Perhaps more so than any other document we find in the NT, we know almost nothing about the letter than what it says. We do not know who the author was, when it was written, specifically to whom it was addressed and where they resided. From the letter itself, however, we get a fairly clear picture of why it was written. Let us start, then, with its purpose.
The first hint of its purpose is given fairly early in the letter; immediately after an exposition of the person of Christ as superior to the angels (Chap 1), the author says, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away" (2:1). This tenor is refracted in diverse ways in the repetitions we see in the rest of the letter:
Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus (3:1)
See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God (3:12)
Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it (4:1)
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess (4:14)
It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened . . . if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance (6:4-6)
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful (10:23)
Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. . . . So do not throw away your confidence . . . [for] we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. (10:32-39)
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith . . . so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (12:2-3
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. . . . Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees! (12:7-12)
See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? (12:25)
These constant exhortations point to an author who senses that his audience's faith in Jesus is under tremendous strain and pressures, perhaps to the point where they may be tempted to give up their faith. Encouraging them with his exposition of the superiority of Christ and the salvation he has wrought, the author encourages his readers to persevere and not give up their faith. Three times (3:7-8, 15; 4:7) he repeats the verse from Psm 95 ("Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion") to remind them not to harden their hearts as the generation of the exodus did.
If the general purpose of the letter is clear, is there any hint who these people so tempted to give up their faith might be?
One might be tempted to think that since we are reading "the letter to the Hebrews," as its title proclaim, its audience must be Jewish believers. The problem with this assumption is that the letter itself is unique among the NT epistles in that it says nothing about who it was addressed to or who wrote it. Although the title "To the Hebrews" is found in the oldest manuscripts we have of the letter (from the 2nd Cent) it is first attested only from that period (by, e.g., Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian). The name may, therefore, reflect only the emerging consensus of the early church.1
One cannot miss the saturation of references and allusion in the letter to the Old Testament. It is quite apparent that the author assumed that his readers were fairly conversant with the OT. While it is not impossible for Gentile believers to know the OT well enough for the author to assume such a background in his readers, its more than copious use and allusions—as well as the assumption of a familiarity with Levitical liturgy and the priesthood—in the letter has led many scholars to conclude that the audience were more likely Jewish believers who were tempted by their circumstances to revert to their former faith.
What is clear also from the letter itself is that not only do the recipients of the letter "formed a specific community with a specific history"2, but also the author knew them well, and may have been related to them in some mentoral and/or pastoral relationship in the past. As such he could speak to them in tones of deep pastoral concern as well as in words that border on rebuke as. e.g., in 5:11-6:3 :
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3And God permitting, we will do so.
He is, in William Lane's words, "a friend with a pastor's heart. He understands their peril and their fears—and he cares."3
The letter is silent about where the recipients were located, and this has been the subject of rife speculations. Proposals have included almost every city or province in the Roman empire—Rome, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, Antioch, Palestine, Cyprus, the Lycus Valley, Syria, Asia, Galatia, Colossae—where there were a sizable Jewish population. It has even been suggested that they were converts to the Christian faith from the Qumran, the community near the Dead Sea known to us for the Dead Sea Scrolls. The most that can be said about these proposals is that none can be affirmed with confidence.
As mentioned in passing earlier, the letter was associated with Paul as its author early in the church. This claim began in Alexandria and crystallized into the tradition that held the field for many centuries afterwards. There are, however, adequate reasons to doubt the veracity of this tradition.4 Five finds wide circulation:
2. The author does not know the Lord first hand but only as it "was announced by the Lord [and] confirmed to us by those who heard him" (2:3). This certainly is not what Paul would allow anyone to say of him; Paul was passionately adamant about the "first-hand" nature of his apostleship.
2. The letter is anonymous, something unknown from any other letter of Paul.
3) The author makes much of the high-priesthood of Christ, of its superiority over that of the Levitical priests. This is a theme unknown from any of Paul's other writings.
4) Central Pauline themes and motifs are visibly absent in Hebrews. The idea of "in Christ," e.g., finds only a single passing reference in Hebrews. Paul's characteristic emphasis on justification by faith is missing and the work of Christ is spelled out in Hebrews in terms of cleansing and sanctifying instead. Though complementary to Paul's theology, these points suggest a non-Pauline authorship.
5) The letter is, to those familiar with Greek literature, stylistically the most elegant of all the NT documents and different from the Pauline literature.
For these and other reasons, the tradition of Pauline authorship was questioned by many even in the early church and rejected by most of the Reformers, including Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and John Calvin.
The reference to Timothy in the closing greetings of the letter (13:23) has suggested to many—on the assumption that this is the same person mentioned in Paul's letters—that the author was closely associated with Paul. This suggestion is strengthened by that fact that, despite the differences between this letter and Paul's, Hebrews and Paul's letters overlap greatly from a theological point of view. Two possible candidates for such an associate include Apollos and Barnabas, though Luke has also been proposed. In the end we simply do not know. We conclude this discussion with the helpful counsel from Origen and
That the character of the diction of the epistle entitled To the Hebrews has not the apostle's [Paul's] rudeness in speech, who confessed himself rude in speech, that is, in style, but that the epistle is better Greek in the framing of its diction, will be determined by everyone who is able to discern differences of style. But again, on the other hand, that the thoughts of the epistle are admirable, and not inferior to the acknowledged writings of the apostle, to this also everyone will consent as true who has given attention to reading the apostle . . . But as for myself, if I were to state my opinion, I should say that the thoughts are the apostle's, but that the style and composition belong to one who call to mind the apostle's teachings and, as it were, made short notes of what his master said. If any church, therefore, holds this epistle as Paul's, let it be commended for this also. For not without reason have the men of old time handed it down as Paul's. But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows.
Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 2, tr. by J. E. L. Oulton (Loeb Classical Library; London/Cambridge, Mass: Heinemann/Harvard University Press, 1942), 77-79.
The most important thing Hebrews tells us about the author, whoever he was, is that in the first decades of the Christian movement, another remarkable mind and heart besides Paul�s was at work in interpreting the significance of the crucified and raised Messiah Jesus for the understanding of Scripture, of the world, and of human existence.
L. T. Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 44
Like many of the questions we have about the origin of the letter, it is uncertain when the letter was written. Peter O'Brien observes that,
the latest date for Hebrews is set by the use of repeated references to the letter in 1 Clement (esp. 36:1-6). This has been traditionally dated c. a.d. 96. Although some have thought that 1 Clement was written well into the second century (as late as 140) this is unlikely. Even if its date was in the first decade of the second century, Hebrews would have a terminus of a.d. 90.
Peter O'Brien, The Letter to the Hebrew (PNTC; Grand Rapids/Cambridge, 2010), 16.
It has often been pointed out that the letter often refers to the activity of the Levitical priesthood in the present tense5, suggesting that the temple was still standing. If the letter reflects this fact then the letter would have predated 70 AD, when the temple was razed and destroyed. This argument, however, is flawed, as Peter O'Brien points out:
First, the present tense in Greek, even in the indicative, does not necessarily refer to present time. Traditional approaches to Greek grammar observe the frequency of the so-called historic present in Greek. Moreover, �a more linguistically informed approach, appealing to verbal aspect theory, doubts that the (morphological) �present tense� has any immediate bearing on time�. Second, Josephus writes about the Jerusalem temple and the sacrificial cult in the present tense even though the temple had been destroyed and the sacrificial system had ceased. Similarly, Clement of Rome uses the present tense to describe the ritual of the temple well after its destruction.6
For all that we do not know about the letter to the Hebrews, we do know the author. He was:
saturated in the Old Testament Scriptures, as shown by his extensive use throughout the epistle of the Greek Bible (LXX). He knows the content of the Scriptures intimately, and refers to those in the earliest chapters of Genesis through to the later prophetic and poetic writings (e.g., the heroes of faith in Heb. 11). He interprets the Scriptures in a variety of ways, from a typological and salvation-historical perspective to a straight literal application, as he explains the word of God and brings it to bear on the lives of his listeners.
Hebrews was written by a creative theologian who adapted traditional Christian teaching to the urgent issues facing his community. He was an accomplished preacher of the gospel who sent his sermon (�word of exhortation�, 13:22) in written form to a congregation whose members he regarded as Christian �brothers and sisters� (3:1, 12; 10:19; 13:22) and �dear friends� (6:9). His letter shows an intimate knowledge of their needs: it is addressed to the congregation as a whole, but also to �each one� individually (6:11). As a true pastor, who understands their peril and their fears, he displays a combination of firmness and tenderness. His powerful warnings (some of the strongest in the New Testament) are immediately followed by words of encouragement and promise. Both warnings and promises are the word of God (based particularly on the Old Testament), and the author identifies with his listeners by recognizing that he too needs to be subject to this divine word and to persevere with them in faith to the very end. 7
He was, in another word, a model of leadership and pastoral concern we can worthily emulate. His letter demands to be studied well and preached more often.
©Alberith, 2016
©ALBERITH
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