Epistle to the Hebrews in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE
LITERATURE
I. Title.
In the King James Version and the English Revised Version
the title of this book describes it as "the Epistle of Paul
the Apostle to the Hebrews." Modern scholarship has disputed
the applicability of every word of this title. Neither does
it appear in the oldest manuscripts, where we find simply
"to Hebrews" (pros Hebraious). This, too, seems to have been
prefixed to the original writing by a collector or copyist.
It is too vague and general for the author to have used it.
And there is nothing in the body of the book which affirms
any part of either title. Even the shorter title was an
inference from the general character of the writing. Nowhere
is criticism less hampered by problems of authenticity and
inspiration. No question arises, at least directly, of
pseudonymity either of author or of readers, for both are
anonymous. For the purpose of tracing the history and
interpreting the meaning of the book, the absence of a
title, or of any definite historical data, is a
disadvantage. We are left to infer its historical context
from a few fragments of uncertain tradition, and from such
general references to historical conditions as the document
itself contains. Where no date, name or well-known event is
fixed, it becomes impossible to decide, among many
possibilities, what known historical conditions, if any, are
pre-supposed. Yet this very fact, of the book's detachment
from personal and historical incidents, renders it more
self-contained, and its exegesis less dependent upon
understanding the exact historical situation. But its
general relation to the thought of its time must be taken
into account if we are to understand it at all...
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