The attribution of this letter to Paul was probably a key factor in the decision to include it in the canon. However, anyone reading the letter in Greek will not take long to recognize that the style of Greek is not that of Paul: it is much more polished, rhetorical Greek. Or to put it simplistically, the author to the Hebrews finishes his sentences much more regularly than Paul does! Already early Church Fathers like Clement and Origen already noted these differences of style, so this is not merely an invention of modern scholarship. The theology is also different: for Paul, the work of Christ focuses on the death and resurrection of Christ; for Hebrews, it focuses on Christ as High Priest, with almost no interest in or place for the resurrection in his theological system. Perhaps the strongest argument against Pauline authorship is the statement in Hebrews 2:3-4. There the author emphasizes that he was not an eyewitness but received his knowledge of the Lord ‘second-hand’. This is so radically different from Paul’s repeated emphasis (cf. e.g. Galatians 1:11-12) that he did not depend on others for his calling or his Gospel, that it becomes highly implausible to regard Paul as the author. In fact, it was only in the 4th century that the arguments of Augustine and Jerome carried the day and official recognition of Pauline authorship was given, and so the attribution to Paul is much less strong than is the case in many other traditions concerning the authorship of New Testament writings.
So who might the author have been, if not Paul? A few intriguing suggestions have been made, and they are worth looking at, even if in the end we find we have to conclude, with Origen, that “Only God knows who wrote it”.
Lindars observes that "The Greek language and style of Hebrews are the best in the New Testament and indicate some degree of Greek education, especially in the art of rhetoric. All the Old Testament quotations follow the Septuagint" (Barnabas Lindars, Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p.21). What little Semitic influennce there is, is probably due to the influence of the Septuagint. This could perhaps suggest an Alexandrian background, since there were many Jews well educated in Greek learning in Alexandria. Yet suggested links with Philo are at best uncertain; the idea of heavenly realities behind the earthly is only mildly Platonic, and the writer does not allegorize the way Philo (or the author of the 'Epistle of Barnabas') did. In view of these considerations, Martin Luther suggested that Apollos might be the author. Acts 18:24 tells us that Apollos had many of the key traits that one might attribute to the author on the basis of the evidence in the letter: He was Jewish, Alexandrian, educated, eloquent, and well-versed in the Scriptures. He would also have known Timothy (cf. 1 Corinthians 16:10-12; Hebrews 13:23). Yet the biggest problems with this view, as noted by Andrew H. Trotter (Interpreting the Epistle to the Hebrews, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997, pp.48-49), are that no one prior to Martin Luther suggested that he might be the author, and the attributes that are the focus of attention here could apply to hundreds of other people in the first century! In fact, there is nothing that links the epistle with Alexandria with any certainty. Trotter also notes that it would be surprising if we had only one work from this author, since he is clearly very comfortable as a writer! This might give some plausibility to two more ancient suggestions concerning authorship, namely the possibility that either Luke or Clement of Rome wrote it, opinions that already circulated in Origen’s time, and for which Calvin would later argue.
Tertullian attributed the letter to Barnabas, and this evidence has a certain strength to it, since he simply takes for granted that “Barnabas wrote a letter ‘to the Hebrews’”, whereas no one else in the Church had any clear tradition regarding the letter’s author, until it began to be argued on theological grounds that the author was Paul, primarily so as to justify its inclusion in the canon by providing an unambiguous link with an apostle. On the one hand, the second century psuedepigraphic work known as the ‘Epistle of Barnabas’ employs a similar (though not identical) allegorical approach to Scripture, and its author may have been seeking to imitate the style of the real Barnabas in Hebrews. On the other hand, it is also possible that Tertullian had confused these two writings. At any rate, Barnabas was a Diaspora Jew and could well have had a Greek education sufficient to produce the letter to the Hebrews: Alexandria was by no means the only place that one could learn excellent Greek and the arts of rhetoric and interpretation of Scripture.
Another suggestion made by Harnack is that the letter was written by Priscilla and Aquila, who were closely associated with Apollos. This husband and wife team would suit the interchanges between ‘I’ and ‘we’ (that at least one of the authors was male is clear from the masculine participle used in 11:32). The discomfort in the ancient Church with a letter written by a woman might be the reason that the identity of the author was obscured.
Many have suggested that the letter was written to converted Jews, perhaps former priests, but this ignores the fact that the concentration is on the tabernacle rather than the temple, and the description of the ritual seems to suggest it was not related directly to the experience of the readers. The Jewish understanding of God is taken for granted as accepted by the readers. We can be sure that it was a letter (13:22-25), and not a homily or treatise as some have suggested. Lindars (op.cit.) suggests that it is an "address to these people from afar" (p.7; cf. Heb.13:20-22). The ending written in the author's own hand, as in Paul's letters, suggests a concern for its acceptance, and this and many other factors may suggest the author is a member of the same Christian community, but has been forced to be absent from there for some time. Perhaps the leaders of the group have written to him for help, and since he cannot appear in person, he writes this detailed and carefully planned letter. The exhortations to brotherly love, acceptance of leaders, and to remember those who brought them the Gospel (13:7-16) may give us clues to the crisis facing the readers. The 'strange teachings' mentioned in the last chapter must surely relate to what the author has been writing about up until then. Perhaps it was a (comparatively) small community of former Jews who are now feeling pressure to (and some are beginning to) return to the synagogue and Judaism. The mention of 'people from Italy' in 13:24, and the fact that the earliest reference we have to Hebrews is by Clement of Rome (AD96), have led many to suggest that Rome was the destination of the letter; Romans shows that there was a mixed congregation there of Jews and Gentiles, but there were probably many small groups, just as there were 11 synagogues, because the Romans forbid large assemblies and associations.
Lindars suggests that the book was
written to Jews who, although converted, felt the need for continued
forgiveness, and thus were being urged by other Jews to return to Judaism, which
had further sacrifices for further sins (that post-baptismal sins worried many
is proved by the literature of the early Church, and the continued felt need for
a means to do something practical to make amends for their faults is a common
one to all people; Robert Smith, a Christian teacher in Sierra Leone, confirms
the existence of a syncretistic form of Christianity there which continues to
offer animal sacrifices, the justification being the felt need to 'do something'
that costs about their problem of sin). That the 'new covenant' involved the
abrogation of the old was the logical and clear conclusion, but still one which
not all Jewish converts were able to recognize, is clear from elsewhere in the
OT. On the Day of Atonement, Jews throughout the world felt their solidarity
through prayers and fasting, as sacrifice was made on their behalf in Jerusalem;
Lindars rightly notes that the 'psychological' effect of no longer having such a
continual solidarity in which assurance of forgiveness was shared should not be
underestimated. 'Conscience' as it is used here does not exactly correspond to
the English word; "It does not denote a moral law within the mind, telling
one what one ought or ought not to do. It is rather knowledge within oneself of
the moral status of one's own actions, whether good or bad, usually the
latter...The problem of the readers is that they are smitten with a
consciousness of sin for which they can find no relief without some practical
method of atonement with God, and this does not seem to be provided by their
Christian allegiance" (p.88). The contrast is thus not between 'inward and
outward religion', but between a temporary measure (provided in Torah) and the
permanent, perfect one (provided in Jesus). If Lindars is right in his guess at
who the intended readers were, then if they were Hellenistic Jews, they were not
like Stephen, who saw clearly the limitations of the Temple and its rituals, but
were a more conservative Jewish group; many peoples and communities are more
nationalistic and traditional when they are living among others than they would
be in their own country.
Perhaps the recipients were first generation Diaspora Jews (i.e.
‘Hebrews’, originally from Judea rather than born and raised elsewhere) who
had become Christians and who now (or perhaps even previously) felt guilty about
their lack of obedience to the Law requiring them to go up to the Temple; and
perhaps the author of Hebrews stood in the tradition of Stephen in Acts 7 and
other Hellenists like him, who saw that there was no need for Christians to
offer sacrifices in the Temple. But we shall have more to say on this below.
The most likely conjecture about their location is that the letter was
sent to Rome. This view has a number of arguments in its favor. In the first
instance, we have the fact that the letter is first known at Rome, since it is
quoted or alluded to by 1 Clement, who was writing presumably not long after
Hebrews itself was written. The second century work known as the Shepherd of
Hermas also originated at Rome, and addresses the same problem of repentance
after baptism as is addressed in Hebrews (although apparently giving a different
answer). An additional piece of evidence is the reference in 13:24 to ‘those
from Italy’. While this could conceivably mean ‘those in Italy’,
this is not the most natural meaning, and so it most likely means ‘those from
Italy’, who would presumably be sending greetings back home.
The
letter has sometimes been regarded as a Christian response to the destruction of
the Temple in 70 C.E. But the fact that on the one hand, the sacrificial cult of
Judaism is argued to be obsolete on the basis of Jesus' sacrifice, while on the
other hand no mention is made of the Temple's destruction, suggests a date
before 70 C.E. Further evidence includes the way that the author refers to the
activity of the priests in the present tense (Hebrews 9:6-9), and still more
conclusive is the fact that in 10:1-2, the author says that if the sacrifices of
the old covenant had brought about perfection, then they would have ceased to
have been offered. It is almost certain that the author would have expressed
himself differently if the temple had been destroyed and the offering of
sacrifices interrupted. And so, while the letter provided theological
reflections that were extremely important for Jewish Christianity after 70 C.E.,
the letter was almost certainly written earlier.
The title ‘To the Hebrews’, while not original, was known by the last quarter of the second century, and thus must be considerably earlier. While it may simply represent someone’s conjecture based on the content of the letter, it may also imply that the author was not himself a ‘Hebrew’ in the sense that he was of the ‘Hellenists’, i.e. a Greek speaking Jewish community formed from Diaspora Jews, like that found in Jerusalem and mentioned in Acts 6:1. Raymond Brown (Introduction to the New Testament, New York: Doubleday, 1997, p.693) calls this theory “attractive” but also “unprovable”. Yet there is certainly at least one major feature that links the letter to the Hebrews with the theology expressed in the speech of Stephen in Acts 7: the regarding of the Temple in Jerusalem as something inferior ‘made by hands’, and with a focus on the tabernacle as opposed to the Temple. Both felt that the tabernacle, even if a shadow of heavenly realities, was God-ordained, whereas the Temple in Jerusalem is condemned in the speech of Stephen and not even deemed worthy of discussion in Hebrews. This is not to say that they clearly represent identical theologies, but they certainly may at least be conjectured to stand in the same strand of early Christian thought.
Lindars begins his book: "The author of Hebrews ranks with Paul and the Fourth Evangelist as one of the three great theologians of the New Testament. In each case we can see the emergence of a distinctively Christian theology in response to the gospel of Jesus Christ" (p.1). The author, who clearly does not simply represent another strand of theological thought known from other NT documents, is clearly a great theologian in his own right, as well as a skilled author with a pastor’s heart. Two ideas in Hebrews are unique in the NT: The priesthood of Jesus (according to the order of Melchizedek) and the use of the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement to expound the sacrificial death of Jesus (which goes beyond previous confessions; e.g. 1 Cor.15:3). Hebrews thus gives the longest exposition of how the death of Jesus takes away sins.
A.Vanhoyne (La Structure littéraire de l'Epître aux Hébreux,
Paris & Bruges, 1963) analyzed the structure of Hebrews, and found in it a
perfect chiastic structure with its center at 8:1-9:28 (on the sacrifice of
Christ). Yet Lindars feels the chiasmus isn't perfect, and that the real climax
of the book's argument is at the conclusion of chapter 12; "there have been
previous climaxes like peaks on the path up the mountain, but the argument runs
continuously through the whole letter". However, Lindars admits that there
is 'inclusion', repetition at the end of ideas set forth at the beginning (e.g.
2:10 & 12:2). The 'point' (κεφαλαιov) in
8:1 is not the gist or essence of what has just been said, but the conclusion to
which it leads (Lindars, op.cit., p.79).
The basic root ideas of Hebrews are already to be found in the primitive
kerygma: Jesus is pre-existent Son of God, and also Messiah and truly human. The
list of basic practices and doctrines which the readers already accepted (6:1-2)
is not particularly Christian (it could equally be Jewish), but the plural
'baptisms/ablutions' probably refers to multiple acts of individual baptism
(so Lindars, pp.66f). In any case, there are more explicit references to
Christian baptism with water and also of experience of the Holy Spirit. The
writer emphasizes throughout the idea of 'perfection', which appears in various
forms and with different shades of meaning; the readers need to become mature in
their faith, and come to a full understanding, and also to be made holy,
sanctified, in a way which was not possible through the OT sacrifices. The New
Covenant is contrasted with the Old. Much use of OT scripture is made, and it
follows more closely rabbinic methods than allegorical ones (e.g. the relation
of passages with identical words ('rest'), and the assumption that what does not
appear in scripture can be assumed to not have existed (the ancestry of
Melchizedek). The author thus shows the influence not only of Hellenistic
philosophy (in particular Platonism, with its concept of earthly realities as
mere shadows or reflections of true, heavenly ones), but also of emergent
rabbinic Judaism.
Daniel Wallace - Hebrews: Introduction, Argument, and Outline
http://www.bible.org/docs/soapbox/hebotl.htm
Daniel Wallace - The Argument of Hebrews
http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/heb/hebrews.htm
New American Bible – Introduction to (and text of) Hebrews
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/hebrews/intro.htm
Numerous useful links from ‘The Text This Week’:
http://www.textweek.com/epistlesrevelation/hebrews.htm
Scott David Foutz – Study Helps on Hebrews
http://www.theologywebsite.com/nt/hebrews.shtml
Introductions to the New Testament and other relevant books and articles:
http://www.religion-online.org