were Barnabas, and that tradition too was Unknown to the vast majority of the early churches. All that is known of Apollos suits the author of Hebrews. He may have learned the gospel from “them that heard” (2:3); he was a Jew, “an Alexandrian by race, a learned (or eloquent) man,” “mighty in the Scriptures,” “he powerfully confuted the Jews” (Acts 18:24 ff), and he belonged to the same Pauline circle as Timothy and Titus (1 Cor 16:10-12; Tit 3:13; compare Heb 13:23).
The Alexandrian type of thought, the affinities with Philo, the
arguments from Jewish tradition and ceremonial, the fluent style, may all have issued from “an eloquent Jew of Alexandria.” But it does not follow that Apollos was the only person of this type. The author may have been a Gentile, as the purity of his Greek language and style suggests; and the combination of Greek and Hebrew thought, which the epistle reflects, and even Philo’s terms, may have had a wide currency outside Alexandria, as for instance in the great cosmopolitan cities of Asia. All that can be said is that the author of Hebrews was someone generally like what is known of Apollos, but who he actually was, we must confess with Origen, “God alone knows.”
conversion had been thorough, and their faith and Christian life had been of a high order. They had a sound knowledge of the first principles of Christ (Heb 6:1 ff). They had become “partakers of Christ,” and had need only to
“hold fast the beginning of (their) confidence firm unto the end” (Heb 3:14). They had been fruitful in good works, ministering unto the saints (Heb 6:10), enduring suffering and persecution, and sympathizing with whose who were imprisoned (Heb 10:32-34). All this had been in former days which appeared now remote. Their rulers and ministers of those days are now dead (Heb 13:7). And they themselves have undergone a great change. While they should have been teachers, they have become dull of hearing, and have need again to be taught the rudiments of the first principles of the gospel (Heb 5:12), and they are in danger of a great apostasy from the faith. They need warning against “an evil heart of
unbelief, in falling away from the living God” (Heb 3:12). They are become sluggish (Heb 6:12), profane like Esau (Heb 12:16), worldly-minded (Heb 13:5). Perhaps their religion was tending toward a false asceticism and outward works (Heb 13:4,9). And now that this moral dulness and spiritual indifference had fallen upon them, they are being subjected to a new test by persecution from outside (Heb 10:36; 12:4), which renders the danger of their falling away from the faith all the more imminent. The author apparently bases his claim to warn them on the fact that he had been a teacher among them, and hoped soon to return to them (Heb 13:18 f). The same might be said perhaps of Timothy (Heb 13:23). Both author and readers had friends in Italy (Heb 13:24) who were with the author when he wrote, either in Italy saluting the readers outside, or outside, saluting the readers in Italy. In all this there is little or nothing to help to fix the destination of the letter, for it might be true at some time or other of any church.
2. Jews or Gentiles?:
The old tradition that the readers were Jews claims some more definite support from the epistle itself. The writer assumes an intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and of Jewish ceremonial on their part. The fathers of the Hebrew race are also their fathers (Heb 1:1; 3:9). The humanity that Christ assumed and redeemed is called “the seed of Abraham” (Heb 2:16).
All this, however, might stand in reference to a Gentilechurch, for the early Christians, without distinction of race, regarded themselves as the true Israel and heirs of the Hebrew revelation, and of all that related to it (1 Cor 10:1; Gal 3:7 ff; 4:21 ff; Rom 4:11-18). Still there is force in Zahn’s
argument that “Hebrews does not contain a single sentence in which it is so much as intimated that the readers became members of God’s people who descended from Abraham, and heirs of the promise given to them and their forefathers, and how they became such” (Intro to New Testament, II, 323).
Zahn further finds a direct proof in Heb 13:13 that “both the readers and the author belong to the Jewish people,” which he interprets as “meaning that the readers were to renounce fellowship with the Jewish people who had rejected Jesus, to confess the crucified Jesus, and to take upon
themselves all the ignominy that Jesus met at the hands of his countrymen”
(ibid., 324-25). But that is too large an inference to draw from a figurative expression which need not, and probably does not, mean more than an exhortation to rely on the sacrifice of Christ, rather than upon any external rules and ceremomes. Nor were the “divers and strange teachings” about marriage and meats (13:4,9) necessarily Jewish doctrines. They might be the doctrines of an incipient Gnosticism which spread widely throughout the Christian churches, both Jewish and gentile, toward the end of the 1st century. There is otherwise no evidence that the apostasy, of which the readers stood in danger, was into Judaism, but it was rather a general unbelief and “falling away from the living God” (3:12).
It is the whole argument of the epistle, rather than any special references, that produced the tradition, and supports the view, that the readers were Jews. The entire message of the epistle, the dominant claims of Christ and of the Christian faith, rests upon the supposition that the readers held Moses, Aaron, the Jewish priesthood, the old Covenant and the Levitical ritual, in the highest esteem. The author’s argument is: You will grant the Divine authority and greatness of Moses, Aaron and the Jewish
institutions: Christ is greater than they; therefore you ought to be faithful to Him. He assumes an exclusively Jewish point of view in the minds of his readers as his major premise. He could scarcely do that, if they had been Gentiles. Paul, when writing to the mixed church at Rome, relates his philosophy of the Christian revelation to both Jewish and Gentilepre- Christian revelation. Gentile Christians adopted the Jewish tradition as their own in consequence of, and secondary to, their attachment to Christianity.
Even Judaizing GentileChristians, such as may be supposed to have belonged to the Galatian and Corinthian churches, adopted some parts of the Jewish law only as a supplement to Christianity, but not as its basis.
Von Soden and others have argued with much reason that these Christians were not in danger of falling back into Judaism from Christianity, but
rather of falling away from all faith into unbelief and materialism, like the Israelites in the wilderness (Heb 3:7 ff), or Esau (Heb 12:16). With all its references to Old Testament sacrifice and ceremonial, the letter contains not a single warning against reviving them, nor any indications that the readers were in danger of so doing (Hand-Commentar, 12-16). But it has been too readily assumed that these facts prove that the readers were not Jews. The pressure of Social influence and persecution rendered Jews and Jewish Christians, as well as GentileChristians, liable to apostatize to heathenism or irreligion (The Wisdom of Solomon 2:10,20; 2 Macc 4; 6; 7;
Philo, De Migratione Abrahami, XVI; Mt 24:10,12; Acts 20:30; 1 Cor 10:7,14; 2 Thess 2:4; 1 Jn 2:18; 5:21; Pliny Epistle X, 96). Von Soden’s argument really cuts the other way. If the writer had been dealing with Gentile Christians who were in danger of relapsing into heathenism or of falling into religious indifference, his argument from the shadowy and temporary glories of Judaism to the perfect salvation in Christ would avail nothing, because, for such, his premises would depend upon his
conclusion. But if they were Jewish Christians, even though leaning toward heathenism, his argument is well calculated to call up on its side all the dormant force of their early religious training. He is not arguing them out of a “subtle Judaism” quickened by the zeal of a propaganda (Moffatt, Introduction, 449-50), but from “drifting away” in Heb (2:1), from
“neglect” (2:3), from “an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God” (3:12), from “disobedience” (4:11), from “a dulness of hearing” (5:11), but into “diligence .... that ye be not sluggish” (6:11 f), into “boldness and patience” (10:35 f), and to “lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees” (12:12); and this he might well do by his appeal to their whole religious experience, both Jewish and Christian, and to the whole religious history of their race.
3. The Locality of the Readers:
The question of the locality of these “Hebrews” remains a matter for mere conjecture. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, Colosse, Ephesus, Berea, Ravenna and other places have been suggested. Tradition, since Clement of Alexandria, fixed on Jerusalem, but on the untenable ground that the letter was written to Aramaic-speaking Jews. The undisputed fact that it was written in Greek tells against Jerusalem. So does the absence of all reference to the temple ritual, and the mention of almsgiving as the chief grace of the “Hebrews” (6:10). Jerusalem received rather than gave alms.
Nor is it likely that all the personal disciples of the Lord would have died
out in Jerusalem (2:3). And it could not be charged against the mother church that it had produced no teachers (5:12). These points also tell with almost equal force against any Palestinian locality.
Alexandria was suggested as an alternative to Jerusalem, on the
supposition that those references to Jewish ritual which did not correspond with the Jerusalem ritual (Heb 7:27; 9:4; 10:11) might refer to the temple at Leontopolis. But the ritual system of the epistle is that of the tabernacle and of tradition, and not of any temple. The Alexandrian character of the letter has bearing on the identity of the author, but not so much on that of his readers. The erroneous idea that Paul was the author arose in
Alexandria, but it would have been least likely to arise where the letter was originally sent.
Rome has lately found much favor. We first learn of the existence of the letter at Rome. The phrase “they of Italy salute you” (Heb 13:24) implies that either the writer or his readers were in Italy. It may be more natural to think of the writer, with a small group of Italian friends away from home, sending greetings to Italy, than to suppose that a greeting from Italy generally was sent to a church at a distance. It is probable that a body of Jewish Christians existed in Rome, as in other large cities of the Empire.
But this view does not, as von Soden thinks, explain any coincidences between Hebrews and Romans. A Roman origin might. It could explain the use of Hebrews by Clement. But the letter might also have come to Rome by Clement’s time, even though it was originally sent elsewhere. The slender arguments in favor of Rome find favor chiefly because no arguments can be adduced in favor of any other place.