Making sense of the Pauline Epistles

[Vanished]

Oops - I was about to change the dates and forgot when I was writing the Early Marcion theory bit. I'll rectify that now, thanks for pointing it out

How do you get a date for Hebrews when you don't know who wrote it? That range of proposed authors covers >100 years.

What's the first mention of Hebrews that's dateable?

Is it even in Marcion's Apostolikon? Or Titus? Epiphanius doesn't think so.

That's not necessarily the date I'd put it at, just the date most often used. The traditional view places it around there and even various challenges to its authorship would place it in the same time period - I haven't seen any widely accepted arguments for another date, so I imagine if we're going by the majority opinion, there's a lot more people that would place it around that time period than any other. When I do my post on Hebrews - which will likely be the second one I do, as right now I'm researching who the potential author of the pastoral epistles may be - I'll include a section talking about potential dates.

[ebion]

Oops - I was about to change the dates and forgot when I was writing the Early Marcion theory bit. I'll rectify that now, thanks for pointing it out

How do you get a date for Hebrews when you don't know who wrote it? That range of proposed authors covers >100 years.
What's the first mention of Hebrews that's dateable?
Is it even in Marcion's Apostolikon? Or Titus? Epiphanius doesn't think so.

That's not necessarily the date I'd put it at, just the date most often used.

There is no date most often used for a Marcionite View of Hebrews and Titus - they're not in his canon.
Maybe take them out of the "Marcionite View" entirely; Philemon might be questionable as well.

[lclapshaw]

According to SA, Hebrews is written in Attic Greek and not Koine like the rest of the Pauline letters. This alone would seem to make it unlikely to belong to the Pauline collection.

Also, Titus and 1 and 2 Timothy do not seem to be part of the Marcionite collection but rather are thought to date post Acts; possibly by the same author.

[ebion]

According to SA, Hebrews is written in Attic Greek and not Koine like the rest of the Pauline letters. This alone would seem to make it unlikely to belong to the Pauline collection.

Yes I forgot 1 and 2 Timothy - I'll edit my post and add them.

Do you know the difference between Attic Greek and Koine Greek? If so could you add a comment to Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is NotFaul in the Early Christian Ebionaen Canon. The reason I ask is that I've heard the differences in Greek referred to as Good Greek and Poor Greek, where the Poor/Koine Greek may be indicating that it is a translation Greek, from Aramaic. I know Attic Greek formally existed as a legislated migration from the Ionic, but am not so sure that Koine is so well defined. There are enough Howlers in the Faulines to show that they were originally written in Aramaic. (PS: who is SA?)

Also, Titus and 1 and 2 Timothy do not seem to be part of the Marcionite collection but rather are thought to date post Acts; possibly by the same author.

Careful with saying what pre-post: our canon is dating the Faulines as MarcionOrLater (>=138-144 AD) and dating Acts to PaulOnTrial (50-60 AD) which would be almost 80-90 years earlier,

[lclapshaw]

Do you know the difference between Attic Greek and Koine Greek? (PS: who is SA?)

No. I'm sorry but I don't. That's why I was careful to say "according to SA".

SA is what we abbreviate Secret Alias's online name as. I go even further and address him as Esse, which is a Mexican slang term for "buddy or pal".

Here's the quote viewtopic.php?p=164278#p164278

[Vanished]

Oops - I was about to change the dates and forgot when I was writing the Early Marcion theory bit. I'll rectify that now, thanks for pointing it out

How do you get a date for Hebrews when you don't know who wrote it? That range of proposed authors covers >100 years.
What's the first mention of Hebrews that's dateable?
Is it even in Marcion's Apostolikon? Or Titus? Epiphanius doesn't think so.

That's not necessarily the date I'd put it at, just the date most often used.

There is no date most often used for a Marcionite View of Hebrews and Titus - they're not in his canon.
Maybe take them out of the "Marcionite View" entirely; Philemon might be questionable as well.

By Marcionite view, I don't mean the view of Marcion himself, I mean the view held (by some) today that Marcion authored many Pauline epistles. Hebrews still, you know, exists, and since there isn't a prevailing theory for its origin outside of the scholarly view, I've defaulted back to those.

[ebion]

There is no date most often used for a Marcionite View of Hebrews and Titus - they're not in his canon.
Maybe take them out of the "Marcionite View" entirely; Philemon might be questionable as well.

By Marcionite view, I don't mean the view of Marcion himself, I mean the view held (by some) today that Marcion authored many Pauline epistles. Hebrews still, you know, exists, and since there isn't a prevailing theory for its origin outside of the scholarly view, I've defaulted back to those.

I sincerely hope that the Marcionite view held (by some) today of Marcion is the view of Marcion himself.

I mean the view held (by some) today that Marcion authored many Pauline epistles holds that there is no View of Hebrews and Titus as they're not in his canon. Do you have anything you can point to from say Moll or Baur or Harnack that says so - I'd be interested in seeing it.

I also mean the view held (by almost everyone) today of the Pauline epistles holds that there is no View of Hebrews as it's not written by Paul or Marcion. Which is why I'm interested in a concensus on who wrote it and when it was written: if it was written before Marcion, he may have willfully excluded it, like he did Matthew.

[DCHindley]

While I have previously spent a lot of time studying the 13 Pauline letters, busily separating the conversations going on between what pertains to an original Paul and the commentaries that the final editor of Paul's letter collection ("p" in eapr textual groupings used in critical apparatus), I have not spent a similar amount of time on Hebrews & Acts, and the only General epistle I have analyzed in any depth is 2 Peter.

Still, the persons who commented upon the Pauline letters to churches, later interpolated into the original text, had their own "personal" (counter) salvation tradition, while Paul was relying on people's trust in the fulfillment of God's promise to Abram's "seed" as the thing that rectifies one before the Judean God, and allows them to be co-heirs. "Original" Paul, FWIW, I do not think even heard of Jesus, or was not concerned with him. For the original Paul, it was all about inter-household harmony and sympathy for gentiles who saw the Judean expectation of a future blessed age where they will be accepted by physical descendants (Judeans) as fellow heirs.

How the gentile element of the Jesus movement evolved so that Jesus became associated with a heavenly redeemer similar to Philo's concept of the divine Logos, seems to have evolved over time. My earlier reads of Hebrews do show an attempt to sew up all the Savior Christ ideas in the epistles, but I do not see too many stand out "Pauline" (interpolator/editor) allusions. The person, I understand, wrote in good Greek, and he or she was definitely familiar with Philo's concepts of how God works. It is almost a little "Arian" in the way it sees Christ figure as an extension of the divine Logos.

Hebrews does not seem to be redefining someone else's concept of what the divine redeemer Christ was all about. But this is something I need to look into closer.

DCH

[DCHindley]

A quick and dirty analysis of Hebrews and its relationship to other NT literature (by DCHindley, 2024)

I reformatted this to fit in a mere 54 pages (it was 71 before I changed the font to TNR 10pt).

It should allow the average reader to see what ideas might have influenced the author of Hebrews. From my has-to-be-wrong POV, this author had read at least some of the letters of Paul as we have them now. S/he alludes to passages that I would attribute to an “original Paul” as well, and predominantly, passages I would attribute to a commentator and/or editor who held a fully mature mystical doctrine of a divinely sent redeemer, Christ.

While it is always possible for A) the Author of Hebrews to have influenced the high Christology of the letters, or B) the high Christology in the letters influenced the author of Hebrews, but C) it is also possible for both to draw on a common tradition, or D) be similar by sheer chance. Personally I think it is B, in the sense that he made systematic presentation for a high Christological theology that we also find echoed in scattered statements in the letters as we have them.

While I thought that many of the allusions cited by the cross references were, well, stupid, but if we just go by mentions then Rom leads pack by a longshot, them 1 Cor, then Phi, then a 3 way tie between Eph, Col & 1 Tim, *then* Galatians, then a four way tie between 2 Cor, 2 The, 2 Tim & Tit. 1 The & Phm don’t even make the list.

Among NT gospel books, the gospel of Mat led the list, followed by 2 way tie between with Joh & Act, then Mar, then Luk. Yes, Luke is the least cited of the NT chain references. Rev is cited about as often as Eph/Col/1 Tim. Of the general epistles, 1 Joh & Jud are cited the most, then a tie between Jam & 1 Pet, followed by 2 Pet. No sign of 2 & 3 Joh.

While this is far from a proof, this overview does not suggest that the author was reactive to Marcion at all, if we go by the heresy hunters.

Dig in and Enjoy!

DCH

(Hindley, David C) Analysis of Hebrews and relationship of other NT literature (c. 2024).pdf

(704.9 KiB) Downloaded 44 times

[MrMacSon]

I went thru Hebrews in a series of posts three years ago

Starting here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7585 ... but perhaps see / start at this post viewtopic.php?p=117106#p117106 and following ie. the rest of my posts on that page (page 3)

(so much of Hebrews is exegesis / new midrashim based on the Hebrew Bible and Tanakh)

Then the start of page 8: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7585&start=70

And page 9 viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7585&start=80 which includes

Excerpts from David Runia's 1993 book, Philo in Early Christian Literature.

.

Chapter Four

Philo and the New Testament

... 3. The Epistle to the Hebrews

The New Testament book that shows the most affinity to Philonic thought is unquestionably the Epistle to the Hebrews ...

Hurst (1990) concludes that there seems to be a special affinity between Hebrews and the kind of OT exegesis found in Acts 7 (this again seems to have some affinities with what we find in Philo...).

< omitted here ie. omitted from this quote of 22/01/2024 >

Examination of the evidence has shown that the author of the Hebrews and Philo come from the same milieu; in a closer sense than in the case of Paul. I would not be at all surprised if that the author of Hebrews had had some form of direct contact with Judaism as it had developed in Philo’s Alexandria. Linguistic, hermeneutical and thematic correspondences are impressive. But the thought-worlds are markedly different. The antitheses ontological versus eschatological dualism and allegory versus typology sum up much of the difference. But the crucial point of divergence, as Weiss points out, lies in the area of Christology. It is the Hebrews author’s recognition of the Christ and his self-sacrifice which furnishes the dynamics that inform his eschatology, typology and soteriology, impelling them in a direction away from the Philonic heritage (in the broad sense) with which he must have been familiar.
.

In an introductory section in that same chapter, Runia wrote about the views about the different forms of Judaism

.
Chadwick, in [a 1966] article on Philo and Paul, to make the following bold claim:

... I believe the theology of the hellenistic synagogue, as recorded in long printed and familiar texts of Greek speaking Judaism, still throws more light on the world of St. Paul, St. John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, than any other single non-Christian source. There is nothing surprising in this conclusion. We cannot take too seriously the basic fact that the New Testament is entirely in Greek. It is orientated toward the non-Palestinian world. It would be very strange if its principal theologians did not disclose substantial parallels with the writings of Philo, Josephus, and the author of the Wisdom of Solomon . . . To me, at least, it seems clear that of all the non-Christian writers of the first century AD Philo is the one from whom the historian of emergent Christianity had most to learn ...

This statement makes us want to know more about the face of Judaism in the time of Philo. Is it legitimate to make such a clear-cut distinction between the Hellenistic synagogue which conducted its affairs in Greek and the Hebrew-Aramaic world of Palestinian Judaism?
.

And note the next and last post in that series:

Eric F Mason You Are a Priest Forever': Second Temple Jewish Messianism and the Priestly Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews

• The present study reevaluates the priestly Christology of Hebrews and the presentations of the messianic priest and Melchizedek in the Qumran texts, arguing that the latter [ie. Qumran texts]...provide the closest parallels to Hebrews' thought.

Eric Mason argues that the conceptual background of the priestly Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews closely parallels presentations of the messianic priest and Melchizedek in the Qumran scrolls. In both Hebrews and Qumran a priestly figure is discussed in the context of a Davidic figure; in both cases a divine decree appoints the priests to their eschatological duty; both priestly figures offer an eschatological sacrifice of atonement. Although the author of Hebrews was not directly influenced by Qumran's "Messiah of Aaron", these and other conceptions did provide "a precedent...to conceive Jesus similarly as a priest making atonement and eternal intercession in the heavenly sanctuary" [p.199].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to ... omposition

Mason, You Are a Priest Forever, pp. 33–34:

In Heb 7:4-10 the author develops his assertion that Melchizedek's priesthood is greater than that of the Levitical priests … Obviously the major concern here is to demonstrate the superiority of Melchizedek's priesthood over that of the Levites, the traditional Jewish priestly tribe. The author's primary critique of the Levitical priesthood is asserted in Heb 7:11 — it and the Law under which it served could not bring perfection. Thus a new priesthood and a corresponding new law are necessary (7:12). Jesus, as a descendant of Judah, does not fit the proper priestly paradigm of Levitical descent (7:14). Instead, he resembles Melchizedek, who has a priesthood which is not based on genealogy or a legal requirement but rather "through the power of an indestructible life" (7:16).¹

1. Perhaps the interruption to Jesus's "indestructible life" - the crucifixion - came later (?)

Hebrews 7:16 in context:

14 For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, and in regard to that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.

15 And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, 16 one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. 17 For it is declared:

... “You are a priest forever,
...... in the order of Melchizedek” .. [Psalm 110.4(b)]

.....

21 but he became a priest with an oath when God said to him:

... “The Lord has sworn
...... and will not change his mind:
...... ‘You are a priest forever’.” .. [also Psalm 110.4(a)]

22 Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant.