Truth
On
Tough
Texts
ISSUE 12–
July/2006
Does the Authorship of Hebrews Matter?
(2)
II
Peter 3:15-16
As we submitted last month, there is an
overall nonchalant attitude toward the issue of
the authorship of the Book of Hebrews. It’s absolutely
unthinkable that God would “hide” the authorship of such
a key book of His Word.
We, therefore,
submitted first the evidence offered by Peter and,
second, by the Early Church. In this conclusion, we
would offer three further evidences of Pauline
authorship, a conclusion, and one final consideration
that is rarely addressed and which will also serve to
set the stage for next month’s tott.
The Testimony of
Paul
It is
consistently argued that Paul was the Apostle to the
Gentiles, not to the Jews, so
he would have had no reason to write this Epistle. While
it’s true that Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles, he
also clearly considered himself “an Hebrew of Hebrews”
(Phil.3:5). As he also makes plain in his Epistle to the
Romans (9:3; 10:1), he had a great burden for his fellow
Jews. He consistently taught that the Gospel should go
“to the Jew first” (Rom. 1:16). In fact, he always went
to the synagogue first when he arrived in a new city
(Acts 17:1-2). It certainly stands to reason that Paul
would write a detailed exposition of the doctrine of
Christ for the benefit of his fellow Christian Jews. God
revealed the depths of the doctrine of the New Covenant
to Paul, so it seems obvious that he would be the one to
pass it on to both Jew and Gentile. Arthur W. Pink
comments on this point:
Though he was
distinctively and essentially the “apostle of the
Gentiles” (Romans 11:13), yet his ministry was by no
means confined to them, as the book of Acts clearly
shows. At the time of his apprehension the Lord said,
“He is a chosen
vessel unto Me, to bear My Name before the Gentiles, and
kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts
9:15)[i].
Was the commission
that the Lord Jesus Christ left for His apostles, to go
to the Gentiles only, or to Israel only?
No, it was to all nations. It had no bound but was
wholly catholic [that is, universal or general]. Peter
was “the apostle of the Circumcision” (cf. Gal. 2:7);
yet it was he, first of all, who proclaimed the Gospel
of Christ to the Gentiles, in the house of Cornelius
(Acts 10). God, who is not respecter of persons, is not
limited in the employment of His messengers. He gave
Paul the apostolic, prophetic, and evangelistic gifts.
He also gave him the teaching gift. Could He not, then,
have used him in this capacity to the Hebrews, rather
than in that of prophet or apostle announcing the future
of some new revelation?[ii]
The Testimony of Internal
Evidence
Added to the
foregoing, there are several internal pointers to Paul’s
authorship in the Epistle itself.
First, style
differences are not as insurmountable as some critics
would have us believe. A common objection to Pauline
authorship is that the style of this letter is
supposedly far different than Paul’s. Ignored, however,
are the similarities. Consider, for example, several
parallels with other Pauline Epistles, such as 5:13
(“For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word
of righteousness: for he is a babe”) with I Cor. 3:2 (“I
have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto
ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye
able”). Or how about 10:1 (“For the law having a shadow
of good things to come, and not the very image of the
things, can never with those sacrifices which they
offered year by year continually make the comers
thereunto perfect”) with Col. 2.17 (“Which are a shadow
of things to come; but the body is of Christ”)? We could
also note 8:6, 9 with Gal. 3:19-20; 13:10 with I
Corinthians 9:13 and II Corinthians 10:18; and
others.
There is also the
interesting similarity between Romans, Galatians, and
Hebrews, all of which quote Habakkuk 2:4: “the just
shall live by his faith” (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb.
10:38). Does this have no
significance?
Should we
also ignore 13:25 (“Grace be with you all”), a statement
that is so typical of Paul that it appears multiple
times, in various forms, in every one of his Epistles?
Is not this as good as a signature? Compare it with the
closing of Paul’s other 13 letters: Rom. 16:24; I Cor.
16:23-24; II Cor. 13:14; Gal. 6:18: Eph. 6:24;
Phil.4:23; Col. 4:18; I Thes. 5:28; II Thes. 3:18; I
Tim. 6:21; II Tim. 4:22; Titus 3:15; Phile. 25. We ask
again: Is not this as good as a
signature?
Ironically, the
so-called “stylistic differences” argument is voiced by
the liberal commentator mentioned at the end of Part 1
of this article who denies Pauline authorship of
Ephesians. But just as his ridiculous, Bible-dishonoring
attacks are easily answered by the fact that different
letters call for different emphases, words, and even
style, so it is with Hebrews.
Now we readily
admit that there are some style differences. A notable
one is that Hebrews is an extremely polished letter,
much more so than Paul’s other letters. This is easily
answered, however, by two points. First, most of Paul’s
other letters were written earlier, during a busy life
filled with traveling, conflict, struggle, and danger.
In contrast, Hebrews was a later letter, one which Paul
could have taken much more time to compose.
One other comment
on the style question is in order, of which a friend of
mine reminded me.[iii] Higher
critics have been challenging Scripture for many years.
One of the ways they do so is by rejecting the
traditional view that Isaiah wrote the book that bears
his name and instead insist on a dual- (or even tri-)
authorship. And what is one of their major arguments?
Style! The point to be made
is that while conservative scholars won’t allow Isaiah
to be ripped apart (or while we’re at it, the Pentateuch
by the long ago refuted “Documentary Hypothesis” of four
authors), then why do they entertain any doubt about
Hebrews for supposed style
differences?
Second, as J.
Sidlow Baxter offers,[iv] we could even
concede, without doing any damage to Paul’s authorship,
that Luke aided Paul in polishing the letter, just
putting some finishing touches on it. Alternately, we
could concede, as noted scholar R. Laird Harris writes,
that this is “a genuine Epistle of Paul with Barnabus as
his secretary.”[v]
Further, Paul was
writing to different people and with a different
purpose, which would in-turn demand different language.
Another example of different language, in fact, is I
Corinthians, which contains expressions that do not
occur in any other of the Apostle’s letters. This was
part of Paul’s genius. Baxter offers another
illustration using the Apostle John:
What a difference
between the Greek of the Gospel according to John and
the Apocalypse!—yet on weighty evidence, both external
and internal, John is accepted by first rank scholars as
the author or both.[vi]
Let us also note
again the closing of the letter. Who can deny that this
is Paul?
And I beseech you,
brethren, suffer the word of exhortation: for I have
written a letter unto you in few words. Know ye that our
brother Timothy is set at liberty; with whom, if he come
shortly, I will see you. Salute all them that have the
rule over you, and all the saints. They of Italy salute
you. Grace be with you all. Amen.
(13:22-25)
This leads us
right to a second internal evidence.
Second, as noted in 13:23 above, the
writer refers to “our brother Timothy,” which is typical
of Paul since Timothy was his convert, disciple, and
co-worker. As Owen, Gill, and Barnes all point out, in
light of the fact that Timothy was with Paul in Rome
during the latter’s imprisonment (Phil. 1:13, 14,
2:19-24), who but Paul would
not only mention Timothy, who was unknown to the
letter’s recipients, but also make special note of him
being released from prison? This is, in fact, as the old
expression goes, “a dead giveaway” of the author’s
identity.
Third, as Baxter
observes, there is the striking use of the pronoun “we”
in addressing his readers, “as though he speaks
representatively of a group (5:11; 6:9, 11; 13:18, 23).”
This is characteristic of Paul alone, as it “is never
found in John, Peter, James, [or] Jude.” Baxter
explains:
It often occurs,
of course, in verses where the writer includes himself
with his readers in some large class, as for instance in
I John 1:7, “If we walk in the light,” where the
writer includes himself with all Christian
believers; but not once is it used by the writer as
associating others cooperatively with himself. Yet it is
found everywhere in Paul’s epistles, and again in
Hebrews.[vii]
Fourth, the writer speaks of himself in
2:3 as one who had not witnessed Jesus earthly ministry.
While this verse is used by critics to “prove” that Paul
wasn’t the author, it actually indicates he
was! It is argued that the verse implies that
Paul never heard the Lord,
which, of course, he did on the road to Damascus. But
the verse goes deeper than just a single incident: “How
shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which
at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was
confirmed unto us by them that heard
him” (emphasis added). The
picture here is obviously what people heard and saw over
a period of time, that is, during Jesus’ earthly
ministry, nothing of which, to our knowledge, did Paul
ever witness. Paul didn’t witness Jesus’ miracles or
teaching, but others did and subsequently “confirmed” it
to Paul and his
readers.
Fifth
and finally, we might also add here that the date of
writing (62-65) fits Pauline authorship. Since there is
no mention of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70
A.D., the letter had to be written before that. This
coincides with Paul’s writings. His last letter (II
Tim.), for example, was written in about 68 A.
D.
The Testimony of
Alternative Authors
If Paul didn’t
write Hebrews, who did? Many alternatives have been
offered through the centuries, but no more than four are
worth mention: Luke, Barnabus, Clement of Rome, and
Apollos.
Luke is, if not
impossible, highly improbable since he was a Gentile and
would, therefore, not have been qualified to write such
a letter, much less been accepted by Jewish
readers.
Barnabus, on
the other, was a Jew, a Levite, in fact, but the only
ancient writer to even suggest him was Tertullian
(160-230) and he had no proof.
How about Clement
of Rome, who we know wrote an excellent letter to the
Corinthians? For one thing, there are absolutely no
similarities between his letter to the Corinthians and
the Epistle of Hebrews, and for another, there is no
ancient support for his authorship.
Finally, Apollos
has been suggested. The first one to suggest him was
actually Martin Luther, but again with no ancient
support. Frankly, Apollos is almost as ridiculous a
suggestion as Priscilla, who also has been offered
because of “‘certain dainty feminine touches,’ which a
lady expositor thinks she has seen in
it”![viii]
The truth of the
matter in all these and all others is that there is not
one shred of evidence that any of them penned this
Epistle. Men’s conjectures have served only to muddy the
water.
Conclusion
To conclude, I
offer three points.
First, one
question that still remains is, “Why didn’t Paul just
say he was the author of the Epistle and clear up
any confusion?” For one thing, there wasn’t
any confusion in that day. As we’ve demonstrated,
Paul’s authorship becomes clear to the discerning
reader, and Paul’s readers were discerning. For another,
however, it is quite reasonable that Paul didn’t mention
his name “up front” because it would have immediately
put off certain Jews who were prejudiced against him and
viewed him as having become an enemy of the Mosaic Law.
Both Matthew Poole[ix] and Harry
Ironside make this point, but Ironside makes it much
better:
Paul is here
writing to his own brethren after the flesh. They were
greatly prejudiced against him and his ministry, though
he yearned after them with all the fervor as a devoted
brotherly love. Yet many of them repudiated his
apostleship and feared his attitude toward their ancient
ritual. He had tried to overcome this opposition. Upon
the occasion of his last visit to Jerusalem [Acts
21:18-40], he went so far, in accordance with the
suggestion of James, as to pay for the sacrificial
offering of certain brethren about to be released from
Nazarite vows. But God would not permit this, for it
would have been a virtual denial of the sufficiency of
the one offering of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the
cross, and so the divinely permitted insurrection
against Paul saved him from this apparent inconsistency.
Probably during the time of his release, after his first
imprisonment and before his second arrest (cf. Heb.
13:23), he was chosen of God to write this letter
calling upon believers in the Lord Jesus to separate
completely from Judaism, as the entire system was about
to be definitely rejected with the destruction of the
Jewish temple so soon to take place. Paul therefore acts
in accordance with the principle laid down elsewhere,
“Unto the Jews I became a Jew that I might gain the
Jews” (I Cor. 9:20). And so he hides his identity for
the time being and does not insist upon his own
apostolic authority, but rather makes his appeal to the
Old Testament Scriptures, in the light, of course, of
the new revelation.[x]
Second, I think E.
Schuyler English best summarizes our
discussion:
We recapitulate:
(1) Peter, writing to the Hebrews, declares that Paul
wrote to them also, a communication that teaches the
same truths and has some things hard to be understood;
(2) the Epistle to the Hebrews is a letter that teaches
the same truth and contains in it some things hard to be
understood. In other words, (a) Paul wrote to the
Hebrews; (b) we have a letter to the Hebrews; and
(c) there is no other letter to the Hebrews
extant. Therefore this must be Paul’s letter. If not,
where is it?[xi]
Third, and
finally, we come full circle back to our original
question: “Does all this really matter? Why is the
authorship of Hebrews important?” As stated when we
began, without knowledge of the author, we have a New Testament letter with
no apostolic authority and which therefore simply cannot
be Scripture.
In his book, Inspiration
and Canonicity of the Bible,
scholar R. Laird Harris makes a vital point concerning
how the Early Church recognized
Scripture:
Our conclusion is
that the Early Church was not misled when it used the
principle that that is inspired which is apostolic. They
clearly included in their concept that which was
prepared under direction of the
apostles.[xii]
We must
conclude, then, if that which is inspired is apostolic,
it must also be true that that which is not apostolic is
not inspired. I submit, therefore, that for the Epistle
of Hebrews to be inspired we must know the Apostolic authority behind it, and that
authority can be no one else but the Apostle
Paul.
One Final
Consideration
In his
classic Halley’s Bible Handbook, Henry Halley makes a very significant
statement:
In the King James
Version [Hebrews] is called, in the title, the Epistle
of Paul. In the American Revised Version [ASV of 1901]
it is anonymous, because in the older manuscripts, found
since the King James Translation was made, the Author is
not named.
While some
readers would conclude that Halley says that to
deny Pauline authorship and
attack the KJV, that is not the case, for he goes on to
add:
On the whole, the
traditional view, held through the centuries, and still
widely held, is that Paul was the
Author.[xiii]
Why is that
significant? We submit that it is so because Halley
rightly states the traditional view, the view
that is quite frankly obvious and has been recognized
through the ages. It was not until the rise of
rationalistic textual criticism that this view was
seriously challenged. It was, in
fact, not until the rise of so-called “older and more
reliable manuscripts,” which omit the traditional view
of Pauline authorship, that this view was categorically
denied. Does no one see a problem
here?
That
question serves to prepare us for the question of next
month’s anniversary issue of tott:
“What’s Really At Stake in the
Textual Issue?”
Dr. J. D. Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible Church
*
* *
I
will give you this as a most solemn observation, that
there never was anything of false doctrine brought into
the church, or anything of false worship imposed upon
the church, but either it was by neglecting the
Scripture, or by introducing something above the
Scripture.
— Puritan John
Collins
*
* *
We endeavour to teach the
Scriptures, but, as everybody else claims to do the
same, and we wish to be known and read of all men, we
say distinctly that the theology of the Pastors’ College
is Puritanic. We know nothing of the new "ologies"; we stand by the old ways. The
improvements brought forth by what is called “modern
thought” we regard with suspicion, and believe them to
be, at best, dilutions of the truth, and most of them
old, rusted heresies, tinkered up again, and sent abroad
with a new face put upon them, to repeat the mischief
which they wrought in ages past . . . Both our
experience and our reading of the Scriptures confirm us
in the belief of the unfashionable doctrines of grace;
and among us, upon those grand fundamentals, there is no
uncertain sound . . . Those who think otherwise can go
elsewhere; but for our own part, we shall never consent
to leave the doctrinal teaching of the Institution vague
and undefined, after the manner of the bigoted
liberalism of the present day. This is our College
motto: “I Hold And Am Held.”
C. H. Spurgeon’s
Autobiography (Pasedena, TX: Pilgrim Publications,
1992 reprint), Vol. II, pp.
149-150
*
* *
The world depends on promotion,
prestige, and the influence of money and important
people. The Church depends on prayer, the power of the
Spirit, humility, sacrifice, and service. The Church
that imitates the world may seem to succeed in time, but
it will turn to ashes in eternity. The Church in the
book of Acts had none of the “secrets of success” that
seem so important today. They owned no property; they
had no influence in government; they had no treasury . .
. ; their leaders were ordinary men without special
education in the accepted schools; they had no
attendance contests; they brought in no celebrities; and
yet they turned the world upside down.
Warren
Wiersbe, We Wise
(Wheaton: Victor Books, 1983), pp.
49-50
NOTES
[i]
Arthur W. Pink, An Exposition of
Hebrews.
[ii] E. Schuyler
English, Studies in the Epistle to the
Hebrews (Findlay, OH: Dunham
Publishing Company, 1955), p. 23 (emphasis in the
original).
[iii] Thanks to my
friend and colleague Dr. James Bearss, pastor and
director of On Target Ministry, an international
education ministry founded in 2006
(www.OnTargetMinistry.org).
[iv] J. Sidlow
Baxter, Explore the Book
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960),, p.
279
[v] R. Laird
Harris, Inspiration and Canonicity of the
Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1957), p. 269.
[vii] Baxter, p. 277
(emphasis in the original).
[viii] Cited in H.
A. Ironside, Studies in the Epistle to the Hebrews
and the Epistle to Titus
(Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1932, 1958), p.
8.
[ix] Matthew
Poole, Matthew Poole’s Commentary of the Bible
(electronic edition in The Online
Bible).
[xi] English, p. 26
(emphasis added).
[xiii] Henry H.
Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook, New Revised Edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1965), p.
646.
