The Author of Hebrews

When did The Author live?

The Author of Hebrews is dated epistle c. AD 63–67 (trad. dating) in the archive, which places The Author in the Apostolic Age (AD 4–70). The dating is traditional and approximate; the archive marks it as uncertain rather than fixing a year the sources do not give.

What did The Author write?

The Author of Hebrews has 1 catalogued writing in the archive: The Epistle to the Hebrews.

Which early sources mention The Author?

The Author of Hebrews is named in 3 primary-source passages catalogued here, drawn from Clement of Rome, Tertullian of Carthage and Origen. Every passage is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.

Where was The Author from?

The archive associates The Author of Hebrews with Unknown (Italy connections; Alexandrian schooling?).

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…

…who being the brightness of his majesty is so much greater than angels, as he hath inherited a more excellent name.

For there is extant withal an Epistle to the Hebrews under the name of Barnabas.

Tertullian's De Pudicitia, written at Carthage c. AD 217–222 in his Montanist years; chapter 20 assigns the Epistle to the Hebrews to Barnabas — the earliest surviving ascription of its authorship to anyone. Critical text: Eligius Dekkers, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 2 (1954). English translation by S. Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4 (1885), public domain.

But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows. The account that has reached us is twofold: some say Clement, who became bishop of Rome, wrote it; others, that it was Luke.

Paul the Apostle

The tradition of Alexandria (Pantaenus, Clement) and the medieval East and West; the Greek style told against it even in antiquity.

Barnabas of Cyprus

Tertullian’s attribution (De pudicitia 20) — a Levite ‘son of encouragement’ suits the letter’s priestly ‘word of exhortation.’

Luke

Reported by Origen as one current account, as translator or author; Clement of Alexandria thought Luke translated Paul’s Hebrew.

Clement of Rome

The other account Origen reports; 1 Clement’s heavy use of Hebrews explains the guess.

Apollos

Luther’s proposal, followed by many moderns: an Alexandrian Jew, ‘eloquent and mighty in the scriptures.’

Priscilla (with Aquila)

Harnack’s conjecture (1900), explaining the vanished name by the author’s sex; unprovable but scholarly.