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1. Hebrews is full of unknowns, which means we could write many stories from its mysteries. And many have, including scholars. The more disciplined we are, the more generic its message becomes -- although its original meaning was almost certainly specific to a concrete situation.
This book will play out a plausible scenario. It means to paint a vivid picture of what might have been, even though it must remain somewhat hypothetical. Just keep in mind that virtually every inch of Hebrews is debated. This is a book meant to bring the book of Hebrews to life.
2. Before I give the justification, here is the scenario under which we will explore Hebrews. We will sit somewhat lightly to it, knowing it is just one of many possible hypotheses.
Not too long after the destruction of the temple, someone from the Pauline circle -- perhaps someone like Apollos -- writes a sermon to the churches of Rome to encourage them to persist in their faith. Those churches were primarily Gentile in nature, so they were converts not only to Christ but to Christian Judaism and the God of Israel.
The author is urging them not to fall away from the living God (3:12). I don't think they were necessarily in great danger of returning to paganism. But it must have been a serious enough possibility to merit this strong exhortation (cf. 6:3-12).
While the earliest Christians clearly understood Jesus' death to have atoning value, they had not really fully understood it yet as a wholesale replacement for the temple. This was the great insight of Hebrews -- that the temple was no longer necessary at all for atonement. They need not be discouraged about its destruction. The reality of atonement was something far greater.
Hebrews thus takes a potential source of faith crisis -- how can the God of Israel be legitimate if he lets his temple be destroyed by the Romans? And the author turns it into a matter of great confidence in Jesus -- the temple was never the truest temple, which is in heaven. The sacrifices done there were always shadowy illustrations of the one sacrifice of Christ that was coming. The priests there were never the ultimate priests that Christ is, who has an indestructible life.
While we will try not to force this scenario on the text, this is the picture we will keep in mind as we imagine the writing of this sermon, also making note of other readings along the way.
3. Now for the backstory.
It is not too controversial to suggest that a church at Rome or the churches of Rome in general might have been the destination of Hebrews. The expression, "those from Italy greet you" (13:24) isn't much to go on. Does it refer to Priscilla and Aquila? All we can say for certain is that it could.
It makes sense that if you are writing to Italy you might send greetings from some individuals from there. That's probably the majority hunch, but it is just a hunch. Hebrews seems to have been known early on at Rome. The Christians there seemed to have better insight into its authorship than elsewhere -- namely, they knew it wasn't Paul. Other regions succumbed more easily to the starry-eyed sentimentalism that makes traditions out of wishful thinking.
A majority have also concluded that it was a "sent sermon." 13:22 styles the book a "word of exhortation," which we know from elsewhere in the New Testament was a sermon (cf. Acts 13:15). The book has no letter introduction, even though it ends much like one of Paul's letters. It begins more like a homily. So it is not unreasonable to see it as a sermon that was mailed as a letter to the churches at Rome.
4. The author is not named. A "Timothy" is mentioned in 13:23. If it is the same Timothy of Paul's fame, then that puts Hebrews earlier than the late first century. And it suggests that the author is in the Pauline circle. That cast of characters possibly included people like Titus, Silas, Luke, Priscilla, Aquila, and Apollos.
Why not Paul? Again, the argument is not foolproof. On the surface, the style is rather more "high Greek" than Paul's letters. It's lofty style is more along the lines of Luke-Acts. It is fashionable to make recourse to secretaries these days to wiggle out of the different style of letters like Ephesians and Titus. Fair enough. But the style isn't Paul's just the same.
(I used to get so frustrated about what I see as rampant sentimentalism even among scholars. The arguments are ingenius, the motives less than truth-seeking.)
The strongest argument against Paul is 2:2, in which the author locates himself as a second generation believer. He does not see himself as a direct witness to Jesus. Paul, as we know so well, emphasized that he himself was an apostle who had seen the risen Lord (1 Cor. 9:1). He received his understanding of the gospel directly from Jesus (Gal. 1:12). It's hard to hear Paul distancing himself from Jesus like that.
The theology is related but distinct from Paul's. For example, Paul's references to the Law tend to focus on those boundary issues that distinguished Jew from Gentile. Hebrews knows none of that. References to the Law in Hebrews largely focus on the sacrificial system -- something Paul never does.
There is a reason Apollos is most often suggested these days as a possible author, and its because of the cumulative drip of superficial parallels between Hebrews and the writings of Philo. Apollos was from Alexandria, and it seems difficult to suppose that a young man growing up there would not have absorbed from the waters of the Great Synagogue some whiff of Philo's influence, even if superficial.
Ultimately, we just don't know. The author self-identifies grammatically in 11:32 as a male. Intelligent arguments have been made for why that is not an absolute argument for a male author. I would be delighted if Priscilla had been the author, but it just doesn't seem the most obvious proposal at all. The audience seems to know the author, so there doesn't seem to be any conspiracy to hide a female author in play. So I'll go with the most likely and say the author was a male.
(Insert more condescending remarks about scholarly sentimentalism.)
5. I would be somewhat unusual to think that the audience was primarily Gentile, non-Jewish. However, I'll turn the tables and blame superficial thinking on the more common assumption that the audience must have been Jewish. "How would a Gentile have known so much about the Old Testament?" is like the worst argument ever.
I'm not Jewish. I know a lot about the Old Testament. The moment a Gentile believed in Jesus, the Jewish Scriptures immediatelly became their Scriptures. And many of the first Gentile converts had probably been God-fearers to begin with. They knew the Scriptures even before they believed on Jesus.
Galatians has an intricate argument -- and it was written primarily to non-Jews. An intricate Old Testament argument requires that the author know the Old Testament thoroughly. How many lectures go straight over the heads of their audiences? I'm not saying this is what happened. I'm just saying there's some pretty flimsy thinking going on here.
What convinced me of a primarily Gentile audience was 5:11-6:2. The author treats basic Jewish teachings -- faith in God, repentance for sins, resurrection, eternal judgment -- as matters the audience learned when they came to Christ. But if they were Jewish, they would have known these from the earliest days of their lives -- not from when they first believed on Jesus.
Why do we miss that? Because we unthinkingly have separated Judaism from Christianity when they were one and the same for the earliest Christians. To become a Christian in those days, was to become a Jew. Yes, a very specific kind of Jew -- a Christian Jew -- but it was to become a Jew nonetheless.
(Insert condescending remarks about how anachronistic so much popular Christian thinking and preaching is.)
Also, the churches at Rome were probably predominantly Gentile. The Emperor Claudius kicked the earliest Jewish layer out of the city. And I have argued elsewhere that Romans 16 was probably for Ephesus originally. From an inductive standpoint, the rest of Romans reads best as written primiarily to a Gentile church.
(Insert more condescending remarks about scholarly sentimentalism.)
6. Probably most American scholars date Hebrews to the 60s but before the destruction of the temple. Some of the arguments are really flimsy. "Hebrews talks about sacrifices in the present tense." So does Josephus. So does Clement. So does the letter to Diognetus. All written after the temple was destroyed.
Surely almost everyone would have assumed that the temple's destruction was temporary. After all, it had been destroyed once before. Until the Romans smashed bar Kokhba in 135, they would surely have expected it to be rebuilt. We only know it was really gone because we live 2000 years later. So "near disappearance" is not the foolproof argument anachronistic thinkers suppose.
There are clear hints that Hebrews comes from a post-destruction time. "We don't have a city that remains here" (13:14) fits really well just after the temple's destruction. So does Hebrews 11's strong comments on seeking a heavenly city (11:16) and homeland (14) rather than an earthly one. The sense of alienation, being strangers and aliens (11:13) fits this context very well also.
You'll see. As we get into the warp and woof of Hebrews, you will see the explanatory power this hypothesis gives. The sermon will "pop" under this proposal. And we'll mention other reconstructions too.
If Hebrews were written while the temple was still operating, it would have come off with a striking anti-temple tone. It would starkly say, "The temple, its priests, and sacrifices -- that stuff happening in Jerusalem right now -- are a failure." But that's not its tone. It's tone is "Don't be troubled by these things -- they were never intended to truly take away sins in the first place."
7. If you want further justification for all these positions, I have a scholarly monograph that explores Hebrews in relation to the "parting of the ways" here.
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