Le brusque changement de ton que l'on observe, dans l'épître aux Hébreux, entre les dernières phrases du ch. xii et les premières du ch. xiii a porté certains exégètes à contester l'authenticité du ch. xiii et à considérer celui-ci, en tout ou en partie, comme un morceau hétérogène, ajouté maladroitement au beau discours de Héb. i–xii. D'autres auteurs se sont mis en peine de défendre l'authenticité du chapitre, mais, comme il arrive dans les controverses, ils sont restés tributaires de la façon dont le problème avait été posé: le ch. xiii continue pour eux à constituer un morceau à part, que l'on peut étudier séparément. C'est ainsi que deux monographies récentes, dont les auteurs prennent position en faveur de l'authenticité d'Héb xiii, considèrent cependant ce chapitre comme une unité littéraire distincte et le prennent comme sujet d'étude.

The problems surrounding the integrity of II Corinthians vi. 14–vii. I are well known. In the first place, verses vi. 11–13 and vii. 2–4 flow together rather easily as a single piece of personal appeal. ‘My heart is opened wide toward you…In a like reciprocation, I speak as to children, you also open wide (your hearts toward me)…Make room for me.’ The parenesis of vi. 14–vii. I abruptly breaks this flow of thought. Moreover, vi. 14–vii. I is a self-contained unit, which begins with a concrete prohibition supported by five balanced rhetorical questions, which in turn is supported by a catena of Old Testament passages, and concludes with a general parenesis. Nothing within this passage seems even remotely related, either in language or concept, to the personal appeal within which it is embedded.

In the continuing discussion of the possible role of Christian prophets in the formation of the tradition of the words of Jesus, reference continues to be made to the relevance or irrelevance of the words of the exalted Christ transmitted by the prophet John in the Apocalypse. They remain the only un-disputed example from the first century of prophetic utterances made in the name of Christ in the first person, and for advocates of the creative activity of the Christian prophets they are therefore invaluable evidence that such utterances could be made. Their use as evidence for the role of prophecy in the formation of the Synoptic tradition involves, admittedly, additional assumptions not easily demonstrable. We must suppose that John's prophecy is typical of the content of early Christian prophecy in general, and also that this late first-century work is faithfully representative of the earlier prophets whom alone we can suppose to have been responsible for originating logia which actually entered the Synoptic tradition. The uniqueness of John's prophetic status vis-à-vis that of the church prophets has been cogently argued by D. Hill, and it seems that at least we cannot infer otherwise un-attested characteristics of early Christian prophecy in general from the contents of the Apocalypse alone. In any case the Apocalypse is surely untypical in being a lengthy and closely integrated literary composition, with its own distinctive stylistic traits. Partly for this reason the words of Christ reported in it are for the most part quite unsuitable for transference to the lips of the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition, at least without substantial adaptation.