with which the first readers of the Epistle were confronted. If the approaching day (Heb 10:25) be taken to mean the Final Coming of Christ, the exact date of the Epistle must be left uncertain. But if it be rightly interpreted as an allusion to the inevitable culmination of some national movement already active-a movement which forced upon the readers a final choice between Christianity and Judaism-it is most naturally regarded as referring to the outbreak of the Jewish war which led to the Destruction of Jerusalem. The date of the Epistle would then fall between a.d. 63 and 70.

No chronological argument can be based on the fact that the writer of the Epistle generally uses the present tense in speaking of Levitical institutions (Heb 7:8; Heb 7:20; Heb 8:3; Heb 8:5; Heb 9:8-9; Heb 9:13; Heb 13:10). The use of the present tense does not necessarily imply that the Temple was still standing when he wrote. Similar language is frequently employed in reference to the Temple service in writings much later than a.d. 70 (e.g. Clem. Rom. ad Cor. 40-41; Justin Martyr, Dial. 117; Epistle of Barnabas, passim). But what the writer to the Hebrews has in mind is not the service of the Temple but that of the Tabernacle. The references [of the Epistle] to the Mosaic ritual are purely ideal and theoretical, and based on the Law in the Pentateuch (Davidson, op. cit. p. 15).

Some commentators have found a further indication of date in the writers application of the words of Psalms 95 to the circumstances of his own day (Heb 3:7-11). Special emphasis is laid on the fact that be departs from the construction of the original passage in connecting the words forty years with the preceding clause they saw my works, instead of with that which follows. It is suggested that the change was made intentionally, because the writer wished to point out that, as he wrote, another period of forty years of seeing Gods works was rapidly drawing to a close, namely, the forty years which followed the Crucifixion (circa, about a.d. 30-70). Yet, even if it be permissible to take the number forty literally, this argument has little value. The language of the Psalm might equally well be applied to the period a.d. 30-70 at a much later date by a writer who considered that the to-day of unbelieving Israels opportunity closed with the Destruction of Jerusalem. The passage has even been used to prove that the Epistle must have been written some years later than a.d. 70 (Zahn, Introd. to the NT, Eng. translation , ii. 321ff.). But it seems unlikely either in the original Psalm or in the quotation that forty years means anything more definite than the lifetime of a generation.

5. The readers

(1) Jews or Gentiles?-A unanimous tradition, reaching back to the 2nd cent. and embodied in the title invariably given to the Epistle, asserts that it was addressed . It may be granted that the title does not go back to the original writer, and that it represents nothing more than an inference from the contents of the letter, but the inference is probably correct if not inevitable. The traditional view remained unquestioned until the 19th cent., but since then it has frequently been maintained that the Epistle was addressed to Gentiles, or at least to Christians generally, without regard to their origin. By isolating certain incidental statements contained in the Epistle, it is not difficult to present a plausible case for this opinion. It has been said, for example, that no Jewish convert would need to be taught the elementary doctrines enumerated in Heb 6:1-2; that conversion from Judaism which the writer believed to be a Divinely-given religion, would never have been described by him as turning from dead works to serve a living God (Heb 9:14); that the faults against which the readers are warned (Heb 12:14; Heb 13:4) are the faults of heathen rather than of Jews. It must be recognized, however, that the details on which the argument rests are capable of more than one interpretation, and that similar passages, equally dubious perhaps (e.g. the use of the terms seed of Abraham [Heb 2:16] and the nation [Heb 2:17], where the argument rather requires mankind), may be quoted on the other side.

But the traditional opinion is most strongly supported by the general drift and tendency of the Epistle taken as a whole. The writer appeals to the OT as to an independent authority which may be quoted in support of the Christian faith. He assumes that his readers take the same view of the OT. This would be true of Jewish but not of Gentile converts. To the Gentile the OT had no meaning apart from Christianity. In the same way the main argument of the Epistle, while involving the conclusion that Christianity is the perfect and final religion, yet formally proves only that Christianity is superior to Judaism. This method of reasoning, unaccompanied by any reference to paganism in any form, is only intelligible if addressed to men who were either Jews by birth or who had adopted Jewish ways of thinking so completely as to be indistinguishable from born Jews.

(2) Place of residence.-The Epistle contains no opening salutation, and no direct information as to its destination. This lack of evidence makes it very difficult to locate the readers for whom it was intended. The ancient title throws no light upon the question, for the term Hebrews is national, not local. Many suggestions have been made of probable places where such a circle of readers as the Epistle presupposes may have existed. The claims most widely upheld are those of (a) Jerusalem or some other Palestinian or Syrian community, (b) Alexandria, (c) Rome or some other church in Italy.

(a) In favour of the first hypothesis, it is argued that Jerusalem, or at least some Palestinian city, would be the most likely place for a purely Jewish community, and that there too the practical problem with which the Epistle deals would be most keenly felt. But the language used in the Epistle (Heb 2:3), which implies that the community addressed had had no opportunity of hearing the gospel from Christs own lips, certainly does not favour the theory of any Palestinian destination, nor do the suggestions of the comparative wealth of the readers (Heb 6:10; Heb 10:33 f.) agree with the known poverty of the primitive church of Judaea . Palestine again is not a place where Timothy might be expected to have much influence (Heb 13:23), and the absence of any distinct mention in the Epistle of the Temple as opposed to the Tabernacle would be, to say the least, remarkable if it were addressed to Judaea .

(b) Alexandria has been suggested chiefly on account of the affinities of thought and language between the Epistle and Alexandrian Judaism as represented by the writings of Philo and the Book of Wisdom. Such affinities undoubtedly exist, and may perhaps contain a hint concerning the writers own birth-place, but they supply no evidence as to the destination of the Epistle. It must be remembered also that the Alexandrian type of Judaism was by no means confined to Alexandria. The theory that the Epistle was written with particular reference to the worship of the Jewish Temple at Leontopolis falls to the ground when it is realized that the writer had in view not the worship of any particular Temple, but the Levitical service as it is described in the Pentateuch (K. Wieseler, Untersuchung ber den Hebrerbrief, 1861).

(c) What little evidence the Epistle itself supplies, may be quoted in favour of Rome or some other Italian community. For the words They of Italy send greeting are most naturally taken as implying that the letter was sent either to or from Italy, and some less vague expression than (Heb 13:24) might reasonably have been expected if the writer were actually in Italy at the time of writing. Corroborative evidence for regarding Rome as the destination of the Epistle may be found in the fact that the earliest known quotation of its language occurs in the letter of Clement of Rome.

But the question of the Epistles destination must remain without a final answer. It seems clear that it was addressed not to a mixed community, but to Jews, and the general impression it gives is of a limited circle of readers rather than of a large and miscellaneous gathering (Zahn, op. cit. ii. 349ff.). Whether that circle was the church in so-and-sos house, or a group of scholarly men like the author (Nairne, op. cit. p. 10), cannot be finally determined.

6. Author.-But who wrote the Epistle God Only knows certainly ( , Origen, ap. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)vi. 25). These words were originally spoken with reference to the amanuensis or translator of the Epistle. Most modern scholars are content to extend their reference to the actual author. The writer keeps himself in the background, and later research has never finally discovered his identity. In this respect students of the 2nd cent. were as much in the dark as those of the present day. It is significant that the Roman Church, which was the first to make use of the Epistle, refused for more than three centuries to grant it a place amongst the NT Scriptures, on account of the uncertainty of its authorship ( Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)iii. 3). If Eusebius is to be trusted, Roman opinion on the subject did not go beyond a denial of the authorship of St. Paul. The only positive statement made by any early Latin writer occurs in a work of Tertullian, who attributes the Epistle without question to Barnabas (de Pudicitia, xx.). This belief may perhaps represent a Montanist tradition generally current in North Africa. It is difficult to see why it vanished so completely from the other churches, if it had ever been more widely circulated.

It was in Alexandria, after the Epistle had already been accepted as canonical on its own merits, that the theory of Pauline authorship gradually arose. The writings of Clement of Alexandria (circa, about a.d. 200), Origen (circa, about a.d. 220), and Eusebius (circa, about a.d. 320), display the theory in process of formation. Clement put forward the suggestion that St. Paul wrote the Epistle in Hebrew, and St. Luke afterwards translated it into Greek. The latter conjecture is based on the resemblance of style between the Greek of the Epistle and that of the Acts ( Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)vi. 14). Origen expresses his own opinion thus: The thoughts are the thoughts of the Apostle, but the language and composition that of one who recalled from memory, and, as it were, made notes of what was said by the master ( , ap. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)vi. 25). Eusebius himself, while admitting that the Roman Church did not accept the Epistle because it was not St. Pauls (HE [Note: E Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.).] iii. 3), yet declares that it is reasonable on the ground of its antiquity that it should be reckoned with the other writings of the Apostle (iii. 37). Clearly, none of the three writers regarded the Epistle as being Pauline in the full sense, yet for the sake of convenience it was their practice to quote it as of Paul. Later Alexandrian writers adopted this title as being literally true, and from Alexandria belief in the literal Pauline authorship of the Epistle spread throughout the Church. In this, as in other matters, the Western Church followed the lead of St. Hilary, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine.

It is easy to imagine how the Epistle became connected with St. Pauls name. When once an anonymous letter bearing the simple title was appended to a collection of acknowledged Pauline Epistles, the addition to the heading of the words would only be a matter of time.

Nevertheless, as Origen already felt, internal evidence makes the theory of Pauline authorship untenable. It is incredible that St. Paul, who insisted so strongly that he received his gospel by direct revelation (Galatians 1), could have written the confession of second-hand instruction contained in Heb 2:3. Nothing, again, could be more unlike St. Pauls method of expression than the elegant and rhythmical style of the Epistle to the Hebrews; and behind the difference of style lies a real difference of mental attitude. The characteristic Pauline antitheses faith and works, law and promise, flesh and spirit, are replaced by new contrasts-earthly and heavenly, shadow and substance, type and antitype. The difference of thought which separates the two writers becomes apparent when they meet on common ground. Faith and righteousness are key-words in St. Pauls theology. The Epistle to the Hebrews also speaks often of faith and sometimes of righteousness (Heb 1:9; Heb 5:13; Heb 7:2; Heb 11:7; Heb 11:33; Heb 12:11), but the words have lost their special Pauline sense, Faith no longer means intimate personal union with Christ, but expresses the more general idea of grasp on unseen reality. Righteousness is stripped of its forensic associations. It simply means ethical righteousness, not right standing in the eyes of God. The same contrast is visible in the different applications made by the two writers of the only two OT passages quoted by both (Deu 32:35, quoted in Rom 12:19, Heb 10:30; Hab 2:3 quoted in Rom 1:17, Gal 3:11, Heb 10:37-38).

The theory of Pauline authorship being therefore necessarily abandoned, all attempts to discover the authors name are reduced to mere conjecture. Such conjectures have usually started from the assumption that his acquaintance with Timothy (Heb 13:23) places the writer of the Epistle amongst the circle of St. Pauls friends. The early Church suggested, as having at least a share in the authorship, St. Luke (Clem. Alex. ap. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)vi. 14), or Barnabas (Tertullian, de Pudicitia, xx.), or Clement of Rome (some known to Origen [ap. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)vi. 25]). Luther (e.g. Enarr. in Gen 48:20, Op. Exeg. xi. 130) supported the claim of Apollos. More recent conjectures have been Silas (e.g. C. F. Boehme, Ep. ad Heb., 1825); Aquila (suggestion mentioned but not approved by Bleek, Der Brief an die Hebrer, i. 42); St. Peter (A. Welch, The Authorship of Hebrews, 1898); Prisca and Aquila in collaboration, Prisca taking the lions share (Harnack, Zeitschrift fr die neutest. Wissenschaft , 1900); Aristion, the Elder known to Papias (J. Chapman, Revue Bndictine, xxii. [1905], p. 50); and lastly, Philip the Deacon (Ramsay, Expositor, 5th ser. ix. 401-422). The evidence in favour of any of these conjectures is of the flimsiest description. The affinities of language and style between the Epistle and the Acts, or the resemblances of thought between the Epistle and 1 Peter, are quite insufficient to prove community of authorship. The quotation of long passages from the Epistle by Clement of Rome serves only to emphasize their difference from his own way of thinking and writing. Barnabas, Silas, Aquila, Philip, Aristion remain as possible authors chiefly because next to nothing is known about them. Apollos, the learned Alexandrian Jew, mighty in the Scriptures (Act 18:24), companion of St. Paul, is the sort of man who might have written the Epistle, but no shred of positive evidence exists which would justify the assertion that he actually did write it.

That a leaf has been accidentally lost from the beginning of the Epistle which would perhaps have told of its authorship and destination (Fritz Barth, Einleitung in das NT2, 1911, p. 114), is a hypothesis which cannot be verified. It is at least more probable than the suggestion that the authors name was intentionally removed by the prejudice of a later generation which demanded that all canonical Epistles should be of apostolic origin. But it is not necessary to assume that the Epistle ever had a formal address. It is clear from the contents that the readers knew who was addressing them and by what authority, and many reasons for the omission of any formal superscription can be easily imagined (cf. Jlicher, Introd. to NT, Eng. translation , p. 153).

7. Affinities of thought and language

(1) The OT.-The Epistle makes extensive use of the OT. Twenty-nine distinct quotations occur, twenty-one of which are not found elsewhere in the NT, and there are frequent allusions to passages of the OT which are not definitely cited. The writer shows no acquaintance with the Hebrew text, but follows the Septuagint even where it differs materially from the Hebrew (e.g. Psa 95:10, Jer 31:31 ff., Psa 40:6-8, Hab 2:3-4, Pro 3:11, quoted in Heb 3:9; Heb 8:8-12; Heb 10:5-7; Heb 10:37-39; Heb 12:5-6). Three of his OT quotations differ both from the Septuagint and from the Hebrew (Gen 22:16 f., Exo 24:8, Deu 32:35; cf. Heb 6:13 f.; Heb 9:20; Heb 10:30). The last of these occurs in the same form in Rom 12:19. Amongst the more general allusions to the language of the Greek Bible may be noticed the reference to stories contained in 1 and 2 Mac. (Heb 11:34-35; cf. especially 2 Maccabees 6, 7), and the possible reminiscence in Heb 1:3 of the words of the Book of Wisdom in which Wisdom is described as (sc. , Wis 7:26).

The mode of citation employed in the Epistle is worthy of note. The name of the individual writer is never mentioned, but in every case (except Heb 2:6 ff., where God is directly addressed), the words of the OT are ascribed to God, or to Christ (Heb 2:11; Heb 2:13; Heb 10:5 ff.), or to the Holy Spirit (Heb 3:7 ff.; Heb 10:15). In striking contrast to the allegorical method of Philo, and to St. Pauls custom of adopting OT phrases to express ideas different from those of the original writer (e.g. The just shall live by faith), the author of the Epistle is true to the historical method of interpretation, and uses OT passages in the exact sense which the first writer himself put upon them. This is true even of the chapter dealing with Melchizedek (Hebrews 7), where the Epistle seems to approximate most closely to the Philonic method of exegesis. Melchizedek remains the priest-king of Salem. He is not a mere symbol, still less is he identical with Christ. Lastly, it may be observed that the Epistle lays stress on the continuity of revelation. The same God who spoke by means of the prophets speaks in the Son, and the principles which the prophets revealed in part are the same principles which He reveals in full perfection. Thus, it appears to the writer, Christhood is not a new thing. The eternal Son inherited the name of Christ from partial and imperfect Christs who went before Him (Heb 1:4; of. Nairne, op. cit. pp. 16f., 153, 249ff.). Words, therefore, which in the first place were spoken of Gods anointed ones of past ages-the king (Heb 1:5-6; Heb 1:8-9; Heb 1:13), or the nation (Heb 2:12), or the prophet (Heb 2:13)-are unhesitatingly applied to the Christ in whom that which they dimly shadowed is at last fully realized. (On the use of the OT in the Epistle, see Westcott, op. cit. pp. 471-197; Nairne, op. cit. pp. 248-289.)

(2) Philo.-Much has been written about the influence exercised on the writer of the Epistle by the Alexandrian school of pre-Christian Judaism, whose chief representative is Philo. The evidence bearing on the question may be arranged as follows.

(a) Resemblances.-(i.) Both use the Septuagint in a recension closely resembling Cod. A (Bleek, op. cit. i. 369ff.). (ii.) The custom in the Epistle of quoting the OT as the direct utterance of God, without mentioning the writers name, finds an exact parallel in the works of Philo. (iii.) Striking and unusual words and phrases used in the Epistle occur also in Philos writings, e.g. (Heb 1:3; de Mundi Op. 51), (Heb 1:3; de Plant. Noe, 5), in the sense of altar (Heb 9:4; Quis rer. div. hr. 46), (Heb 2:14; cf. , Quis rer. div. hr. 30), ) Heb 5:2; de Abrah. 44), (Heb 4:13; de Vita Mos. i. 53), (Heb 5:7; de Cherubim, 13), (Heb 5:8; cf. , de Somn. ii. 15), used of God (Heb 2:10; de Leg. alleg. i. 15), applied to the lid of the Ark (Heb 9:5; de Vita Mos. iii. 8). The Epistle describes Christ as and (Heb 1:6; Heb 2:17; Heb 3:1); Philo applies the terms , (de Agricult. 12), (de Somn. i. 38) to the Divine Logos. (iv.) Both display the same habit of inter-weaving doctrinal and practical passages, the same unusnal transposition of words (cf. , Heb 1:6; de Leg. alleg. iii. 9), the same use of (Heb 2:16; e.g. de Leg. alleg. i. 3) and (Heb 7:9; e.g. de Plant. Noe, 38). (v.) Both argue from the silences as well as from the statements of Scripture, attach importance to the meaning of OT names, and emphasize the same particular aspects of the lives of Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. (vi.) Philo speaks of an eternal universe ( , de Mundi Op. 4-6), of which the visible universe ( , ib.) is a transitory copy. The writer of the Epistle mentions the heavenly Tabernacle, a copy of which Moses reproduced on earth (Heb 8:5), and frequently alludes to earthly institutions as copies or shadows of heavenly realities (Heb 9:23-24).

(b) Divergences.-(i.) While the Epistle resembles Philo in its mode of citation of the OT, it presents a radical difference in its method of interpretation. Men and institutions remain what they are said to be in the OT. They do not become mere symbols of transcendental ideas. (ii.) In the Epistle stray expressions may be applied to the Son which Philo applies to the Logos, but the personal Son of Hebrews is essentially different from the abstract impersonal Logos of Philo. (iii.) The writer of the Epistle uses language which recalls the Alexandrian notion of the real invisible world which corresponds with the unreal world of sense. But that idea is not the basis of his conception of Christianity.

He does not identify Christian truth with an already existing system of thought: his Christian thought merely possess itself of the outlines of a mode of conception existing, which it fills with its own contents (Davidson, op. cit. p. 201).

It appears, then, that the Epistle does show some affinities with Philo and the Alexandrian school. It is at least probable that the writer was acquainted with their ideas and their philosophical terminology. But his message is all his own; he owes little to Alexandria beyond the outward expression. So far as he borrows thoughts, he borrows from the gospel tradition and the OT Scriptures (see G. Milligan, The Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews, pp. 203-211; Bruce in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 335).

(3) The Synoptic tradition.-The author shows considerable acquaintance with the facts of our Lords life on earth. He knows of His human birth (Heb 2:14), of His descent from the tribe of Judah (Heb 7:14), of His human development (Heb 5:8), of His temptation (Heb 2:18; Heb 4:15), of His fidelity (Heb 3:2), of His sinlessness (Heb 4:15), of His preaching (Heb 2:3), of His gentle bearing towards sinners (Heb 2:17), of the contradiction He endured at the mouth of ignorant men (Heb 12:3), of His circle of disciples (Heb 2:3; Heb 2:13), of His agony in the Garden (Heb 5:7), of His Ascension (Heb 6:20; Heb 7:26; Heb 9:24). Though the Resurrection occupies no large place in the writers doctrinal teaching, it is not because he is ignorant of the fact (Heb 13:20). These things are mentioned in the Epistle quite incidentally and because of their bearing on the general argument. It is not likely, therefore, that they represent the whole of the writers information concerning the earthly ministry of Jesus. The additional fact that he takes it for granted that his readers need no explanation of his allusions indicates that an evangelic tradition, not unlike that of the Synoptic Gospels, was already in circulation, but whether it had yet taken the form of a written record cannot be ascertained (see Westcott, op. cit. p. 465; Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 63f.).

(4) St. Paul.-Allusion has already been made to the differences between the Epistle and the writings of St. Paul. Attention must now be directed to their similarities. Definite reminiscences of the language of Romans , 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians have been discovered in the following passages. Heb 1:4 || Php 2:9 f.; Php 2:2 || Gal 3:19; Heb 2:4 || 1Co 12:11; Heb 2:14 || 1Co 15:26; Heb 5:12 || 1Co 3:2; Heb 5:14 || 1Co 2:6; Heb 6:10 || 2Co 8:4; Heb 10:30 || Rom 12:19; Heb 10:28 || 2Co 13:1; Heb 10:38 || Rom 1:17; Heb 12:14 || Rom 14:19; Heb 12:22; Heb 13:15 || Gal 4:25 f.; Heb 13:18 || Php 4:15; Php 4:18; Heb 13:18 f. || 2Co 1:11-12; Heb 13:20 || Rom 15:23; Heb 13:24 || Php 4:21-22 (Moffatt, Introd. to Literature of the New Testament (Moffatt)., p. 453). It may be doubted whether direct literary connexion can be proved in any of these cases. Even where such connexion seems most certain-when the two writers agree with each other, while differing both from the Septuagint and from the Hebrew, in the text of an OT passage (Heb 10:30, Rom 12:19)-it is possible that they are quoting independently an interpretation which is at least as old as the Targum of Onkelos. Yet in many ways the Epistle presupposes the work of St. Paul. Though they see things from a different point of view, the two are in fundamental agreement. Both display the same broad conception of the universality of the Gospel, the same grasp of the age-long purpose of God wrought out through Israel, the same trust in the atoning work of Christ, and in His present sovereignty (Westcott, op. cit. p. lxxviii). That the writer to the Hebrews can take up an attitude of wide universalism without mentioning the question of circumcision or even naming the Gentiles at all, and can calmly put aside the Law almost as though its futility were self-evident, implies that the Pauline battle of Galatia and Rome has been fought and won.

(5) The Fourth Gospel.-In point of time the Epistle to the Hebrews stands midway between the Pauline Epistles and the Johannine writings. In the development of apostolic theology it occupies precisely the same place. St. Paul had a hard struggle to establish the principle of the universal application of the gospel to Jew and Gentile alike. The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Fourth Gospel both take this for granted. St. Paul, though he does not dwell on the idea, occasionally speaks of Christs death in terms of sacrifice (Eph 1:7; Eph 2:13; Eph 5:2, 1Co 5:7, Rom 3:25; Rom 8:3 etc.). The Epistle to the Hebrews deals fully with the sacrificial aspect of Christs death, and sets forth at length the corresponding conception of His Priesthood. The root-ideas contained in the doctrines of Christs Priesthood and Sacrifice find their final expression in the seemingly simple and unstudied language of the Fourth Gospel, even though the terms priest and sacrifice are never used (cf. Joh 10:1-21; Joh 12:32; Joh 16:7; John 17). Lastly, the description of the person and work of Christ given in the opening verses of the Epistle (Heb 1:1-4) might almost be taken to be a first sketch of the completed picture of the Divine Word made flesh contained in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel.

The teaching which St. John has preserved offers the final form of the Truth. St. Johns theory (if we may so speak) of the work of Christ is less developed in detail than that which is found in the Epistles of St. Paul and in the Epistle to the Hebrews; but his revelation of Christs Person is more complete. He concentrates our attention, as it were, upon Him, Son of God and Son at man, and leaves us in the contemplation of facts which we can only understand in part (Westcott, op. cit. p. lx f.).

8. Importance.-The Epistle to the Hebrews has an interest peculiarly its own. It is the earliest exposition of the Christian tradition by one who had all the instincts of a scholar and a philosopher, Wherever the author may have been born, he may be regarded as the NT representative of the type of mind which afterwards appeared in the great teachers of the Christian school of Alexandria. At the same time he is altogether free from the particular limitations of that school. He agrees with the Alexandrians in his philosophical bent and his love of cultured and scholarly expression, but he is also of one mind with the school of Antioch in his appreciation of the importance of fact. His doctrine of the Person of Christ combines the two central truths, the isolation of one of which was the cause of disaster both to Alexandria and to Antioch. For while he insists, equally with the Alexandrians, on the cosmic work and pre-incarnate glory of the Son, he is not less emphatic than the Antiochenes in his statement of the completeness of His participation in human suffering and temptation and His exaltation in human nature to the right hand of power. The Epistle to the Hebrews rendered permanent service to the Church by showing that the way to understand something of the meaning of the Person of Christ is not to minimize either the Divine or the human nature, but to emphasize both.

In his interpretation of the OT, the writer of Hebrews seems to be in sympathy much more with Antioch than with Alexandria. His exegesis is based on principles which have never been forsaken without disastrous consequences. He recognizes the OT as a Divinely-given revelation, and yet a revelation which is partial and incomplete. He realizes the true method of historical interpretation: a passage of Scripture must be explained in the light of its context; its real meaning is that which the writer intended it to bear. These are the principles which lie at the root of all sound biblical criticism.

But the greatest service which the Epistle to the Hebrews has rendered to the Church is its interpretation of the Death of Christ in terms of Priesthood and Sacrifice. The ideas so familiar to us were new when the Epistle was written. The writer was not repeating but creating theology (Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 10). He offers no formal theory of the Atonement, but he reveals principles on which it rests, and states them in a way which appeals to the common instincts of mankind. Salvation of others can be wrought only through sacrifice of self. The priest must be also the victim. He must give his life to others as well as for others, and his life becomes available for others only through death-the death of self. The priest who offers the perfect sacrifice must himself be perfect-perfectly one with humanity in nature and in full human experiences; else the sacrifice would be impossible. He must be personally sinless; otherwise the offering would be incomplete and of partial efficacy. If his act of self-sacrifice is to be eternally valid, he must himself be eternal. Christ has fulfilled these conditions, and He will never change: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever (Heb 13:8). The principles here set forth leave some things unexplained, but they are sufficient to strengthen faith to lay hold on what must always remain deeply mysterious-the inexpressible Divine love which made the Eternal Son lay down His life as man. To enkindle faith was the sole object of the writer. In one sense he may be called a visionary, but it is a practical vision that he sees-the vision of a few weak, halting Christians brought safely through an earthly crisis by the outstretched hand of the eternal High Priest who is enthroned in the heavenly sanctuary.

Every student of the Epistle to the Hebrews must feel that it deals in a peculiar degree with the thoughts and trials of our own time. The difficulties which come to us through physical facts and theories, through criticism, through wider views of human history, correspond with those which came to Jewish Christians at the close of the Apostolic age, and they will find their solution also in fuller views of the Person and Work of Christ (Westcott, op. cit. Pref. p. v).

Literature.-I. Commentaries: F. Bleek (1828-40); F. Delitzsch (Eng. translation , 1868-70); A. B. Davidson (1882); F. Rendall (1883): C. J. Vaughan (1890); H. von Soden (1892); B. F. Westcott (31903); E. C. Wickham (1910).

II. Articles: Hebrews, Epistle to, by A. B. Bruce in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. (1899); Hebrews (Epistle), by W. Robertson Smith and H. von Soden in Encyclopaedia Biblica ii. (1901).

III. NT Introductions: G. Salmon (71894); A. Jlicher (Eng. translation , 1904); T. Zahn (Eng. translation , 1909); A. S. Peake (1909); J. Moffatt (1911).

IV. Special Studies: E. K. A. Riehm, Der Lehrbegriff des Hebrerbriefes, 1867: E. Mngoz, La Thologie de lptre aux Hbreux, 1894; A. C. McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, 1897; G. Milligan, The Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 1899; A. B. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews: the First Apology for Christianity, 1899; G. B. Stevens, The Theology of the NT, 1899; W. P. DuBose, High Priesthood and Sacrifice, 1908; A. Nairne, The Epistle of Priesthood, 1913.

F. S. Marsh.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

Hebrews, Epistle to the

Written at Rome, c.63, after Saint Paul’s release from his first Roman imprisonment. It was addressed to a Church whose members were almost entirely converts from Judaism, who were subject to persecutions, and for whom the splendor of the Temple and the pomp of its services were a constant danger; all of which shows that the Christians of Jerusalem were the recipients of this epistle. Its purpose is to encourage the Christians to perseverance in the faith, and to warn them against apostasy to Judaism; to accomplish this purpose, it sets forth the excellence of Jesus Christ and the superiority of the New Law. The epistle is divided:

the dogmatic part (1:1 – 10:17), in which is shown the Dignity of Christ who, as the Son of God, is far superior to the Angels and Moses through whom the Old Law was given (1:1 – 4:13), the eternal Priesthood of Christ, which is infinitely superior to the priesthood of the Old Law (4:14 – 7:28), and the Sacrifice of the New Law which possesses an excellence and efficacy far superior to the sacrifices of the Old Law (8:1 – 10:18)

the Moral Part (10:19 – 13:17), in which the Christians are exhorted to perseverance in the faith and to Christian life according to the faith. The unbroken testimony of the Eastern Fathers, the perfect accord in the Western Church since the 4th century, the decrees of popes and councils, the constant practise of the universal Church, the similarity and harmony existing between this and other epistles of Saint Paul prove that he is its author; the differences in style and language are perhaps due to one of Saint Paul’s disciples who put it in the form in which it now stands (Biblical Commission, 24 June, 1914)

New Catholic Dictionary

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Hebrews, Epistle to the

This will be considered under eight headings: (I) Argument; (II) Doctrinal Contents; (III) Language and Style; (IV) Distinctive Characteristics; (V) Readers to Whom it was Addressed; (VI) Author; (VII) Circumstances of the Composition; (VIII) Importance.

I. ARGUMENT

In the Oldest Greek manuscripts the Epistle to the Hebrews (pros Hebraious) follows the other letters to the Churches and precedes the pastoral letters. In the later Greek codices, and in the Syriac and Latin codices as well, it holds the last place among the Epistles of St. Paul; this usage is also followed by the textus receptus, the modern Greek and Latin editions of the text, the Douay and Revised Versions, and the other modern translations.

Omitting the introduction with which the letters of St. Paul usually begin, the Epistle opens with the solemn announcement of the superiority of the New Testament Revelation by the Son over Old Testament Revelation by the prophets (Hebrews 1:1-4). It then proves and explains from the Scriptures the superiority of this New Covenant over the Old by the comparison of the Son with the angels as mediators of the Old Covenant (i, 5-ii, 18), with Moses and Josue as the founders of the Old Covenant (iii, 1-iv, 16), and, finally, by opposing the high-priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchisedech to the Levitical priesthood after the order of Aaron (v, 1-x, 18). Even in this mainly doctrinal part the dogmatic statements are repeatedly interrupted by practical exhortations. These are mostly admonitions to hold fast to the Christian Faith, and warnings against relapse into the Mosaic worship. In the second, chiefly hortatory, part of the Epistle, the exhortations to steadfastness in the Faith (x, 19-xii, 13), and to a Christian life according to the Faith (xii, 14-xiii, 17), are repeated in an elaborated form, and the Epistle closes with some personal remarks and the Apostolic salutation (xiii, 18-25).

II. DOCTRINAL CONTENTS

The central thought of the entire Epistle is the doctrine of the Person of Christ and His Divine mediatorial office. In regard to the Person of the Saviour the author expresses himself as clearly concerning the true Divine nature of Christ as concerning Christ’s human nature, and his Christology has been justly called Johannine. Christ, raised above Moses, above the angels, and above all created beings, is the brightness of the glory of the Father, the express image of His Divine nature, the eternal and unchangeable, true Son of God, Who upholdeth all things by the word of His power (i, 1-4). He desired, however, to take on a human nature and to become in all things like unto us human beings, sin alone excepted, in order to pay man’s debt of sin by His passion and death (ii, 9-18; iv, 15, etc.). By suffering death He gained for Himself the eternal glory which He now also enjoys in His most holy humanity on His throne at the right hand of the Father (i, 3; ii, 9; viii, 1; xii, 2, etc.). There He now exercises forever His priestly office of mediator as our Advocate with the Father (vii, 24 sq.).

This doctrine of the priestly office of Christ forms the chief subject-matter of the Christological argument and the highest proof of the pre-eminence of the New Covenant over the Old. The person of the High-priest after the order of Melchisedech, His sacrifice, and its effects are opposed, in an exhaustive comparison, to the Old Testament institutions. The Epistle lays special emphasis on the spiritual power and effectiveness of Christ’s sacrifice, which have brought to Israel, as to all mankind, atonement and salvation that are complete and sufficient for all time, and which have given to us a share in the eternal inheritance of the Messianic promises (i, 3; ix, 9-15, etc.). In the admonitory conclusions from these doctrines at the end we find a clear reference to the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Christian altar, of which those are not permitted to partake who still wish to serve the Tabernacle and to follow the Mosaic Law (xiii, 9 sq.).

In the Christological expositions of the letter other doctrines are treated more or less fully. Special emphasis is laid on the setting aside of the Old Covenant, its incompleteness and weakness, its typical and preparatory relation to the time of the Messianic salvation that is realized in the New Covenant (vii, 18 sq.; viii, 15; x, 1, etc.). In the same manner the letter refers at times to the four last things, the resurrection, the judgment, eternal punishment, and heavenly bliss (vi, 2, 7 sq.; ix, 27, etc.). If we compare the doctrinal content of this letter with that of the other epistles of St. Paul, a difference in the manner of treatment, it is true, is noticeable in some respects. At the same time, there appears a marked agreement in the views, even in regard to characteristic points of Pauline doctrine (cf. J. Belser, “Einleitung” 2nd ed., 571-73). The explanation of the differences lies in the special character of the letter and in the circumstances of its composition.

III. LANGUAGE AND STYLE

Even in the first centuries commentators noticed the striking purity of language and elegance of Greek style that characterized the Epistle to the Hebrews (Clement of Alexandria in Eusebius, “Hist. Eccl.”, VI, xiv, n.2-4; Origen, ibid., VI, xxv, n. 11-14). This observation is confirmed by later authorities. In fact the author of the Epistle shows great familiarity with the rules of the Greek literary language of his age. Of all the New Testament authors he has the best style. His writing may even be included among those examples of artistic Greek prose whose rhythm recalls the parallelism of Hebrew poetry (cf. Fr. Blass, “[Barnabas] Brief an die Hebraer”. Text with indications of the rhythm, Halle, 1903). As regards language, the letter is a treasure-house of expressions characteristic of the individuality of the writer. As many as 168 terms have been counted which appear in no other part of the New Testament, among them ten words found neither in Biblical or classical Greek, and forty words also which are not found in the Septuagint. One noticeable peculiarity is the preference of the author for compound words (cf. E. Jacquier, “Histoire des livres du N.T.”, I, Paris, 1903, 457-71; Idem in Vig., “Dict. de la Bible”. III, 530-38). A comparison of the letter as regards language and style with the other writings of St. Paul confirms in general the opinion of Origen that every competent judge must recognize a great difference between them (in Eusebius, “Hist. Eccl.”, VI, xxv, n. 11).

IV. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS

Among other peculiarities we should mention: The absence of the customary form of the Pauline letters. The usual opening with the Apostolic greeting and blessing is entirely lacking; nor is there any clear evidence of the epistolary character of the writing until the brief conclusion is reached (xiii, 18-25). On this account some have preferred to regard the letter rather as a homily, but this is plainly incorrect. According to the statement of the author it is an admonition and exhortation (logos tes karakleseos, xiii, 22), which, above all, presupposes a well-defined situation of an actually existing individual Church. The method of citing from the Old Testament. The author in his instruction, demonstration, and exhortation draws largely from the copious treasures of the Old Testament. All the citations follow the text of the Septuagint even where this varies from the Masoretic text, unless the citation is freely rendered according to the sense and without verbal exactness (examples, i, 6; xii, 20; xiii, 5). In the other Pauline letters, it is true, quotations from the Old Testament generally follow the Greek translation even when the text varies, but the Apostle at times corrects the Septuagint by the Hebrew, and at other times, when the two do not agree, keeps closer to the Hebrew. In regard to the formula with which the citations are introduced, it is worthy of note that the expression “It is written”, so commonly used in the New Testament, occurs only once in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x, 7). In this Epistle the words of Scripture are generally given as the utterance of God, at times also of Christ or the Holy Spirit.

V. READERS TO WHOM IT WAS ADDRESSED

According to the superscription, the letter is addressed to “Hebrews”. The contents of the letter define more exactly this general designation. Not all Israelites are meant, but only those who have accepted the faith in Christ.

Furthermore, the letter could hardly have been addressed to all Jewish Christians in general. It presupposes a particular community, with which both the writer of the letter and his companion Timothy have had close relations (xiii, 18-24), which has preserved its faith in severe persecutions, and has distinguished itself by works of charity (x, 32-35), which is situated in a definite locality, whither the author hopes soon to come (xiii, 19, 23).

The place itself may also be inferred from the content with sufficient probability. For although many modern commentators incline either to Italy (on account of xiii, 24), or to Alexandria (on account of the reference to a letter of Paul to the Alexandrians in the Muratorian Canon and for other reasons), or leave the question undecided, yet the entire letter is best suited to the members of the Jewish Christian Church of Jerusalem. What is decisive above all for this question is the fact that the author presupposes in the readers not only an exact knowledge of the Levitical worship and all its peculiar customs, but, furthermore, regards the present observance of this worship as the special danger to the Christian faith of those addressed. His words (cf. particularly x, 1 sq.) may, if necessary, perhaps permit of another interpretation, but they indicate Jerusalem with the highest probability as the Church for which the letter is intended. There alone the Levitical worship was known to all by the daily offering of sacrifices and the great celebrations of the Day of Atonement and of other feast-days. There alone this worship was continuously maintained according to the ordinances of the Law until the destruction of the city in the year 70.

VI. AUTHOR

Even in the earliest centuries the question as to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was much discussed and was variously answered. The most important points to be considered in answering the inquiry are the following:

(1) External Evidence

(a) In the East the writing was unanimously regarded as a letter of St. Paul. Eusebius gives the earliest testimonies of the Church of Alexandria in reporting the words of a “blessed presbyter” (Pantaenus?), as well as those of Clement and Origen (Hist. Eccl., VI, xiv, n. 2-4; xxv, n. 11-14). Clement explains the contrast in language and style by saying that the Epistle was written originally in Hebrew and was then translated by Luke into Greek. Origen, on the other hand, distinguishes between the thoughts of the letter and the grammatical form; the former, according to the testimony of “the ancients” (oi archaioi andres), is from St. Paul; the latter is the work of an unknown writer, Clement of Rome according to some, Luke, or another pupil of the Apostle, according to others. In like manner the letter was regarded as Pauline by the various Churches of the East: Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Cappadocia, Mesopotamia, etc. (cf. the different testimonies in B. F. Westcott, “The Epistle to the Hebrews”, London, 1906, pp. lxii-lxxii). It was not until after the appearance of Arius that the Pauline origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews was disputed by some Orientals and Greeks.

(b) In Western Europe the First Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians shows acquaintance with the text of the writing (chs. ix, xii, xvii, xxxvi, xlv), apparently also the “Pastor” of Hermas (Vis. II, iii, n.2; Sim. I, i sq.). Hippolytus and Irenaeus also knew the letter but they do not seem to have regarded it as a work of the Apostle (Eusebius, “Hist. Eccl.”, xxvi; Photius, Cod. 121, 232; St. Jerome, “De viris ill.”, lix). Eusebius also mentions the Roman presbyter Caius as an advocate of the opinion that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not the writing of the Apostle, and he adds that some other Romans, up to his own day, were also of the same opinion (Hist. Eccl., VI, xx, n.3). In fact the letter is not found in the Muratorian Canon; St. Cyprian also mentions only seven letters of St. Paul to the Churches (De exhort. mart., xi), and Tertullian calls Barnabas the author (De pudic., xx). Up to the fourth century the Pauline origin of the letter was regarded as doubtful by other Churches of Western Europe. As the reason for this Philastrius gives the misuse made of the letter by the Novatians (Haer., 89), and the doubts of the presbyter Caius seem likewise to have arisen from the attitude assumed towards the letter by the Montanists (Photius, Cod. 48; F. Kaulen, “Einleitung in die Hl. Schrift Alten und Neuen Testaments”, 5th ed., Freiburg, 1905, III, 211).

After the fourth century these doubts as to the Apostolic origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews gradually became less marked in Western Europe. While the Council of Carthage of the year 397, in the wording of its decree, still made a distinction between Pauli Apostoli epistoloe tredecim (thirteen epistles of Paul the Apostle) and eiusdem ad Hebroeos una (one of his to the Hebrews) (H. Denzinger, “Enchiridion”, 10th ed., Freiburg, 1908, n. 92, old n. 49), the Roman Synod of 382 under Pope Damasus enumerates without distinction epistoloe Pauli numero quatuordecim (epistles of Paul fourteen in number), including in this number the Epistle to the Hebrews (Denzinger, 10th ed., n. 84). In this form also the conviction of the Church later found permanent expression. Cardinal Cajetan (1529) and Erasmus were the first to revive the old doubts, while at the same time Luther and the other Reformers denied the Pauline origin of the letter.

(2) Internal Evidences

(a) The content of the letter bears plainly the stamp of genuine Pauline ideas. In this regard it suffices to refer to the statements above concerning the doctrinal contents of the Epistle (see II).

(b) The language and style vary in many particulars from the grammatical form of the other letters of Paul, as in sufficiently shown above (see III).

(c) the distinctive characteristics of the Epistle (IV) favour more the opinion that the form in which it is cast is not the work of the author of the other Apostolic letters.

(3) Most Probable Solution

From what has been said it follows that the most probable solution of the question as to the author is that up to the present time the opinion of Origen has not been superseded by a better one. It is, consequently, necessary to accept that in the Epistle to the Hebrews the actual author is to be distinguished from the writer. No valid reason has been produced against Paul as the originator of the ideas and the entire contents of the letter; the belief of the early Church held throughout with entire correctness to this Apostolic origin of the Epistle.

The writer, the one to whom the letter owes its form, had apparently been a pupil of the Apostle. It is not possible now, however, to settle his personality on account of the lack of any definite tradition and of any decisive proof in the letter itself. Ancient and modern writers mention various pupils of the Apostle, especially Luke, Clement of Rome, Apollo, lately also Priscilla and Aquila.

VII. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE COMPOSITION

An examination both of the letter itself and of the earliest testimonies of tradition, in reference to the circumstances of its composition, leads to the following conclusions:

(1) The place of composition was Italy (xiii, 24), and more precisely Rome (inscription at end of the Codex Alexandrinus), where Paul was during his first imprisonment (61-63).

(2) The date of its production should certainly be placed before the destruction of Jerusalem (70), and previous to the outbreak of the Jewish War (67), but after the death of James, Bishop of Jerusalem (62). According to ch. xiii, 19, 23, the Apostle was no longer a prisoner. The most probable date for its composition is, therefore, the second half of the year 63 or the beginning of 64, as Paul after his release from imprisonment probably soon undertook the missionary journey “as far as the boundaries of Western Europe” (St. Clement of Rome, “I Epistle to the Corinthians”, v, n. 7), that is to Spain.

(3) The reason for its composition is probably to be found in the conditions existing in the Jewish Christian Church at Jerusalem. The faith of the Church might fall into great danger through continued persecution by the Jews, who had put James, the head of the community to a violent death. Precisely at this period the services in the temple were celebrated with great pomp, as under Albinus (62-64) the magnificent building was completed, while the Christian community had to struggle with extreme poverty. The national movement which began shortly before the outbreak of the last Jewish war would increase the danger. These circumstances might lead the Apostle to write the letter.

(4) The Apostle himself declares the aim of his writing to be the consolation and encouragement of the faithful (xiii, 22). The argument and context of the letter show that Paul wished especially to exhort to steadfastness in the Christian Faith and to warn against the danger of apostasy to the Mosaic worship.

VIII. IMPORTANCE

The chief importance of the Epistle is in its content of theological teaching. It is, in complete agreement with the other letters of St. Paul, a glorious testimony to the faith of the Apostolic time; above all it testifies to the true Divinity of Jesus Christ, to His heavenly priesthood, and the atoning power of His death.

———————————–

LEOPOLD FONCK Transcribed by Judy Levandoski Dedicated to Br. Terance Thielen, T.O.R.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Hebrews, Epistle to the

hebrooz,

I.Title

II.Literary

1.The Author’s Culture and Style

2.Letter, Epistle or Treatise?

3.A Unity or a Composite Work?

III.The Author

1.Tradition

(1)Alexandrian: Paul

(2)African: Barnabas

(3)Rome and the West: Anonymous

2.The Witness of the Epistle Itself

(1)Paul not the Author

(2)Other Theories

(a)Luke and Clement

(b)Barnabas; Priscilla and Aquila; Philip; Aristion; Apollos

IV.Destination

1.General Character of the Readers

2.Jews or Gentiles?

3.The Locality of the Readers

V.Date

1.Terminal Dates

2.Conversion and History of the Readers

3.Doctrinal Development

4.The Fall of Jerusalem

5.Timothy

6.Two Persecutions

VI.Contents

1.Summary of Contents

2.The Main Theme

3.Alexandrian Influences

4.The Christian Factor

Literature

I. Title

In the King James Version and the English Revised Version the title of this book describes it as the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews. Modern scholarship has disputed the applicability of every word of this title. Neither does it appear in the oldest manuscripts, where we find simply to Hebrews (pros Hebraous). This, too, seems to have been prefixed to the original writing by a collector or copyist. It is too vague and general for the author to have used it. And there is nothing in the body of the book which affirms any part of either title. Even the shorter title was an inference from the general character of the writing. Nowhere is criticism less hampered by problems of authenticity and inspiration. No question arises, at least directly, of pseudonymity either of author or of readers, for both are anonymous. For the purpose of tracing the history and interpreting the meaning of the book, the absence of a title, or of any definite historical data, is a disadvantage. We are left to infer its historical context from a few fragments of uncertain tradition, and from such general references to historical conditions as the document itself contains. Where no date, name or well-known event is fixed, it becomes impossible to decide, among many possibilities, what known historical conditions, if any, are pre-supposed. Yet this very fact, of the book’s detachment from personal and historical incidents, renders it more self-contained, and its exegesis less dependent upon understanding the exact historical situation. But its general relation to the thought of its time must be taken into account if we are to understand it at all.

II. Literary Form

1. The Author’s Culture and Style

The writer was evidently a man of culture, who had a masterly command of the Greek language. The theory of Clement of Alexandria, that the work was a translation from Hebrew, was merely an inference from the supposition that it was first addressed to Hebrew-speaking Christians. It bears none of the marks of a translation. It is written in pure idiomatic Greek. The writer had an intimate knowledge of the Septuagint, and was familiar with Jewish life. He was well-read in Hellenic literally (e.g. Wisdom), and had probably made a careful study of Philo (see VI below). His argument proceeds continuously and methodically, in general, though not strict, accord with the rules of Greek rhetoric, and without the interruptions and digressions which render Paul’s arguments so hard to follow. Where the literary skill of the author comes out is in the deft adjustment of the argumentative to the hortatory sections (Moffatt, Introduction, 424 f). He has been classed with Lk as the most cultured of the early Christian writers.

2. Letter, Epistle or Treatise?

It has been questioned whether Hebrews is rightly called a letter at all. Unlike all Paul’s letters, it opens without any personal note of address or salutation; and at the outset it sets forth, in rounded periods and in philosophical language, the central theme which is developed throughout. In this respect it resembles the Johannine writings alone in the New Testament. But as the argument proceeds, the personal note of application, exhortation and expostulation emerges more clearly (Heb 2:1; Heb 3:1-12; Heb 4:1, Heb 4:14; Heb 5:11; Heb 6:9; Heb 10:9; Heb 13:7); and it ends with greetings and salutations (Heb 13:18). The writer calls it a word of exhortation. The verb epesteila (the Revised Version (British and American) I have written) is the usual expression for writing a letter (Heb 13:22). Hebrews begins like an essay, proceeds like a sermon, and ends as a letter.

Deissmann, who distinguishes between a true letter, the genuine personal message of one man to another, and an epistle, or a treatise written in imitation of the form of a letter, but with an eye on the reading public, puts Hebrews in the latter class; nor would he consider it anything but a literary oration – hence, not as an epistle at all – if the epesteila, and the greetings at the close, did not permit of the supposition that it had at one time opened with something of the nature of an address as well (Bible Studies, 49-50). There is no textual or historical evidence of any opening address having ever stood as part of the text; nor does the opening section bear any mark or suggestion of fragmentariness, as if it had once followed such an address.

Yet the supposition that a greeting once stood at the beginning of our document is not so impossible as Zahn thinks (Introduction to the New Testament, II, 313 f), as a comparison with James or 1 Peter will show.

So unusual is the phenomenon of a letter without a greeting, that among the ancients, Pantaenus had offered the explanation that Paul, out of modesty, had refrained from putting his name to a letter addressed to the Hebrews, because the Lord Himself had been apostle to them.

In recent times, Jlicher and Harnack have conjectured that the author intentionally suppressed the greeting, either from motives of prudence at a time of persecution, or because it was unnecessary, since the bearer of the letter would communicate the name of the sender to the recipients.

Overbeck advanced the more revolutionary hypothesis that the letter once opened with a greeting, but from someone other than Paul; that in order to satisfy the general conditions of canonization, the non-apostolic greeting was struck out by the Alexandrians, and the personal references in Heb 13:22-25 added, in order to represent it as Pauline.

3. A Unity or a Composite Work?

W. Wrede, starting from this theory, rejects the first part of it and adopts the second. He does not base his hypothesis on the conditions of canonization, but on an examination of the writing itself. He adopts Deissmann’s rejected alternative, and argues that the main part of the book was originally not an epistle at all, but a general doctrinal treatise. Then Heb 13, and especially Heb 13:18, were added by a later hand, in order to represent the whole as a Pauline letter, and the book in its final form was made, after all, pseudonymous. The latter supposition is based upon an assumed reference to imprisonment in Heb 13:19 (compare Phm 1:22) and upon the reference to Timothy in Heb 13:23 (compare Phi 2:19); and the proof that these professed Pauline phrases are not really Pauline is found in a supposed contradiction between Heb 13:19 and Heb 13:23. But Heb 13:19 does not necessarily refer to imprisonment exclusively or even at all, and therefore it stands in no contradiction with Heb 13:23 (compare Rom 1:9-13). And Timothy must have associated with many Christian leaders besides Paul. But why should anybody who wanted to represent the letter as Pauline and who scrupled not to add to it for that purpose, refrain from the obvious device of prefixing a Pauline greeting? Moreover, it is only by the most forced special pleading that it can be maintained that Heb 1 through 12 are a mere doctrinal treatise, devoid of all evidences of a personal relation to a circumscribed circle of readers. The period and manner of the readers’ conversion are defined (Heb 2:3 f). Their present spiritual condition is described in terms of such anxiety and hope as betoken a very intimate personal relation (Heb 5:11 f; Heb 6:9-11). Their past conflicts, temptations, endurance and triumph are recalled for their encouragement under present trials, and both past and present are defined in particular terms that point to concrete situations well known to writer and readers (Heb 10:32-36). There is, it is true, not in Hebrews the same intense and all-pervading personal note as appears in the earlier Pauline letters; the writer often loses sight of his particular audience and develops his argument in detached and abstract form. But it cannot be assumed that nothing is a letter which does not conform to the Pauline model. And the presence of long, abstract arguments does not justify the excision or explaining away of undoubted personal passages. Neither the language nor the logic of the book either demands or permits the separation of doctrinal and personal passages from one another, so as to leave for residuum a mere doctrinal treatise. Doctrinal statements lead up to personal exhortations, and personal exhortations form the transition to new arguments; they are indissolubly involved in one another; and chapter 13 presents no such exceptional. features as to justify its separation from the whole work. There is really no reason, but the unwarrantable assumption that an ancient writer must have conformed with a certain convention of letter-writing, to forbid the acceptance of Hebrews for what it appears to be – a defense of Christianity written for the benefit of definite readers, growing more intimate and personal as the writer gathers his argument into a practical appeal to the hearts and consciences of his readers,

III. The Author

1. Tradition

Certain coincidences of language and thought between this epistle and that of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians justify the inference that Hebrews was known in Rome toward the end of the 1st century ad (compare Heb 11:7, Heb 11:31 and Heb 1:3 with Clement ad Cor 9, 12, 36). Clement makes no explicit reference to the book or its author: the quotations are unacknowledged. But they show that Hebrews already had some authority in Rome. The same inference is supported by similarities of expression found also in the Shepherd of Hermas. The possible marks of its influence in Polycarp and Justin Martyr are too uncertain and indefinite to justify any inference. Its name does not appear in the list of New Testament writings compiled and acknowledged by Marcion, nor in that of the Muratorian Fragment. The latter definitely assigns letters by Paul to only seven churches, and so inferentially excludes Hebrews.

When the book emerges into the clear light of history toward the end of the 2nd century, the tradition as to its authorship is seen to divide into three different streams.

(1) Alexandrian: Paul

In Alexandria, it was regarded as in some sense the work of Paul. Clement tells how his teacher, apparently Pantaenus, explained why Paul does not in this letter, as in others, address his readers under his name. Out of reverence for the Lord (II, 2, above) and to avoid suspicion and prejudice, he as apostle of the Gentiles refrains from addressing himself to the Hebrews as their apostle. Clement accepts this explanation, and adds to it that the original Hebrew of Paul’s epistle had been translated into Greek by Luke. That Paul wrote in Hebrew was assumed from the tradition or inference that the letter was addressed to Aramaic-speaking Hebrews. Clement also had noticed the dissimilarity of its Greek from that of Paul’s epistles, and thought he found a resemblance to that of Acts.

Origen starts with the same tradition, but he knew, moreover, that other churches did not accept the Alexandrian view, and that they even criticized Alexandria for admitting Hebrews into the Canon. And he feels, more than Clement, that not only the language, but the forms of thought are different from those of Paul’s epistles. This he tries to explain by the hypothesis that while the ideas were Paul’s, they had been formulated and written down by some other disciple. He found traditions that named Luke and Clement of Rome, but who the actual writer was, Origen declares that God alone knows.

The Pauline tradition persisted in Alexandria, and by the 4th century it was accepted without any of the qualifications made by Clement and Origen. It had also in the same period spread over the other eastern churches, both Greek and Syrian. But the Pauline tradition, where it is nearest the fountain-head of history, in Clement and Origen, only ascribes Hebrews to Paul in a secondary sense.

(2) African: Barnabas

In the West, the Pauline tradition failed to assert itself till the 4th century, and was not generally accepted till the 5th century. In Africa, another tradition prevailed, namely, that Barnabas was the author. This was the only other definite tradition of authorship that prevailed in antiquity. Tertullian, introducing a quotation of Heb 6:1, Heb 6:4-6, writes: There is also an Epistle to the Hebrews under the name of Barnabas … and the Epistle of Barnabas is more generally received among the churches than that apocryphal ‘Shepherd’ of adulterers (De Pudicitia, 20). Tertullian is not expressing his mere personal opinion, but quoting a tradition which had so far established itself as to appear in the title of the epistle in the MS, and he betrays no consciousness of the existence of any other tradition. Zahn infers that this view prevailed in Montanist churches and may have originated in Asia. Moffatt thinks that it had also behind it some Roman tradition (Introduction, 437). If it was originally, or at any time, the tradition of the African churches, it gave way there to the Alexandrian view in the course of the 4th century. A Council of Hippo in 393 reckons thirteen epistles of the apostle Paul, and one by the same to the Hebrews. A council of Carthage in 419 reckons fourteen epistles of the apostle Paul. By such gradual stages did the Pauline tradition establish itself.

(3) Rome and the West: Anonymous

All the evidence tends to show that in Rome and the remaining churches of the West, the epistle was originally anonymous. No tradition of authorship appears before the 4th century. And Stephen Gobarus, writing in 600, says that both Irenaeus and Hippolytus denied the Pauline authorship. Photius repeats this statement as regards Hippolytus. Neither he nor Gobarus mentions any alternative view (Zahn, Intro, II, 310). The epistle was known in Rome (to Clement) toward the end of the 1st century, and if Paul’s name, or any other, had been associated with it from the beginning, it is impossible that it could have been forgotten by the time of Hippolytus. The western churches had no reason for refusing to admit Hebrews into the Pauline and canonical list of books, except only that they did not believe it to be the work of Paul, or of any other apostle.

It seems therefore certain that the epistle first became generally known as an anonymous writing. Even the Alexandrian tradition implies as much, for it appears first as an explanation by Pantaenus why Paul concealed his name. The idea that Paul was the author was therefore an Alexandrian inference. The religious value of the epistle was naturally first recognized in Alexandria, and the name of Paul, the chief letter-writer of the church, at once occurred to those in search for its author. Two facts account for the ultimate acceptance of that view by the whole church. The spiritual value and authority of the book were seen to be too great to relegate it into the same class as the Shepherd or the Epistle of Barnabas. And the conception of the Canon developed into the hard-and-fast rule of apostolicity. No writing could be admitted into the Canon unless it had an apostle for its author; and when Hebrews could no longer be excluded, it followed that its apostolic authorship must be affirmed. The tradition already existing in Alexandria supplied the demand, and who but Paul, among the apostles, could have written it?

The Pauline theory prevailed together with the scheme of thought that made it necessary, from the 5th to the 16th century. The Humanists and the Reformers rejected it. But it was again revived in the 17th and 18th centuries, along with the recrudescence of scholastic ideas. It is clear, however, that tradition and history shed no light upon the question of the authorship of Hebrews. They neither prove nor disprove the Pauline, or any other theory.

2. The Witness of the Epistle Itself

We are therefore thrown back, in our search for the author, on such evidence as the epistle itself affords, and that is wholly inferential. It seems probable that the author was a Hellenist, a Greek-speaking Jew. He was familiar with the Scriptures of the Old Testament and with the religious ideas and worship of the Jews. He claims the inheritance of their sacred history, traditions and institutions (Heb 1:1), and dwells on them with an intimate knowledge and enthusiasm that would be improbable, though not impossible, in a proselyte, and still more in a Christian convert from heathenism. But he knew the Old Testament only in the Septuagint translation, which he follows even where it deviates from the Hebrew. He writes Greek with a purity of style and vocabulary to which the writings of Luke alone in the New Testament can be compared. His mind is imbued with that combination of Hebrew and Greek thought which is best known in the writings of Philo. His general typological mode of thinking, his use of the allegorical method, as well as the adoption of many terms that are most familiar in Alexandrian thought, all reveal the Hellenistic mind. Yet his fundamental conceptions are in full accord with the teaching of Paul and of the Johannine writings.

The central position assigned to Christ, the high estimate of His person, the saving significance of His death, the general trend of the ethical teaching, the writer’s opposition to asceticism and his esteem for the rulers and teachers of the church, all bear out the inference that he belonged to a Christian circle dominated by Pauline ideas. The author and his readers alike were not personal disciples of Jesus, but had received the gospel from those who had heard the Lord (Heb 2:3) and who were no longer living (Heb 13:7). He had lived among his readers, and had probably been their teacher and leader; he is now separated from them but he hopes soon to return to them again (Heb 13:18 f).

Is it possible to give a name to this person?

(1) Paul Not the Author

Although the Pauline tradition itself proves nothing, the internal evidence is conclusive against it. We know enough about Paul to be certain that he could not have written Hebrews, and that is all that can be said with confidence on the question of authorship. The style and language, the categories of thought and the method of argument, all differ widely from those of any writings ascribed to Paul. The latter quotes the Old Testament from the Hebrew and Septuagint, but He only from Septuagint. Paul’s formula of quotation is, It is written or The scripture saith; that of Hebrews, God, or The Holy Spirit, or One somewhere saith. For Paul the Old Testament is law, and stands in antithesis to the New Testament, but in Hebrews the Old Testament is covenant, and is the shadow of the New Covenant. Paul’s characteristic terms, Christ Jesus, and Our Lord Jesus Christ, are never found in Hebrews; and Jesus Christ only 3 times (Heb 10:10; Heb 13:8), and the Lord (for Christ) only twice (Heb 2:3; Heb 7:14) – phrases used by Paul over 600 times (Zahn). Paul’s Christology turns around the death, resurrection and living presence of Christ in the church, that of Hebrews around His high-priestly function in heaven. Their conceptions of God differ accordingly. In Hebrews it is Judaistic-Platonistic, or (in later terminology) Deistic. The revelation of the Divine Fatherhood and the consequent immanence of God in history and in the world had not possessed the author s mind as it had Paul’s. Since the present world is conceived in Hebrews as a world of shadows, God could only intervene in it by mediators.

The experience and conception of salvation are also different in these two writers. There is no evidence in Hebrews of inward conflict and conversion and of constant personal relation with Christ, which constituted the entire spiritual life of Paul. The apostle’s central doctrine, that of justification by faith, does not appear in Hebrews. Faith is less the personal, mystical relation with Christ, that it is for Paul, than a general hope which lays hold of the future to overcome the present; and salvation is accomplished by cleansing, sanctification and perfection, not by justification. While Paul’s mind was not uninfluenced by Hellenistic thought, as we find it in Alexandria (as, e.g. in Col and Eph), it nowhere appears in his epistles so clearly and prominently as it does in Hebrews. Moreover, the author of Hebrews was probably a member of the community to which he writes (Heb 13:18 f), but Paul never stood in quite the relation supposed here to any church. Finally, Paul could not have written Heb 2:3, for he emphatically declares that he did not receive his gospel from the older disciples (Gal 1:12; Gal 2:6).

The general Christian ideas on which He was in agreement with Paul were part of the heritage which the apostle had left to all the churches. The few more particular affinities of Hebrews with certain Pauline writings (e.g. Heb 2:2 parallel Gal 3:19; Heb 12:22; Heb 3:14 parallel Gal 4:25; Heb 2:10 parallel Rom 11:36; also with Ephesians; see von Soden, Hand-Commentar, 3) are easily explicable either as due to the author’s reading of Paul’s Epistles or as reminiscences of Pauline phrases that were current in the churches. But they are too few and slender to rest upon them any presumption against the arguments which disprove the Pauline tradition.

(2) Other Theories

The passage that is most conclusive against the Pauline authorship (Heb 2:3) is equally conclusive against any other apostle being the author. But almost every prominent name among the Christians of the second generation has been suggested. The epistle itself excludes Timothy (Heb 13:23), and Titus awaits his turn. Otherwise Luke, Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Silas, Apollos, Priscilla and Aquila, Philip the Deacon, and Aristion have all had their champions.

(a) Luke and Clement

The first two, Luke and Clement, were brought in through their connection with Paul. Where it was recognized that a direct Pauline authorship could not be maintained, the Pauline tradition might still be retained, if the epistle could be assigned to one of the apostle’s disciples. These two were fixed upon as being well-known writers. But this very fact reveals the improbability of theory. Similar arguments from language and thought to those derived from the comparison of Hebrews with the Pauline writings avail also in the comparison of Hebrews with the writings of Lk and Clement. Both these disciples of the apostle adhere much closer to his system of thought than Hebrews does, and they reveal none of the influences of Alexandrian thought, which is predominant in Hebrews.

(b) Barnabas; Priscilla and Aquila; Philip; Aristion; Apollos

Of all the other persons suggested, so little is known that it is impossible to establish, with any convincing force, an argument for or against their authorship.

(i) Barnabas was a Levite of Cyprus (Act 4:36), and once a companion of Paul (Act 13:2). Another ancient writing is called the Epistle of Barnabas, but it has no affinity with Hebrews. The coincidence of the occurrence of the word consolation in Barnabas’ name (Act 4:36) and in the writer’s description of Hebrews (Heb 13:22) is quite irrelevant. Tertullian’s tradition is the only positive argument in favor of the Barnabas theory. It has been argued against it that Barnabas, being a Levite, could not have shown the opposition to the Levitical system, and the unfamiliarity with it (Heb 7:27; Heb 9:4), which is supposed to mark our epistle. But the author’s Levitical system was derived, not from the Hebrew Old Testament, nor from the Jerusalem temple, but from Jewish tradition; and the supposed inaccuracies as to the daily sin offering (Heb 7:27), and the position of the golden altar of incense (Heb 9:4) have been traced to Jewish tradition (see Moffatt, Introduction, 438). And the writer’s hostility to the Levitical system is not nearly as intense as that of Paul to Pharisaism. There is nothing that renders it intrinsically impossible that Barnabas was the author, nor is anything known of him that makes it probable; and if he was, it is a mystery why the tradition was confined to Africa.

(ii) Harnack has argued the probability of a joint authorship by Priscilla and Aquila. The interchange of I and we he explains as due to a dual authorship by persons intimately related, but such an interchange of the personal I and the epistolary we can be paralleled in the Epistles of Paul (e.g. Romans) where no question of joint authorship arises. The probable relation of the author to a church in Rome may suit Priscilla arid Aquila (compare Rom 16:5 with Heb 13:22-24), but even if this interpretation of the aforementioned passages were correct, it is possible and probable that Luke, Barnabas, Apollos, and certainly Clement, stood in a similar relation to a Roman church. Harnack, on this theory, explains the disappearance of the author’s name as due to prejudice against women teachers. This is the only novel point in favor of this theory as compared with several others; and it does not explain why Aquila’s name should not have been retained with the address. The evidences adduced of a feminine mind behind the epistle are highly disputable. On the other hand, a female disciple of Paul’s circle would scarcely assume such authority in the church as the author of Hebrews does (Heb 13:17 f; compare 1Co 14:34 f). And nothing that is known of Priscilla and Aquila would suggest the culture and the familiarity with Alexandrian thought possessed by this writer. Act 18:26 does not prove that they were expert and cultured teachers, but only that they knew and could repeat the salient points of Paul’s early preaching. So unusual a phenomenon as this theory supposes demands more evidence to make it even probable. (But see Rendel Harris, Sidelights on New Testament Research, 148-76.)

(iii) Philip the Deacon and Aristion, a disciple of the Lord mentioned by Papias, are little more than names to us. No positive knowledge of either survives on which any theory can be built. It is probable that both were personal disciples of the Lord, and they could not therefore have written Heb 2:3.

(iv) Apollos has found favor with many scholars from Luther downward. No ancient tradition supports this theory, a fact which tells heavily against it, but not conclusively, for someone must have written the letter, and his name was actually lost to early tradition, unless it were Barnabas, and that tradition too was Unknown to the vast majority of the early churches. All that is known of Apollos suits the author of Hebrews. He may have learned the gospel from them that heard (Heb 2:3); he was a Jew, an Alexandrian by race, a learned (or eloquent) man, mighty in the Scriptures, he powerfully confuted the Jews (Act 18:24), and he belonged to the same Pauline circle as Timothy and Titus (1Co 16:10-12; Tit 3:13; compare Heb 13:23). The Alexandrian type of thought, the affinities with Philo, the arguments from Jewish tradition and ceremonial, the fluent style, may all have issued from an eloquent Jew of Alexandria. But it does not follow that Apollos was the only person of this type. The author may have been a Gentile , as the purity of his Greek language and style suggests; and the combination of Greek and Hebrew thought, which the epistle reflects, and even Philo’s terms, may have had a wide currency outside Alexandria, as for instance in the great cosmopolitan cities of Asia. All that can be said is that the author of Hebrews was someone generally like what is known of Apollos, but who he actually was, we must confess with Origen, God alone knows.

IV. Destination

The identity of the first readers of Hebrews is, if possible, more obscure than that of the author. It was written to Christians, and to a specific body or group of Christians (see I above). The title to Hebrews might mean properly Palestinian Jews who spoke the Hebrew language, but the fact that the epistle was written in Greek excludes that supposition. It therefore meant Christians of Jewish origin, and gives no indication of their place of residence. The title represents an early inference drawn from the contents of the document, and the tradition it embodies was unanimously accepted from the 2nd century down to the early part of the last century. Now, however, a considerable body of critics hold that the original readers were Gentiles. The question is entirely one of inference from the contents of the epistle itself.

1. General Character of the Readers

The readers, like the writer, received the gospel first from them that heard (Heb 2:3), from the personal disciples of the Lord, but they were not of their number. They had witnessed signs and wonders and manifold powers and gifts of the Holy Spirit (Heb 2:4). Their conversion had been thorough, and their faith and Christian life had been of a high order. They had a sound knowledge of the first principles of Christ (Heb 6:1). They had become partakers of Christ, and had need only to hold fast the beginning of (their) confidence firm unto the end (Heb 3:14). They had been fruitful in good works, ministering unto the saints (Heb 6:10), enduring suffering and persecution, and sympathizing with whose who were imprisoned (Heb 10:32-34). All this had been in former days which appeared now remote. Their rulers and ministers of those days are now dead (Heb 13:7). And they themselves have undergone a great change. While they should have been teachers, they have become dull of hearing, and have need again to be taught the rudiments of the first principles of the gospel (Heb 5:12), and they are in danger of a great apostasy from the faith. They need warning against an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God (Heb 3:12). They are become sluggish (Heb 6:12), profane like Esau (Heb 12:16), worldly-minded (Heb 13:5). Perhaps their religion was tending toward a false asceticism and outward works (Heb 13:4, Heb 13:9). And now that this moral dulness and spiritual indifference had fallen upon them, they are being subjected to a new test by persecution from outside (Heb 10:36; Heb 12:4), which renders the danger of their falling away from the faith all the more imminent. The author apparently bases his claim to warn them on the fact that he had been a teacher among them, and hoped soon to return to them (Heb 13:18 f). The same might be said perhaps of Timothy (Heb 13:23). Both author and readers had friends in Italy (Heb 13:24) who were with the author when he wrote, either in Italy saluting the readers outside, or outside, saluting the readers in Italy. In all this there is little or nothing to help to fix the destination of the letter, for it might be true at some time or other of any church.

2. Jews or Gentiles?

The old tradition that the readers were Jews claims some more definite support from the epistle itself. The writer assumes an intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and of Jewish ceremonial on their part. The fathers of the Hebrew race are also their fathers (Heb 1:1; Heb 3:9). The humanity that Christ assumed and redeemed is called the seed of Abraham (Heb 2:16). All this, however, might stand in reference to a Gentile church, for the early Christians, without distinction of race, regarded themselves as the true Israel and heirs of the Hebrew revelation, and of all that related to it (1Co 10:1; Gal 3:7; Gal 4:21; Rom 4:11-18). Still there is force in Zahn’s argument that Hebrews does not contain a single sentence in which it is so much as intimated that the readers became members of God’s people who descended from Abraham, and heirs of the promise given to them and their forefathers, and how they became such (Intro to New Testament, II, 323). Zahn further finds a direct proof in Heb 13:13 that both the readers and the author belong to the Jewish people, which he interprets as meaning that the readers were to renounce fellowship with the Jewish people who had rejected Jesus, to confess the crucified Jesus, and to take upon themselves all the ignominy that Jesus met at the hands of his countrymen (ibid., 324-25). But that is too large an inference to draw from a figurative expression which need not, and probably does not, mean more than an exhortation to rely on the sacrifice of Christ, rather than upon any external rules and ceremomes. Nor were the divers and strange teachings about marriage and meats (Heb 13:4, Heb 13:9) necessarily Jewish doctrines. They might be the doctrines of an incipient Gnosticism which spread widely throughout the Christian churches, both Jewish and gentile, toward the end of the 1st century. There is otherwise no evidence that the apostasy, of which the readers stood in danger, was into Judaism, but it was rather a general unbelief and falling away from the living God (Heb 3:12).

It is the whole argument of the epistle, rather than any special references, that produced the tradition, and supports the view, that the readers were Jews. The entire message of the epistle, the dominant claims of Christ and of the Christian faith, rests upon the supposition that the readers held Moses, Aaron, the Jewish priesthood, the old Covenant and the Levitical ritual, in the highest esteem. The author’s argument is: You will grant the Divine authority and greatness of Moses, Aaron and the Jewish institutions: Christ is greater than they; therefore you ought to be faithful to Him. He assumes an exclusively Jewish point of view in the minds of his readers as his major premise. He could scarcely do that, if they had been Gentiles. Paul, when writing to the mixed church at Rome, relates his philosophy of the Christian revelation to both Jewish and Gentile pre-Christian revelation. Gentile Christians adopted the Jewish tradition as their own in consequence of, and secondary to, their attachment to Christianity. Even Judaizing Gentile Christians, such as may be supposed to have belonged to the Galatian and Corinthian churches, adopted some parts of the Jewish law only as a supplement to Christianity, but not as its basis.

Von Soden and others have argued with much reason that these Christians were not in danger of falling back into Judaism from Christianity, but rather of falling away from all faith into unbelief and materialism, like the Israelites in the wilderness (Heb 3:7), or Esau (Heb 12:16). With all its references to Old Testament sacrifice and ceremonial, the letter contains not a single warning against reviving them, nor any indications that the readers were in danger of so doing (Hand-Commentar, 12-16). But it has been too readily assumed that these facts prove that the readers were not Jews. The pressure of Social influence and persecution rendered Jews and Jewish Christians, as well as Gentile Christians, liable to apostatize to heathenism or irreligion (The Wisdom of Solomon 2:10, 20; 2 Macc 4; 6; 7; Philo, De Migratione Abrahami, XVI; Mat 24:10, Mat 24:12; Act 20:30; 1Co 10:7, 1Co 10:14; 2Th 2:4; 1Jo 2:18; 1Jo 5:21; Pliny Epistle X, 96). Von Soden’s argument really cuts the other way. If the writer had been dealing with Gentile Christians who were in danger of relapsing into heathenism or of falling into religious indifference, his argument from the shadowy and temporary glories of Judaism to the perfect salvation in Christ would avail nothing, because, for such, his premises would depend upon his conclusion. But if they were Jewish Christians, even though leaning toward heathenism, his argument is well calculated to call up on its side all the dormant force of their early religious training. He is not arguing them out of a subtle Judaism quickened by the zeal of a propaganda (Moffatt, Introduction, 449-50), but from drifting away in Heb (Heb 2:1), from neglect (Heb 2:3), from an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God (Heb 3:12), from disobedience (Heb 4:11), from a dulness of hearing (Heb 5:11), but into diligence … that ye be not sluggish (Heb 6:11 f), into boldness and patience (Heb 10:35 f), and to lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees (Heb 12:12); and this he might well do by his appeal to their whole religious experience, both Jewish and Christian, and to the whole religious history of their race.

3. The Locality of the Readers

The question of the locality of these Hebrews remains a matter for mere conjecture. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, Colosse, Ephesus, Berea, Ravenna and other places have been suggested. Tradition, since Clement of Alexandria, fixed on Jerusalem, but on the untenable ground that the letter was written to Aramaic-speaking Jews. The undisputed fact that it was written in Greek tells against Jerusalem. So does the absence of all reference to the temple ritual, and the mention of almsgiving as the chief grace of the Hebrews (Heb 6:10). Jerusalem received rather than gave alms. Nor is it likely that all the personal disciples of the Lord would have died out in Jerusalem (Heb 2:3). And it could not be charged against the mother church that it had produced no teachers (Heb 5:12). These points also tell with almost equal force against any Palestinian locality.

Alexandria was suggested as an alternative to Jerusalem, on the supposition that those references to Jewish ritual which did not correspond with the Jerusalem ritual (Heb 7:27; Heb 9:4; Heb 10:11) might refer to the temple at Leontopolis. But the ritual system of the epistle is that of the tabernacle and of tradition, and not of any temple. The Alexandrian character of the letter has bearing on the identity of the author, but not so much on that of his readers. The erroneous idea that Paul was the author arose in Alexandria, but it would have been least likely to arise where the letter was originally sent.

Rome has lately found much favor. We first learn of the existence of the letter at Rome. The phrase they of Italy salute you (Heb 13:24) implies that either the writer or his readers were in Italy. It may be more natural to think of the writer, with a small group of Italian friends away from home, sending greetings to Italy, than to suppose that a greeting from Italy generally was sent to a church at a distance. It is probable that a body of Jewish Christians existed in Rome, as in other large cities of the Empire. But this view does not, as von Soden thinks, explain any coincidences between Hebrews and Romans. A Roman origin might. It could explain the use of Hebrews by Clement. But the letter might also have come to Rome by Clement’s time, even though it was originally sent elsewhere. The slender arguments in favor of Rome find favor chiefly because no arguments can be adduced in favor of any other place.

V. Date

1. Terminal Dates

The latest date for the composition of Hebrews is clearly fixed as earlier than 96 ad by reason of its use by Clement of Rome about that time. There is no justification for the view that Hebrews shows dependence on Josephus. The earliest date cannot be so definitely fixed. The apparent dependence of Hebrews on Paul’s Epistles, Galatians, 1 Corinthians and Romans, brings it beyond 50 ad.

2. Conversion and History of Readers

But we have data in the epistle itself which require a date considerably later. The readers had been converted by personal disciples of the Lord (Heb 2:3). They did not, therefore, belong to the earliest group of Christians. But it is not necessary to suppose a long interval between the Lord’s ascension and their conversion. The disciples were scattered widely from Jerusalem by the persecution that followed the death of Stephen (Act 8:1). We may well believe that the vigorous preaching of Stephen would set a wave in motion which would be felt even at Rome (Sanday, Romans, xxviii). They are not, therefore, necessarily to be described as Christians of the 2nd generation in the strict chronological sense. But the letter was written a considerable time after their conversion. They have had time for great development in Heb (Rom 5:12). They have forgotten the former days after their conversion (Heb 10:32). Their early leaders are now dead (Heb 13:7). Yet the majority of the church still consists of the first converts (Heb 2:3; Heb 10:32). And although no argument can be based upon the mention of 40 years (Heb 3:9), for it is only an incidental phrase in a quotation, yet no longer interval could lie between the founding of the church and the writing of the letter. It might be shorter. And the church may have been founded at any time from 32 to 70 ad.

3. Doctrinal Development

The doctrinal development represented in Hebrews stands midway between the system of the later Pauline Epistles (Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians) and that of the Johannine Writings. The divers and strange teachings mentioned include only such ascetic tendencies about meat and marriage (Heb 13:4, Heb 13:9) as are reflected in Paul’s Epistles early and late. There is no sign of the appearance of the full-blown heresies of the Ebionites, Docetists, and Gnostics, which became prevalent before the end of the 1st century. On the other hand the Logos-doctrine as the interpretation of the person of Christ (Heb 1:1-4) is more fully thought out than in Paul, but less explicit, and less assimilated with the purpose of Christianity, than in the Fourth Gospel.

4. The Fall of Jerusalem

It has been argued that the letter must have been written before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ad, because in writing to a Jewish community, and especially in dealing with Jewish ritual, the writer would have referred to that event, if it had happened. This point would be relevant, if the letter had been addressed to Jerusalem, which is highly improbable. But, at a distance, an author so utterly unconcerned with contemporary history could easily have omitted mention of even so important a fact. For in fact the author never mentions the temple or its ritual. His system is that of the tabernacle of the Old Testament and of Jewish tradition. The writer’s interest is not in historical Judaism, and his omission to mention the great catastrophe does not prove that it had not occurred. The use of the present tense of the ritual does not imply its present continuance. The present expresses the fact that so it is enjoined in the law, the past that with the founding of the New Covenant the old had been abolished (Peake, Hebrews, 39).

5. Timothy

A point of contact with contemporary history is found in the fact that Timothy was still living and active when Hebrews was written (Heb 13:23), but it does not carry us far. Timothy was a young man and already a disciple, when Paul visited Galatia on his 2nd journey about 46 ad (Act 16:1). And he may have lived to the end of the century or near to it. It cannot be safely argued from the mere mention of his name alone, that Paul and his other companions were dead.

6. Two Persecutions

Two incidents in the history of the readers are mentioned which afford further ground for a somewhat late date. Immediately after their conversion, they suffered persecution, a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, becoming partakers with them that were so used (Heb 10:32 f). And now again, when the letter is written, they are entering upon another time of similar trial, in which they have need of patience (Heb 10:36), though they have not yet resisted unto blood (Heb 12:4). Their leaders, at least, it would appear, the writer and Timothy, have also been in prison, but one is at liberty and the other expects to be soon (Heb 13:19, Heb 13:23). It has been conjectured that the first persecution was that under Nero in 64 ad, and the second, that in the reign of Domitian, after 81 ad. But when it is remembered that in some part of the Empire Christians were almost always under persecution, and that the locale of these readers is very uncertain, these last criteria do not justify any dogmatizing. It is certain that the letter was written in the second half of the 1st century. Certain general impressions, the probability that the first apostles and leaders of the church were dead, the absence of any mention of Paul, the development of Paul’s theological ideas in a new medium, the disappearance of the early enthusiasm, the many and great changes that had come over the community, point strongly to the last quarter of the century. The opinions of scholars at present seem to converge about the year 80 ad or a little later.

VI. Contents

1. Summary of Contents

I.The Revelation of God in His Son (Heb 1-2)

1.Christ the completion of revelation (Heb 1:1-3).

2.Christ’s superiority over the angels (Heb 1:4).

(1)Because He is a Son (Heb 1:4-6).

(2)Because His reign is eternal (Heb 1:7).

3.The dangers of neglecting salvation through the Son (Heb 2:1-4).

4.The Son and humanity (Heb 2:5).

(1)The lowliness and dignity of man (Heb 2:5-8).

(2)Necessity for the Incarnation (Heb 2:9).

(a)To fulfill God’s gracious purpose (Heb 2:9 f) .

(b)That the Saviour and saved might be one (Heb 2:11-15).

(c)That the Saviour may sympathize with the saved (Heb 2:16).

II.The Prince of Salvation (Heb 3:1 Through 4:13)

1.Christ as Son superior to Moses as servant (Heb 3:1-6).

2.Consequences of Israel’s unbelief (Heb 3:7-11).

3.Warning the Hebrews against similar unbelief (Heb 3:12).

4.Exhortations to faithfulness (Heb 4:1-13).

(1)Because a rest remains for the people of God (Heb 4:1-11).

(2)Because the omniscient God is judge (Heb 4:12 f).

III.The Great High Priest (Heb 4:14 through 10:18)

1.Christ’s priesthood the Christian’s confidence (Heb 4:14-16).

2.Christ has the essential qualifications for priesthood (Heb 5:1-10).

(1)Sympathy with men (Heb 5:1-3).

(2)God’s appointment (Heb 5:4-10).

3.The spiritual dulness of the Hebrews (Heb 5:11 through 6:12).

(1)Their lack of growth in knowledge (Heb 5:11).

(2)Press on unto perfection (Heb 6:1-3).

(3)The danger of falling away from Christ (Heb 6:4-8).

(4)Their past history ground for hoping better things (Heb 6:9-12).

4.God’s oath the ground of Christ’s priesthood and of the believer’s hope (Heb 6:13).

5.Christ a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb 7:1).

(1)The history of Melchizedek (Heb 7:1-3).

(2)The superiority of his order over that of Aaron (Heb 7:4-10).

(3)Supersession of the Aaronic priesthood (Heb 7:11-19).

(4)Superiority of Christ’s priesthood (Heb 7:20-24).

(5)Christ a priest befitting us (Heb 7:24).

6.Christ the true high priest (Heb 8:1 through 10:18).

(1)Because He entered the true sanctuary (Heb 8:1-5).

(2)Because He is priest of the New Covenant (Heb 8:6).

(3)A description of the old tabernacle and its services (Heb 9:1-7).

(4)Ineffectiveness of its sacrifices (Heb 9:8-10).

(5)Superiority of Christ’s sacrifice (Heb 9:11-14).

(6)The Mediator of the New Covenant through His own blood (Heb 9:15).

(7)Weakness of the sacrifices of the law (Heb 10:1-5).

(8)Incarnation for the sake of sacrifice (Heb 10:6-9).

(9)The one satisfactory sacrifice (Heb 10:10-18).

IV.Practical Exhortations (Heb 10:19 through 13:25)

1.Draw near to God and hold fast the faith (Heb 10:19-23).

2.The responsibility of Christians and the judgment of God (Heb 10:24-31).

3.Past faithfulness a ground for present confidence (Heb 10:32).

4.The household of faith (Heb 11:1).

(1)What is faith? (Heb 11:1-3).

(2)The examples of faith (Heb 11:4-32).

(3)The triumphs of faith (Heb 11:33).

5.Run the race looking unto Jesus (Heb 12:1-3).

6.Sufferings as discipline from the Father (Heb 12:4-11).

7.The duty of helping and loving the brethren (Heb 12:12-17).

8.Comparison of the trials and privileges of Christians with those of the Israelites (Heb 12:18).

9.Various duties (Heb 13:1-17).

(1)Moral and social relations (Heb 13:1-6).

(2)Loyalty to leaders (Heb 13:7 f).

(3)Beware of Jewish heresies (Heb 13:9-14).

(4)Ecclesiastical worship and order (Heb 13:15-17).

10.Personal affairs and greetings (Heb 13:18).

(1)A request for the prayers of the church (Heb 13:18 f).

(2)A prayer for the church (Heb 13:20 f) .

(3)Bear with the word of exhortation (Heb 13:22).

(4)Our brother Timothy (Heb 13:23).

(5)Greetings (Heb 13:24).

(6)Grace (Heb 13:25).

2. The Main Theme

The theme of the epistle is the absoluteness of the Christian religion, as based-upon the preminence of Jesus Christ, the one and only mediator of salvation. The essence of Christ’s preminence is that He fully realizes in His own person the principles of revelation and reconciliation. It is made manifest in His superiority over the Jewish system of salvation, which He therefore at once supersedes and fulfils. The author’s working concept is the Logos-doctrine of Philo; and the empirical data to which it is related is the religious history of Israel, as it culminates in Christianity. He makes no attempt to prove either his ideal first principles or his historical premises, and his philosophy of religion takes no account of the heathen world. The inner method of his argument is to fit Judaism and Christianity into the Logos-concept; but his actual is related to the ideal in the way of Plato’s antithesis, of shadow and reality, of pattern and original, rather than in Aristotle’s way of development, although the influence of the latter method may often be traced, as in the history of faith, which is carried back to the beginnings of history, but is made perfect only in the Christian consummation (Heb 11:40). In a number of other ideas the teleological movement may be seen cutting across the categories of shadow and reality (Heb 1:3; Heb 1:10; Heb 4:8 f; Heb 5:8 f; Heb 9:12; Heb 10:12; Heb 12:22).

3. Alexandrian Influences

The form of the argument may be described as either rabbinical or Alexandrian. The writer, after laying down his proposition, proceeds to prove it by quotations from the Old Testament, taken out of their context and historical connection, adapted and even changed to suit his present purpose. This practice was common to Palestinian and Alexandrian writers; as was also the use of allegory which plays a large part in Hebrews (e.g. Heb 3:7 through 4:11; Heb 13:11 f). But the writer’s allegorical method differs from that of the rabbis in that it is like Philo’s, part of a conscious philosophy, according to which the whole of the past and present history of the world is only a shadow of the true realities which are laid up in heaven (Heb 8:5; Heb 9:23 f; Heb 10:1). His interest in historical facts, in Old Testament writers, in Jewish institutions and even in the historical life of Jesus, is quite subordinate to his prepossession with the eternal and heavenly realities which they, in more or less shadowy fashion, represent. That the affinities of Hebrews are Alexandrian rather than Palestinian is further proved by many philological and literary correspondences with The Wisdom of Solomon and Philo. Most of the characteristic terms and phrases of the epistle are also found in these earlier writers. It has been argued that Hebrews and Wisdom came from the same hand, and it seems certain that the author of Hebrews was familiar with both Wisdom and the writings of Philo (Plumptre in The Expositor, I, 329ff, 409ff; von Soden in Hand-Commentar, 5-6). In Philo the dualism of appearance and reality finds its ultimate synthesis in his master-conception of the Logos, and although this term does not appear in Hebrews in Philo’s sense, the doctrine is set forth in Philonic phraseology in the opening verses (Heb 1:1-4). As Logos, Christ excels the prophets as revealer of God, is superior to the angels who Were the mediators of the old Covenant, and is more glorious than Moses as the builder of God’s true tabernacle, His eternal house; He is a greater Saviour than Joshua, for He brings his own to final rest; and He supersedes the Aaronic priesthood, for while they ministered in a holy place made with hands, like in pattern to the true, under a law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things (Heb 9:24; Heb 10:1), He having come a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands … nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption (Heb 9:11 f).

4. The Christian Factor

Yet it is possible to exaggerate the dependence of Hebrews on Alexandrian thought. Deeper than the allegorical interpretation of passages culled from the Septuagint, deeper than the Logos-philosophy which formed the framework of his thought, is the writer’s experience and idea of the personal Christ. His central interest lies, not in the theoretical scheme which he adopts, but in the living person who, while He is the eternal reality behind all shadows, and the very image of God’s essence, is also our brother who lived and suffered on earth, the author of our salvation, our fore-runner within the veil, who is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them (Heb 1:1-4; Heb 2:14; Heb 2:10; Heb 5:7-9; Heb 4:14-15; Heb 6:20; Heb 7:25). As in Paul and John, so in Hebrews, the historical and ever-living Christ comes in as an original and creative element, which transforms the abstract philosophy of Hellenistic thought into a living system of salvation. Because of His essential and personal preeminence over the institutions and personalities of the old Covenant, Christ has founded a new Covenant, given a new revelation and proclaimed a new gospel. The writer never loses sight of the present bearing of these eternal realities on the lives of his readers. They are for their warning against apostasy, for their encouragement in the face of persecution, and for their undying hope while they ‘run the race that is set before (them), looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of … faith (Heb 2:3; Heb 3:12; Heb 4:1; Heb 10:28; Heb 12:1 f,22ff).

Literature

(1) Commentary by A. S. Peake, Century Bible; A.B. Davidson, Bible Handbooks; Marcus Dods, Expositor’s Greek Test.; T.C. Edwards, Expositor’s Bible; F. Rendall (London, 1888); Westcott3 (1903); von Soden, Hand-Commentar; Hollmann, Die Schriften des New Testament.

(2) Introductions by Moffatt, Introduction to the Lit. of the New Testament; A. B. Bruce in HDB; von Soden in EB; Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament; H.H.B Ayles, Destination, Date, and Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews; Harnack, Probabilia, ber die Addresse und den Verfasser des Hebrerbriefes, ZNTW, I (1900); W. Wrede, Das literarische Rtsel des Hebrerbriefes (1906).

(3) Theology: Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews; Milligan, The Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews; Menegoz, La thologie de l’pitre aux Hbreux. For fuller list, see Moffatt, in the work quoted

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Hebrews, Epistle to the

In the received text this composition appears as part of the Canonical Scriptures of the New Testament, and also as the production of the apostle Paul. But on no subject, perhaps, in the department of the higher criticism of the New Testament, have opinions been more divided and more keenly discussed, than on this. Of those who have rejected the claims of the apostle Paul to the authorship of this epistle, some have advocated those of Barnabas, others those of Luke, others those of Clement of Rome, others those of Silas, others those of Apollos, others those of some unknown Christian of Alexandria, and others those of some apostolic man,’ whose name is no less unknown. Of these hypotheses some are so purely conjectural and destitute of any basis either historical or internal, that the bare mention of them as the vagaries of learned men is almost all the notice they deserve. Our limited space will not permit us to enter upon an examination of these theories: we must therefore content ourselves with presenting a condensed outline of the evidence that the epistle was written by the Apostle Paul; and we shall commence with the internal evidence.

1. A person familiar with the doctrines of which Paul is fond of insisting in his acknowledged epistles, will readily perceive that there is such a correspondence in this respect between these and the Epistle to the Hebrews, as supplies good ground for presuming that the latter proceeded also from his pen. That Christianity as a system is superior to Judaism in respect of clearness, simplicity, and moral efficiency; that the former is the substance and reality of what the latter had presented only the typical adumbration; and that the latter was to be abolished to make way for the former, are points which if more fully handled in the Epistle to the Hebrews, are familiar to all readers of the Epistles of Paul (comp. 2Co 3:6-18; Gal 3:22; Gal 4:1-9; Gal 4:21-31; Col 2:16-17, etc.). The same view is given in this epistle as in those of Paul, of the divine glory of the Mediator, as the ‘image of God,’ the reflection or manifestation of Deity to man (comp. Col 1:15-20; Php 2:6; Heb 1:3; etc.); His condescension is described as having consisted in an impoverishing, and lessening, and lowering of Himself for man’s behalf (2Co 8:9; Php 2:7-8; Heb 2:9); and His exaltation is set forth as a condition of royal dignity, which shall be consummated by all His enemies being put under His footstool (1Co 15:25-27; Heb 2:8; Heb 10:13; Heb 12:2). He is represented as discharging the office of a mediator, a word which is never used except by Paul and the writer of this epistle (Gal 3:19-20; Heb 8:6); His death is represented as a sacrifice for the sins of man; and the peculiar idea is announced in connection with this, that He was prefigured by the sacrifices of the Mosaic dispensation (Rom 3:22-26; 1Co 5:7; Eph 1:7; Eph 5:2; Heb 7:10). Peculiar to Paul and the author of this epistle is the phrase ‘the God of peace’ (Rom 15:33, etc.; Heb 13:20). It is worthy of remark also that the momentous question of a man’s personal acceptance with God is answered in this epistle in the same peculiar way as in the acknowledged Epistles of Paul. All is made to depend upon the individual’s exercising what both Paul and the author of this epistle call ‘faith,’ and which they both represent as a realizing apprehension of the facts, and truths, and promises of revelation. By both also the power of this ‘faith’ is frequently referred to and illustrated by the example of those who had distinguished themselves in the annals of the Jewish race (comp. Rom 3:4; Rom 5:2; Heb 3:6; Gal 3:5-14; Heb 10:38; Heb 11:40). On all these points the sentiments of this epistle are so obviously Pauline, that even the most decided opponents of its Pauline authorship in recent times have laid it down as undeniable that it must have been written by some companion and disciple of Paul.

2. Some of the figures and allusions employed in this epistle are strictly Pauline. Thus the word of God is compared to a sword (Eph 6:17; Heb 4:12); inexperienced Christians are children who need milk, and must be instructed in the elements, while those of maturer attainments are full-grown men who require strong meat (1Co 3:1-2; 1Co 14:20; Gal 4:9; Col 3:14; Heb 5:12-13; Heb 6:1); redemption through Christ is an introduction and an entrance with confidence unto God (Rom 5:2; Eph 2:18; Eph 3:12; Heb 10:19); afflictions are a contest or strife (Php 1:30; Col 2:1; Heb 10:32); the Christian life is a race (1Co 9:24; Php 3:14; Heb 12:1); a person under the constraint of some unworthy feeling or principle is ‘a subject of bondage’ (Gal 5:1; Heb 2:15), etc. The fact that these and other such like figurative phrases occur only in this epistle and in the acknowledged Epistles of Paul, affords strong evidence that the former is his production, for in nothing does a writer more readily betray himself than by the use of peculiar and favorite figures.

3. Certain marked characteristics of Paul’s style are found in this epistle. Paley, in enumerating these (Hor Paulin), has laid stress chiefly on the following: A disposition to the frequent use of a word, which cleaves as it were to the memory of the writer, so as to become a sort of cant word in his writings; a propensity ‘to go off at a word,’ and enter upon a parenthetic series of remarks suggested by that word; and a fondness for the paronomasia, or play upon words. In the Epistle to the Hebrews these peculiarities of Paul’s style are richly exemplified.

4. There is a striking analogy between Paul’s use of the Old Testament and that made by the writer of this epistle. Both make frequent appeals to the Old Testament; both are in the habit of accumulating passages from different parts of the Old Testament, and making them bear on the point under discussion (comp. Rom 3:10-18; Rom 9:7-33, etc.; Heb 1:5-14; Hebrews 3; Heb 10:5-17); both are fond of linking quotations together by means of the expression ‘and again’ (comp. Rom 15:9-12; 1Co 3:19-20; Heb 1:5; Heb 2:12-13; Heb 4:4; Heb 10:30); both make use of the same passages, and that occasionally in a sense not naturally suggested by the context whence they are quoted (1Co 15:27; Eph 1:22; Heb 2:8; Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:38); and both, in one instance, quote the same passage in the same way, but in a form in which it does not agree with the Sept., and with an addition of the words ‘saith the Lord,’ not found in the Hebrew; thereby indicating that the passage is given in both instances as it was present to the memory of one and the same writer (comp. Rom 12:19; Heb 10:30).

In fine: The Epistle to the Hebrews contains some personal allusions on the part of the writer which strongly favor the supposition that he was Paul. These are the mention of his intention to pay those to whom he was writing a visit speedily, in company with Timothy, whom he affectionately styles ‘our brother,’ and whom he describes as having been set at liberty, and expected soon to join the writer (Heb 13:23); the allusion to his being in a state of imprisonment at the time of writing, as well as of his having partaken of their sympathy while formerly in a state of bondage among them (Heb 13:19; Heb 10:34); and the transmission to them of a salutation from the believers in Italy (Heb 13:24); all of which agree well with the supposition that Paul wrote this epistle while a prisoner at Rome.

It now remains that we should look at the external evidence bearing on this question. Here we shall find the same conclusion still more decisively supported.

Passing by, as somewhat uncertain, the alleged testimony of Peter, who is supposed (2Pe 3:15-16) to refer to the Epistle to the Hebrews as the composition of Paul, and passing by, also, the testimonies of the apostolic fathers, which, though very decisive as to the antiquity and canonical authority of this epistle, yet say nothing to guide us to the author, we come to the testimony of the Eastern church upon this subject. Here we meet the important fact, that of the Greek fathers not one ascribes this epistle to any but Paul. Nor does it appear that in any part of the Eastern Church the Pauline origin of this epistle was ever doubted or suspected.

In the Western church this epistle did not meet with the same early and universal reception. Notwithstanding the regard shown for it by Clement, the church at Rome seems to have placed it under a ban; and hence Tertullian ascribed it to Barnabas, and others to Luke and Clement, while no Latin writer is found during the first three centuries who ascribed it to Paul. In the middle of the fourth century, Hilary of Poictiers quotes it as Paul’s; and from that time the opinion seems to have gained ground till the commencement of the fifth century, when it speedily became as general in the Western as it had been in the Eastern churches.

The result of the previous inquiry may be thus stated. 1. There is no substantial evidence external or internal in favor of any claimant to the authorship of this epistle except Paul. 2. There is nothing incompatible with the supposition that Paul was the author of it. 3. The preponderance of the internal, and all the direct, external, evidence, go to show that it was written by Paul.

Assuming the Pauline authorship of the epistle, it is not difficult to determine when and where it was written. The allusions in Heb 13:19; Heb 13:24, point to the closing period of the apostle’s two years’ imprisonment at Rome as the season during ‘the serene hours’ of which, as Hug describes them, he composed this noblest production of his pen. In this opinion almost all who receive the epistle as Paul’s concur; and even by those who do not so receive it, nearly the same time is fixed upon, in consequence of the evidence furnished by the epistle itself of its having been written a good while after those to whom it is addressed had become Christians, but yet before the destruction of the Temple.

That the parties to whom this epistle was addressed were converted Jews, the epistle itself plainly shows. Ancient tradition points out the church at Jerusalem, or the Christians in Palestine generally, as the recipients. Stuart contends for the church at Caesarea, not without some show of reason.

Some have doubted whether this composition be justly termed an epistle, and have proposed to regard it rather as a treatise. The salutations, however, at the close, seem rather to favor the common opinion; though it is of little moment which view we espouse.

The design of this epistle is to dissuade those to whom it is written from relapsing into Judaism, and to exhort them to hold fast the truths of Christianity which they had received. For this purpose the apostle shows the superiority of the latter over the former, in that it was introduced by one far greater than angels, or than Moses, from whom the Jews received their economy (Hebrews 1-3), and in that it affords a more secure and complete salvation to the sinner than the former (Hebrews 4-10). In demonstrating the latter position the apostle shows that in point of dignity, perpetuity, sufficiency, and suitableness, the Jewish priesthood and sacrifices were far inferior to those of Christ, who was the substance and reality, while these were but the type and shadow. He shows, also, that by the appearance of the anti-type the type is necessarily abolished; and adduces the important truth, that now, through Christ, the privilege of personal access to God is free to all. On all this he founds an exhortation to a life of faith and obedience, and shows that it has ever been only by a spiritual recognition and worship of God that good men have participated in His favor (Hebrews 11). The epistle concludes, as is usual with Paul, with a series of practical exhortations and pious wishes (Hebrews 12-13).

Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature

Hebrews, Epistle to the

[He’brews]

This is the only Epistle attributed to Paul that does not bear his name. In all the oldest MSS his name does not occur, either at the beginning or at the end. Most of the early writers attribute it to Paul, though with some there were doubts respecting it. 2Pe 3:15-16 seems to confirm the authorship of Paul, besides the internal evidences of it. The question as to who the writer was does not touch its inspiration: of this there can be no legitimate doubt. It may be that Paul’s name is withheld because he was so maligned by the Jews, many of whom were related to the very ones to whom he was writing, that they might not be prejudiced against the Epistle. Doubtless many to whom he was writing had heard the discourses of the Lord, and the Epistle was, as it were, a further discourse from God through Christ as His Apostle: “Hath spoken unto us in [His] Son.” Here Paul classes himself with the listeners.

It was written to Jews as persons already in relationship with God, but evinces that only those who received the Lord Jesus as Mediator were really in that relationship, and were “partakers of the heavenly calling.” It shows that they no longer needed the shadows of heavenly things, for in Christ Jesus the heavenly things themselves were to be possessed. Eternal things are spoken of to the displacement of those that were temporal. It is not properly speaking an Epistle addressed to an assembly, but a treatise, in which the heavenly glory of Christ is contrasted with earthly hopes.

The tender way in which the apostle deals with the consciences of the Jews still clinging to Judaism, stands in marked contrast to the severe manner in which he writes to the Galatians, who as Gentiles never should have placed themselves under law. The believing Hebrews needed to be detached from the earth and attached to Christ in heaven; but though association with Christ is touched on, union with Him is not taught in the epistle, nor is the believer’s relationship to God as Father brought out. The saints are viewed as in the wilderness on their way to the rest of God. In accordance with this the tabernacle is referred to, and not the temple, which belongs to the kingdom. As might be expected, the epistle contains many quotations from the O.T., but they are often cited by way of contrast rather than of comparison.

When and where the epistle was written is unknown: the temple service was still being carried on, and therefore it was written before A.D. 70 (cf. Heb 8:4-5; Heb 10:11; Heb 13:10). It probably dates from A.D. 63 or 64.

The great subject of the Epistle to the Hebrews is approach to God, the basis of which is found in the blessed Person and work of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is viewed as the Apostle and High Priest, while His work is set forth, of such a nature as to give boldness to the believer to enter into the holiest by a new and living way inaugurated by Christ, who has died and risen, and entered as the great priest over God’s house. This entrance is the climax to which the epistle leads the believing Hebrews, in complete contrast to the system, which, though given of God, left the worshippers at a distance and the holiest inaccessible to man. They were to learn the incomparable superiority of that which had been brought in by God Himself through Christ, over all that had been given by Him through Moses, and that, though all was on the ground of faith, with present suffering, they were brought into better things: they had better promises, better hopes, and had privileges to which those who served the tabernacle had no right. But all turns on the glory of the person of the Lord Jesus.

In Heb 1 God has spoken in [the] Son. He is the Apostle in whom God speaks, one of the Persons of the Godhead – the exact expression of His substance. Again, when viewed as born on earth, begotten in time, He is still the Son; His Person is identified with His manhood. In this respect He inherits a more excellent name than the angels. He is worshipped by them, He is addressed as God. If, being man, He has companions, He is above them. He is the Creator. He is set at the right hand of God where no angel is ever placed.

Heb 2. Having thus presented the glorious Person as the One in whom God had spoken in these last days to His people, the inspired writer in chapter 2 parenthetically warns those who had believed, of the danger of slipping away from such a message, and of the impossibility of escape for those who neglected so great salvation, which had first been presented by the Lord Himself, and had been confirmed by those who had heard Him, to whom God also had borne testimony by various acts of power. The subject of the Person is then resumed. If God had been revealed in the Son become man, Man is also presented before God in this same blessed One, and this in answer to the quotation from Psalm 8, “What is man, that thou rememberest him? ” etc. Jesus is the ‘Son of man,’ made indeed a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but now crowned with glory and honour. Everything is to be placed in suitability to the mind and will of God through His death. But He is not alone in the purposes of God as to glory, He is the leader of many sons, destined to this fulness of blessing, and as leader He has reached the goal through suffering. Then is stated what is of the deepest interest, namely, that those who are sanctified – believers in Him – are all of one with the sanctifier Himself: they are His brethren, and form the company identified with Him, “Behold I and the children which God has given me.” He had partaken of flesh and blood and had died, that this might be brought about, having in his death annulled the devil, and broken the power of death for His own, who were now in liberty. He has taken up, not the cause of angels, but the seed of Abraham. It became Him in all things to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things relating to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. As such He is able to succour the tempted, having Himself suffered being tempted.

Heb 3, Heb 4. It will be noted that in Heb 1 and Heb 2 God is speaking to man, and man is presented to God in the same blessed Person. Accordingly in Heb 3 and Heb 4 the Hebrews, as partakers of the heavenly calling, are invited to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus.” Compared with Moses, who had indeed been faithful as a servant in the house of God, Christ had been faithful. But He was the builder of the house, and Son over it. “Whose house are we, if indeed we hold fast the boldness and the boast of hope firm to the end.” This ‘if’ introduces a reference to the forty years’ wandering in the wilderness, the argument being that the Hebrews at that time were not able to enter the rest of God because of not hearkening to the word – because of unbelief. This is warning for the present time. The rest of God is what He has in view for His people. Let none seem to come short of it. The rest now is neither that of creation nor that of Canaan, but one still future, into which those enter who believe. Let all use diligence to enter into that rest, hearkening to the word, which is sharper than a two-edged sword and discovers the very motives of the heart. Returning from this digression on the ‘if,’ the writer takes up again the thread from Heb 3:6 “Having therefore a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession.” He is a High Priest able to sympathise in believers’ infirmities, having been tempted in all things as they are, apart from sin. They should approach the throne of grace therefore with boldness so as to receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help. This aspect of the priesthood of Christ is for their relief from what would otherwise turn them out of the way.

In Heb 5 – Heb 8. the subject of the priesthood of Christ is continued, with another digression in Heb 5 and Heb 6 on the condition of the Hebrew saints, and warnings arising therefrom. High Priests among men, as Aaron, had their functions, but were called of God to the dignity. So Christ, addressed by God as His Son, is selected also by Him as High Priest after the order of Melchisedec. Witness is then borne to His perfect dependence and obedience in the days of His flesh, and that perfected as High Priest beyond death, He became, to all who obey Him, Author of eternal salvation. Of Him much had to be said, but the state of the Hebrews called for serious remark. They had made no progress in spiritual growth, but had become babes.

Heb 6. They are urged to leave the word of the beginning of the Christ, and to go on to what belonged to full growth. The hopelessness of apostasy is most solemnly set forth, but of those he is addressing, the writer is persuaded better things, and he presses them to follow those who through faith and long patience have inherited the promises. These promises were all on the ground of grace, and were secured to the heirs of promise by the word and the oath of God. They then have strong encouragement, and the hope set before them as an anchor of the soul entering within the veil – into the very presence of God, where Jesus has entered as the forerunner – a High Priest after the order of Melchisedec.

In Heb 7. some detail is given of Melchisedec. His titles are interpreted – king of righteousness and king of peace. The fact is noted that nothing is said of his father, mother, or genealogy; nothing of his birth or death; he is said to be assimilated to the Son of God, and abides a priest continually. The greatness of this personage is then dwelt on, as evidenced by Abraham’s conduct toward him, and he is shown to be superior to Levi. Further, if perfection had come in with Levi, why speak of another Priest of another order? Melchisedec is in fact the type of the priesthood of Christ, constituted after the power of an endless life. There was a setting aside of the Aaronic priesthood, because connected with the law which perfected nothing, and the bringing in of a better hope by which we draw nigh to God. The superiority of Christ’s priesthood is further evidenced by its being introduced by the swearing of an oath, and by its continuing for ever. He then is able to save completely those who come to God by Him, always living to intercede for them. The High priest of Christians is the Son, holy, harmless, undefiled, and as man made higher than the heavens. He had no need as other priests to offer up sacrifices for His own sins; He has offered Himself once for all for the sins of the people.

In Heb 8 a summary is given, setting forth again the glory of our High Priest, where He is set, and what He is minister of; all is contrast to what, as Jews, they had in the old order. The ministry is more excellent: the covenant, of which He is Mediator, a better one, established on the footing of better promises. A new covenant had been spoken of in the prophets, not like the first, for it was on the principle of sovereign grace. The old covenant was ready to vanish away.

If Christ be such a Priest, He must have ‘somewhat to offer,’ and in the following chapters the value of His offering is shown forth. This He did once when He offered up Himself.

In Heb 9 – Heb 10:18, the contrast between the two covenants is further enlarged on. Certain features of the tabernacle arrangement are given with regard to the holy and most holy places. Into the first the priests went at all times, but into the second the high priest only once a year. The way into the holiest had not been manifest while the first tabernacle was standing, wherein gifts and sacrifices were offered, which could not give to those who brought them a perfect conscience. But Christ, in contrast to this, had, in connection with a heavenly tabernacle, entered in once into the holy of holies by His own blood, having found an eternal redemption. The blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, was efficacious in complete contrast to the blood or ashes of the victim of old. The ‘called’ ones now received the promise of eternal inheritance. All was established on the basis of death. The tabernacle was but a pattern of things in the heavens, which latter had to be purified with better sacrifices than those of bulls and goats, Christ had entered into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God for us. His work had never to be repeated, like the yearly sacrifices of the high priests. He had once been manifested in the consummation of the ages for the putting away of sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it was the lot of man to die and then to be judged, Christ had borne the sins of many, having borne the judgement due to them, and will appear to those who look for Him to salvation, having broken the power of death.

Of the great work of Christ, and of the good things to come which depended on that work, the law had only shadows, not the very image. The yearly sacrifices never perfected those who brought them; else they would have ceased to be offered by worshippers having no more conscience of sins; sins were in fact brought to mind every year, not put away for ever. But there was One who, coming into the world, could speak of a body prepared for Him, in which He would accomplish the will of God. Sacrifice and offering and offering for sin were taken away, that the will of God might be accomplished by His Son in the prepared body. By this will believers in Christ were sanctified by His one offering. In contrast to the priests, who always stood, offering often the same sacrifices, with barren results as to the taking away of sins, He, having offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God, His rejection from earth being indicated by the words of the psalm, “from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.” The sanctified ones were now perfected in perpetuity. Their sins would never be remembered, the Holy Ghost being witness. There remaineth therefore no longer a sacrifice for sin.

Heb 10:19 gives immediate application of all this. We have boldness to enter into the holy of holies – the presence of God – by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, through the veil, that is, through His flesh. And we have a great Priest over the House of God. Let us then “approach with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, sprinkled as to our hearts from a wicked conscience, and washed as to our bodies with pure water.” This is the climax of the epistle. Other results follow. “Let us hold fast the confession of the hope,” and “let us consider one another to provoke to love and good works.” A second solemn warning is given as to the danger of apostasy. The Hebrews should remember how they had suffered for the truth’s sake, and should not now cast away their confidence which would have great recompense.

In Heb 11, and Heb 12, on the question of faith ‘to soul salvation,’ a most remarkable cloud of witnesses is marshalled, to give their testimony as it were to this great principle. Beginning with Abel and closing with Rahab, various individual characteristics of faith and its consequences are presented, while in Heb 11:32, etc., is given a group of worthies, many not mentioned by name, who by faith triumphed in different ways through suffering, with regard to whom it is added “And these all, having obtained witness through faith, received not the promise, God having foreseen some better thing for us, that they should not be made perfect without us.” The application of this to the Hebrew believers is at once given, “Let us, . . . . laying aside every weight and sin which so easily entangles us, run with endurance the race that lies before us, looking steadfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith.” He had reached the goal, the right hand of the throne of God, through suffering. Believers must resist to blood, if need be, wrestling against sin. Chastening after all is necessary, and a proof of God’s interest in them as sons. To those exercised by it, it would yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness. The Hebrews were to encourage those who were feeble; but to watch lest any lacked the grace of God, and lest evil should come in amongst them.

A very striking contrast between the terror of law and the fulness of grace is now given, to which latter with all its blessings Christians were now come. Let them beware of refusing Him who now speaks from heaven. Everything would be shaken by Him, save the kingdom which He sets up, and which believers receive. Let them serve Him with reverence and godly fear.

Heb 13. A few exhortations follow as to love, hospitality, and the marriage bond. Believers should consider those in affliction, should beware of covetousness, and be content with their present circumstances, if only He is there with them. Leaders who had been faithful and had passed away were to be remembered and their faith followed. But Jesus Christ is the same in the past, present, and future. The Hebrews are warned against “divers and strange doctrines,” a systematic mixture of Judaism and Christianity. Referring to the great day of atonement, it is shown that the Christian’s altar was one of which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. The sacrifice on that day was wholly burnt outside the camp, Jesus had suffered outside the gate – outside the Jewish system which had rejected Him. Believers in Him must now go forth to Him, bearing His reproach. It is the final breach between Christianity and Judaism. Sacrifices of praise and of doing good should be rendered to God. Their guides were to be obeyed, for they watched over their souls. The writer commends the saints to the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, in the power of the blood of the everlasting covenant, that they might be perfect in every good work to do His will.

A word as to Timothy’s liberation, and mutual salutations bring this deeply important epistle to a close.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary