The authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews has never been established and, barring the appearance of new evidence, seems unlikely ever to be determined. No firm tradition ever assigned the document to a particular writer, no statements have ever been discovered that make a solid attribution, and extensive examination of internal evidence has failed to produce anything resembling consensus. Scholars have proposed numerous candidates but such ideas depend almost entirely on internal evidence since as little is known about the audience and date of the letter as is known about the writer. Despite these drawbacks speculation about the author of Hebrews has gone on intermittently for nearly two millennia. This is not speculation for its own sake, however, since the identification of author, audience, and date is intrinsically related to understanding the document. It is the explanatory power of most of these proposals that motivated their authors. A brief discussion of the problems of dating is followed by a summary of the early attributions of Hebrews. The principal candidates for whom claims are still made--Clement of Rome, Apollos, Barnabas, Luke, Priscilla, and Paul--are discussed and the reasons for the rejection of these attributions are summarized. In conclusion it is shown that scholars' growing understanding of the circumstances of Hebrews' composition only increases the difficulty of determining who wrote this epistle.
The document known as the Epistle to the Hebrews presents the lengthiest sustained argument in the Bible. The author developed a carefully structured argument designed to convince his audience of the superiority of Christianity over Judaism and, apparently, to keep them from reverting to their old faith. The author made three principal points: the superiority of Christ over the angels, the prophets, and Moses; the superiority of Christ's priesthood over that of the Levitical order; and the superior ...