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The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Pauline Letter Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Charles P. Anderson
Charles P. Anderson
Affiliation:
The University of British Columbia
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Extract

Scholars today are largely agreed that the Epistle to the Hebrews circulated independently for a lengthy period before gaining admission to the canon, which came about only through the fiction of Pauline authorship. The view that the Pauline corpus and Hebrews were known and used independently of one another prior to the latter's incorporation in the former is so widely accepted that one hesitates to question it. Yet, when the basis of this position is examined, it is a bit surprising to find how slender is the evidence on which the present consensus is based. Moreover, such evidence as there is does not point unequivocally to the conclusions now so commonly drawn, or is capable of other interpretations. Therefore, there may be grounds for a review and reappraisal of the evidence of the sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , October 1966 , pp. 429 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966

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References

1 Origen would hardly refer to men personally known to at least some, probably many, of his own contemporaries (see H.E. 6.14.8–9) as ἀρχαῖοι ἄνδρες.

2 F. G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Fasc. III, Supp. Text (1936), xivf.

3 In the Sahidic version, the alternative was followed, with Hebrews placed after 2 Corinthians. In the archetype of B, Hebrews followed Galatians. (Hatch, W. H. P., “The Position of Hebrews in the Canon of the New Testament,” HTR (1936), xivfGoogle Scholar.

4 In this regard it is significant that the West, after finally accepting Hebrews as canonical, did not allot it a place among the letters previously accepted as Pauline but added Hebrews at the end of the existing corpus of thirteen letters (ibid., 144). Of further interest are the stichometric notations, in a cursive hand apparently belonging to the early third century — so Kenyon, op. cit., xii —, found at the end of the individual epistles in P46. These figures were apparently derived not from P46, but from earlier copies of the epistles (ibid.; Jack Finegan, “The Original Form of the Pauline Collection,” HTR 49 (1956), 100f.). Unfortunately, there is no way of determining whether the earlier copies were assembled in a single corpus, though the practice of measuring lines does seem to require the use of the codex, which in this case implies a collection of epistles.

5 The references by Western writers to Paul's letters to seven churches, or to thirteen epistles of Paul, seem to have a polemical basis, being intended to exclude the identification of other epistles, including Hebrews, as Pauline. When Hebrews did come to be accepted as Paul's, the Pauline canon was said to consist of fourteen epistles.

6 Eusebius writes that Irenaeus mentioned and quoted from Hebrews and the Wisdom of Solomon in “a little book of various discourses,” but nothing is said about the authenticity of either (H.E. 5.26). According to the Muratorian fragment, Rome considered Wisdom canonical.

7 John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament (1942), 57f., 60.

8 W. C. van Unnik holds that the author of the Gospel of Truth, who he is convinced was Valentinus, knew and used Hebrews along with the Pauline epistles and other N.T. writings (see his essay in The Jung Codex, ed. and tr. by F. L. Cross [1955]) 81–129. Other sources whose authors may have known Hebrews include Barnabas and II Clement. See The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers.

9 E. g., Finegan, op. cit., 86; C. Leslie Mitton, The Formation of the Pauline Corpus (1955), 17f. For the evidence of I Clement's dependence on these epistles, see The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (1905), 37–48. According to A. E. Barnett (Paul Becomes a Literary Influence [1941], 88–104), Clement also knew 2 Cor., Gal., Eph., and Phil.

10 Clement's use of Hebrews is supposedly explained by the theory that Rome was the original recipient of Hebrews. However, a circular argument is involved here, since that theory depends partially on the employment of Hebrews in I Clement.

11 Hebrews was moved from an early position among the letters to churches (P46, Sahidic version, archetype of B) to a place following the letters to churches (i.e., after 2 Thessalonians (א, A, B) to its final position at the end of the corpus, i.e., after Philemon (the common Western and Byzantine position). See Hatch, op. cit.

12 A possible exception is the reference to Timothy in 13:23. It has often been suggested that 13:22–25 is a postscript, perhaps added to secure canonical standing for Hebrews. It is difficult to believe that this one reference would have been sufficient to convince the church that Paul wrote Hebrews, unless there were other, stronger reasons for thinking so.