Priscilla/Hebrews++

From: David Scholer (dscholer@netcom.com)
Date: Wed Feb 07 1996 - 23:01:59 EST


Some members of this list might not know that Harnack's 1900 ZNW article
on Priscilla as the author of Hebrews was published in an English
rendition in a not so well known place. It appears as "Probability about
the Address and Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews" as Appendix A in L.
A. Starr's book, The Bible Status of Woman (New York: Fleming H. Revell,
1926), 392-415 [this book was reprinted in Zarephath, NJ: Pillar of Fire,
1955].

I know of three articles that took up Harnack's view:

   Harris, J. R. "Side-Lights on the Authorship of the Epistle to the
Hebrews," Lecture V in Side-Lights on New Testament Research (The Angus
Lectureship VI; London: Kingsgate Press/James Clarke, 1908), 148-76.
   Torrey, C. C. "The Authorship and Character of the So-Called 'Epistle
to the Hebrews,'" JBL 30 (1911), 137-56 [137-45 on Priscilla].
   Tuker, M. A. R. "The Gospel according to Prisca," Nineteenth Century
and After 73 (1913), 81-98.

My own view is that there is simply not enough critical evidence to make
a decision for or against Priscilla as author of Hebrews.

Another proposal for a woman as author of a NT book was made by Benjamin
W. Bacon, "The Authoress of Revelation -- A Conjecture," Harvard
Theological Review 23 (1930), 235-50. I have long thought that this
article, which Bacon wrote two years before his death, was a scholarly
"put on" or joke. He proposes that one of Philip's four prophesying
daughters was the author of Revelation. Does any on know whether or not
Bacon was serious??

David M. Scholer
Professor of New Testament
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, CA 91182
818-584-5288



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