PERFECTION
PERDITION
6
OR
certainty that Paul could not have written such elegant Greek had he desired to do so. On the other hand we may ask
why he should have so altered his style when writing to Hebrew Christians? And there seems to be no definite
answer. Coming to (2) which has often been put forward by expositors as making the Pauline authorship
impossible, we will first quote the verse in full:
`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' (Heb. 2:3).
Nothing is clearer than Paul's independent apostleship received from the risen Christ separately from the
Twelve, but here the writer states that he was indebted to those who heard the Lord, namely the Twelve. There are
several points which must be considered before we can come to a satisfactory conclusion. The `us' can be regarded
as the editorial `we', the first person plural of exhortation being used right throughout this epistle. Note in the
immediate context `we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we
should let them slip ... how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation'. In such a context `Confirmed unto us'
is perfectly natural, whereas `confirmed unto you' would not have been. It is possible that these Hebrew Christians
were not the apostle's converts. They easily could have come to a knowledge of Christ from saved Jews at
Pentecost who were afterwards scattered through persecution (Acts 8:1,4; 11:19). The latter could have come
directly under the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus, and thus be truthfully described as `those who heard Him'. We
have the antithesis between the word of the law, spoken at Sinai through angels, and the special aspect of salvation
which is characteristic of this letter, that of the salvation of the soul (10:32-39) first spoken by the Lord (Matt.
16:24-28 which Paul never could have heard), and confirmed `unto us', that is, Hebrew Christians generally, by
those that heard Him. It is significant that one of these, the apostle Peter, develops this in his first epistle (1 Pet.
1:6-9), linking it with the goal of the tested believer's faith, not his initial salvation from sin. The author of Hebrews
had in view not so much himself, as his readers. It is because the word salvation here has been construed as the
salvation of the sinner, rather than the perfecting of the believer, that the problem has arisen. Most certainly Paul
received the Gospel of grace to the sinner apart from any human instrumentality (Gal. 1:11-12), but salvation in this
sense is not found in Hebrews. It should be remembered that the typical teaching in this epistle does not start with
the bondage in Egypt and deliverance through the blood of the Passover lamb (which it would have done had the
salvation of the sinner been in view), but with the account of a redeemed people journeying through the wilderness
with its tests and difficulties, to Canaan, the land of promise. Hence the particular suitability of that aspect of
salvation, that of the soul, which so intimately pertains to the saved, having reward in view at the judgment seat of
Christ.
From time to time various others, beside Paul, have been put forward as the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews.
Tertullian was the first who suggested Barnabas. As a Cypriot and a Levite, he was evidently a man of standing at
Jerusalem and would have had an insight into the ritual of the Tabernacle and Temple. He was named by the
Apostles as the `son of consolation' in Acts 4:36, and the word `consolation' is the same as `exhortation' in Hebrews
13:22. We have no other early evidence beside Tertullian, nor do we know anything of the capability of Barnabas as
a writer. The apocryphal epistle attributed to him does not help as there are too many divergencies between it and
the Hebrew epistle. Luther advocated Apollos as author and has been followed by others including Kurtz, Farrar,
Alford, and today T. W. Manson, W. F. Howard and C. Spicq. That Apollos was an eloquent man and mighty in the
Scriptures, we are assured by the New Testament, but again we have no writing of his to compare with, so this is
really nothing more than clever guesswork. Harnack maintained that Aquila and Priscilla wrote the epistle, with
Priscilla as the main partner, but against this we have 11:32 `... the time would fail me telling ...' where the participle
diegoumenon, `telling', is masculine, and once more we have nothing written by Aquila and Priscilla with which to
compare the letter to the Hebrews. Sir William Ramsay hazarded Philip the deacon, while Calvin thought of Luke
or Clement of Rome as the author, and in the case of Luke we are on different ground, for we have the Acts of the
Apostles and his Gospel with which to compare.
Professor F.F. Bruce writes:
`Stylistically Hebrews is closer to the writings of Luke than to anything else in the New Testament, but this may
be because our author and Luke approximate more closely than other New Testament writers to the model of
literary Hellenistic - our author even more than Luke' (The Epistle to the Hebrews, p. xli).
Many scholars have noticed the remarkable likeness of Luke's Greek to that of Hebrews.