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Essay on
The Authorship of Hebrews
There is an age old question about who wrote the New Testament book of Hebrews. In a King James Version it titles the book of Hebrews as: The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews. However, The New English Bible has: A Letter to Hebrews; The New International Version has only the word: "Hebrews" as a title while the Today's English Version uses--The Letter to the Hebrews. There is a disagreement because this New Testament book is untitled and the author's name is not mentioned in the text. Even including the word "Hebrews" in the title is questioned. The Pulpit Commentary states, "All we can be sure of is that it was originally sent to Christians of Jewish race, residing in some definite locality." Because of the uncertainty of authorship, the book of Hebrews was not fully accepted by the Christian church until the end of the 4th century.
Even though the book was eventually accepted as part of the New Testament, scholars in the late 1800's questioned Paul's authorship and still do today. Many believe it to have been written by some other person, possibly one who had come under the influence of Paul and here's why. The writer of the book of Hebrews doesn't write like Paul or use the same words and expressions as Paul does. A commentary states, "When compared with the generally accepted epistle of Paul, Hebrews differs markedly, especially in the small, common connective words with which the author binds together his clauses. Another distinctive difference is found in the handling of quotations from the Old Testament. The accepted epistles employ one group of more or less standard phrases to introduce Old Testament quotations, whereas Hebrews uses another group. Also, the epistles show that the apostle was relatively free in his use of Old Testament materials.....
