From: Alan D. Bulley (s458507@aix1.uottawa.ca)
Date: Thu Feb 08 1996 - 15:01:22 EST
On Thu, 8 Feb 1996, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> Charles Puskas sent the following to me; it quite clearly needs to be
> posted to the list as well, and he has authorized me to forward it.
>
> >The above view presupposes the Pauline authorship of the Pastorals, the
> >reliability of the evidence in Acts 18 and seeks to make a specific case from
> >general themes and motifs. In my book, THE LETTERS OF PAUL (Liturgical
> >Press, 1993), where I discuss Hebrews, I discuss these various authorship
> >theories. I conclude that the author is anonymous, at least a second
> >generation Christian (Heb 2:3), a Greek-speaking believer probably
> >unacquainted with the languages of Hebrew & Aramaic and the land of
> >Israel/Palestine, only casually familiar with Pauline Christianity (despite
> >13:23). His (or her) viewpoint regarding the obsoleteness of Jewish
> >tradition is similar to that of the second and fourth Gospel, Barnabas, and
> >Diognetus (the last two expanding more on this theme).
Many thanks to Prof. Puskas for his judicious summary of the issues
surrounding the authorship of Hebrews. It seems to me that we really
can't go much beyond this, given the real scarcity of significant
evidence. If we were to add anything to the list, it might only be that
the author may have had some degree of rhetorical training and some
familiarity with sermonic techniques of the Hellenistic synagogue.
Gee, are we ready for a Hebrews-L?
Alan D. Bulley
Faculty of Theology/Faculte de theologie |s458507@aix1.uottawa.ca
Saint Paul University/Universite St-Paul |abulley@spu.stpaul.uottawa.ca
Ottawa, Canada
Fax: (613) 782-3005
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