Who Wrote Hebrews?

As THE clergy of the church becomes more liberally educated, there is a growing tendency to raise a sophisticated eyebrow when mention is made of what Paul said in the book of He­brews. This attitude may seem quite harmless un­til it places the certain findings of historical re­search in juxtaposition with the plain statements of Ellen G. White and postu­lates that we must reject the one or the other.

In an effort to obviate the dilemma some have suggested that Ellen G. White, while considering Paul as the author, never ac­tually says that he wrote the book. How­ever, in at least one publication she said, "The apostle Paul writes," and then quoted a passage from Hebrews.

In all candor it must be admitted that the minister is faced with a problem, and he should hold an intelligent and tenable position on the subject.

Very early in the history of the church it was conceded that the authorship of He­brews was uncertain, which was doubtless one cause of the persistent reluctance to admit the Epistle into the canon. How­ever, it does have a prominent place in the attention of the early churchmen.

Before the end of the second century, Irenaeus, first witness of a grouping of thirteen Pauline Epistles, had doubts about Hebrews, whereas his contemporary, Tertullian, ascribes it to Barnabas. Also contemporary, Clement of Alexandria ac­cords it a place among the fourteen Paul­ine Epistles,' and he was hesitantly sup­ported in this opinion a century later by Eusebius, and another century later by Athanasius, and finally by the Council of Laodicea in A.D. 363.³ One might risk the generalization that the Eastern Church generally considered Paul its author, though not necessarily its writer, while the Western Church did not connect Paul with the book until the fourth century.'

The matter lay at rest for a thousand years, during which Paul was generally ac­cepted as the author; then, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, renewed study, both within and outside of the Cath­olic Church, brought it back into the arena of controversy. Today critical schol­arship, though by no means unanimously, holds that Paul could not have written the book of Hebrews.

Frederic W. Farrar ascribes it to Apol­los." R. C. H. Lenski is very explicit: "Paul did not write Hebrews,' thus following Martin Luther, founder of his church, who also believed Apollos was the author.' Conybeare and Howson admit their un­certainty but seem to lean toward Barna­has.' Albert Barnes seems certain that He­brews was written by Paul,' and Adam Clarke, Nathaniel Lardner, Bishop Light­foot, and many others listed by both Clarke and Lardner agree." Plumer says, "The evidence of the Pauline origin is very strong.'

It is not the purpose of this writing to list or discuss the arguments for or against the Pauline authorship of Hebrews. But the writer cannot resist the impulse to in­troduce two thoughts. If the radical differ­ence in the Greek style between Hebrews and the Epistles of Paul is conclusive testi­mony against Paul's authorship, then it would seem that the many witnesses in his favor, men to whom the Greek language was a living language, in many cases their mother tongue, would have been con­vinced that the style in Hebrews must bar Paul as its author.

There are early witnesses to the theory that Paul wrote Hebrews originally in the Hebrew language. The two strongest ar­guments against this seem to be that all the Old Testament quotations in the Epis­tle are taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew, and that alliteration in the Greek forbids the theory that it is a translation. But it seems quite natural that the translator, when he came to Bible quotations, would copy the Greek from the Septuagint rather than to make a translation of his own. As to alliteration —will the objectors, following this logic, also conclude that alliteration in Romans 12:2, be not conformed but be trans­formed, proves that Paul wrote the book of Romans in English? Eusebius, about three hundreds years after Christ, says, "Paul having written to the Hebrews in their own language? and then suggests that Luke or Clement of Rome may have trans­lated it into Greek; and nearly a century later Jerome, who like Eusebius was not always certain about the matter, concludes, 'He wrote as a Hebrew to the Hebrews, pure Hebrew, it being his own lan­guage.'' "