Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 68:272 (Oct 1911)
Article: Hebrews A Petrine Document
Author: Lester Reddin

BSac 68:272 (Oct 1911) p. 684

Hebrews A Petrine Document1

Lester Reddin, B.D.

The wise man said, “Of making many books there is no end”; and the same remark may be extended to the making of many theories concerning the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Perhaps there has not been so great a latitude of conjecture concerning the authorship of any other book in the New Testament canon. The vocabulary, literary style, internal references to persons and conditions, and early tradition have all been pressed hard for testimony concerning the identity of the person who wrote this “word of exhortation.” And still there is ample room for further legitimate investigation on this point. Indeed, it would be hard to find, in all the range of New Testament epistolary literature, a better opportunity for the play of one’s critical imagination than is found in this Epistle. One might decide on any Christian in the early church who was active between 52 and 95 a.d., and not be dangerously heterodox. If Paul “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God” (1 Tim. 1:1), “by the will of God” (2 Tim. 1:1), “according to the faith of God’s elect” (Titus 1:1), did not write the Pastoral Epistles, there are evident forgeries in the opening verses of these Epistles; if Peter did not write the two Epistles which bear his name, some other writer, in attaching the Apostle’s name to these Epistles, has committed an unpardonable forgery. But not so with the

BSac 68:272 (Oct 1911) p. 685

Epistle to the Hebrews; the writer has nowhere given his name, and he has so concealed his identity that no satisfactory solution of the problem has yet been reached.

The names of Paul, Barnabas, Apollos, Luke, Silas, Clement of Rome, Prisca and Aquila, have each been mentioned in this connection; and it is a significant fact that each of these (with, perhaps, the single exception of Clement of Rome) has his modern scholarly advocate. Stuart, Wordsworth, Ebrard, Delitzsch, and others contend cither for a Pauline authorship or for a Lukan authorship under Pauline inspiration; B. Weiss, Renan, Zahn, Salmon, and others hold to the view of Tertullian that the Epistle was written by Barnabas; Pflei-derer, Alford, S. Davidson, Farrar, and Moulton agree with Luther in attributing it to Apollos; Godet and a few German scholars think it was written by Silas, the companion of Paul; Harnack stands alone in the view that it was written by Prisca and Aquila, especially Prisca. But notwithstanding this diversity of conjecture, the only two of the views just mentioned that can make any fair c...