R.C. Sproul (0:00)

Whatever the issue was, whoever wrote it and to whom it was written, the central passion of this book is the supremacy of Christ.

Nathan W. Bingham (0:15)

What was R.C. sproul referring to? Well, for the next few days on Renewing youg Mind, he will be exploring the Letter to the Hebrews. In this letter, the author is relentless in his effort to reveal Christ as greater than the prophets, angels, Moses, and the Levitical priests. And in Dr. Sproul's themes from Hebrews series, he unpacks what this author says about our great high priest and the drama of redemption. You'll hear three messages from this 12 message series. So if you'd like access to the entirety of his teaching on Hebrews, when you give a donation of any amount@renewingyourmind.org we'll unlock lifetime digital access to the series. Plus, we'll send you his series Dust to Glory on DVD so that you can be introduced to every book in the Bible. So who wrote Hebrews and to whom were they writing? Here's Dr. Sproul.

R.C. Sproul (1:14)

Welcome to our study on the Book of Hebrews. I've said many times that if I were ever cast into prison and had the option of having only one book with me, that the book that I would choose, of course, would be the Bible. And if I had to narrow my choice further to choose one book of the Bible, the book that I would want with me in prison would be the Book of Hebrews. I would want Hebrews for this reason that the Book of Hebrews is so rich, it has such a wealth of information that covers the whole scope of the history of redemption. It's almost a capsule summary of the Old Testament, as well as the focus on the way in which Christ fulfills all of that Old Testament redemptive history. Now, in this course of study, we're only going to be able to give our attention to what I would call the major themes of this particular book. Now, before we do that, we always have to spend some time on background. We have to ask questions like, who wrote this book? To whom was it addressed? At what time in history was it produced? And perhaps most importantly, what was the historical occasion that provoked the writing of Hebrews? Now, we always do that whenever we prepare for a study of any book of the Scriptures. That's par for the course. But when we do it, in the case of the Book of Hebrews, we enter into a very, very difficult mystery. In fact, trying to answer these background questions about the Book of Hebrews is like reading a whodunit, because there's so much question that surrounds these various areas. Who wrote it? We don't know who wrote it. To whom was it addressed? Nobody knows for sure to whom it was addressed. When was it written? We don't know that for sure, although we can come fairly close to discerning that particular question. And the most critical question of all, what was the occasion that produced it? We don't know the answer to that either. So what we're going to do in this opening session is to try to do a little bit of preliminary detective work. The first question we're going to deal with is who wrote Hebrews? Now, those of you who are students of church history know that the Church dealt with the question of what books would comprise the canon of the New Testament. We know that the New Testament is not just one book, but it is a collection of books. And that collection of books was sifted through and sorted through and examined by the early Church. And the question arose, what books are really sacred Scripture? Now, the vast majority of those New Testament books that are included in your Bible were received by the early Church without any dispute whatsoever. But there were a few books that are now in the New Testament that. That engendered no small amount of debate, and none of them was more controversial than this Book of Hebrews. One church council would embrace it and receive it as sacred Scripture, and the next one would reject it, and then the next one would accept it, and then the next couple would overlook it. And it wasn't until into the 4th century that it was finally received without any further dispute, as genuinely apostolic and canonical. Now, let me just say, before anybody gets all nervous about the fact that there was a historical process and debate about the inclusion of the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament canon. I don't know any orthodox Christian today who has the slightest hesitation about the canonicity of this Book of Hebrews. Its apostolic origin is without question. In fact, the more we study the contents of this book, the greater it seems to be and the more consistent and rich with its coherency with the rest of Scripture that it is. And so nobody's really debating the issue any longer about canonicity. But there's an irony here. What finally persuaded the Church that the book ought to be included in the New Testament canon was the conviction that it was written by the Apostle Paul. The Apostle, who had written 13 other books of the New Testament, was said to have been the original author of Hebrews. And because there were those in the early church who were convinced of Paul's authorship of this book, that that settled the matter for them. If Paul wrote it, then it has to be Scripture. It has to be included in the New Testament canon. Now, the irony is this. Even though the church received this on the basis of the conviction that Paul wrote it, and today the vast majority of New Testament scholars do not believe that Paul wrote this book, yet today, nobody's arguing that it shouldn't be included in the canon. Isn't that an ironical situation from church history? But let's look for a moment at the particular people whose names have been mentioned as possible authors of the Book of Hebrews. First, of course, as we've already mentioned, is the Apostle Paul. Around the year 215 A.D. an early church father by the name of Clement of Alexandria, he wrote of his conviction that Paul wrote Hebrews. But here was the twist. He said that Paul wrote this book not in Greek, but that he wrote it in Hebrew. Paul himself was a Jew. He was writing to Jews and for Jews about Jewish matters. And so in this instance, he penned this book in Hebrew. And then the Hebrew version, according to Clement, in the year 215, Clement of Alexandria said that Paul's Hebrew version was then translated by one of Paul's very close associates, who also had a keen mastery of the Greek language. And his name was Luke the physician. And so that tradition took hold in subsequent generations that the book was written originally by Paul in the Hebrew and was then translated into the Greek by his partner on the missionary journeys, the Gospel writer Luke. Now, this view was then held by Jerome, by St. Augustine, by St. Thomas Aquinas, and through many other great leaders of the Christian church. However, by the time of the Reformation, in fact, just prior to the Reformation, in the period of the High Renaissance, when biblical scholarship took on a new dimension of close, almost pedantic literary analysis, men like Erasmus of Rotterdam, for example, the great humanist biblical scholar of the 16th century, challenged this tradition of Pauline authorship and demonstrated that there were so many stylistic and literary differences between the bulk of Paul's writing and what we find here. Even Erasmus said these differences cannot be accounted for even by translating from Hebrew into Greek. And without getting into the technicalities, let me just say at this point that the whole question now of Paul's authorship became hotly disputed, and other men, and in one case a woman, were suggested as possible authors or authoresses of the Book of Hebrews. Luke himself has been a frequent candidate. We know that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke as well as the Book of Acts, and we find that of the Gospels the richest and most eloquent Greek that we find in the four Gospels is found in the Gospel of Luke. Luke has a highly educated, highly polished style about his writing. And it's generally conceded by experts of the biblical languages that far and away the highest, most eloquent Greek that is found in the New Testament is found in the Book of Hebrews, that is that Hebrews is a literary masterpiece. We see certain similarities in style and vocabulary between Hebrews and the writings of Luke, but there is a Jewish aura about the Book of Hebrews that just doesn't match the rest of the things that we know about Luke. And so I would say that those who favor Luke as the possible author of Hebrews remain pretty much in a minority. Two others that are frequently mentioned include Barnabas, who was a companion of Paul's and who obviously was an educated person and who was called the son of Encouragement and himself had an encouraging pastoral spirit about him. And we might just note at this point that the literary structure of the Book of Hebrews is somewhat different from the rest of the New Testament in that it follows a Jewish pattern of the homily. A homily is a sermon. But whether or not it's Old Testament midrash or those technicalities aside, we do know this, that it basically follows the style of a sermon, including strong exhortations, calls to repentance, and at the same time, a strong touch of consolation. All of which would certainly fit the personality and the style of Barnabas. As we understand his portrait from the New Testament. He's a favorite candidate of many scholars, others, and perhaps in recent days, the one who is given the most votes in the whodunit contest is Apollos. Now, the Bible almost never mentions Apollos. We just have a paragraph or two about him in all of the New Testament. But what the Bible does say about Apollos is significant. Remember when Paul was struggling with the Corinthians and there was the party of Peter and the party of Paul and the party of Apollos. So obviously Apollos was a very prominent leader. We read about him in Acts 18, and you might take some time to check chapter 18 of the book of Acts to give the little profile there that we learn about Apollos, because we are told there that Apollos was very eloquent, that he was Jewish, that he was Alexandrian, that he was powerful in the Scripture and that he taught the Scriptures accurately. Whoever wrote Hebrews was certainly eloquent and he certainly had a mastery, humanly speaking, of the Old Testament scriptures. But beloved, these are all highly speculative guesses at Best. And I would like to be able to say to you, I'm sure that it was Apollos or Barnabas or whoever, but I can't. I have my own favorite, but I'm going to keep that one locked up in the closet because I would hate to announce it and then tomorrow have somebody prove me absolutely wrong on it. I would just as soon wait, but I can only leave that question with a question mark and move on. Now to the second question. To whom is the book addressed? All we know is that it's sent to the Hebrews. But what Hebrews? Are these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem? Are they Jewish Christians of the Diaspora, that is, who have been exiled out of Palestine into Greek speaking nations? Is this a Jewish colony in Alexandria that's struggling with that strange philosophy in Alexandria? And so they are being instructed now on how to resist Alexandrian Judaism. Those are possibilities. There's one more option too that's significant and that is that there was a Jewish Christian community in Rome that were dealing with specific problems. And possibly it was this colony of Christians in Rome who were in need of this letter. For reasons that I don't have time to get into right now. I personally favor a Jerusalem destination, if not Jerusalem. I do believe that this book was written for Jewish Christians inside Palestine. For reasons which I will get into in a moment. The real heavy question is why was the book written? Anytime we read a book, it helps us to know who wrote it, to whom it was written, when it was written, and most importantly, why? What was the concern of the author? Now, as we read the Book of Hebrews, we know this, that there was some serious crisis that threatened the purity of the early church that was so severe that it provoked not simply the writing of the Book of Hebrews in general, but it provoked the writing of Hebrews 6. And the warning of the loss of salvation is so emphatic in the Book of Hebrews that we know this much, that whatever provoked this letter was a very, very serious crisis that could have disastrous results if it was not handled properly. What was the crisis? If we only knew the answer to that question, that would make it so much easier for us to understand the difficult portions of the book, particularly chapter six. Some scholars have suggested that the crisis that provoked the writing of the book was Roman persecutions. And therefore they suggest that this was a colony of Jewish Christians in Rome who were struggling under persecution, and that some of the believers were instead of dying in flames, in glory, as victorious martyrs, capitulating. These were called the lapsi in the early Church, those who denied Christ when the heat was on and then after the heat was off, they wanted to come back into full fellowship in the church. And the church faced that. Cris, do we let them back in or not? So some believe that it was actual martyrdom and the threat of martyrdom that was the crisis that provoked this book. Another option is the most common crisis in the New Testament world was the attack of the Judaizers who wanted to Judaize New Testament Christianity. We see how violent that controversy was by reading the Book of Gal, where Paul has to respond there to those who would insist upon retaining all kinds of elements from the Old Testament. But there's a third option, and it's the option that I favor and will be favoring throughout this course, and that is that a crisis was presented in the early community, not only by the Judaizers, not only by Greek speaking Jews who were using Hellenistic philosophy and blending it together, but there was another party. We read the New Testament and we see Jesus confronting the two main parties of the Jews all the time. And those two parties were called what the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Now when we read the Jewish historians, when we read Josephus, for example, and Philo, whom I've mentioned earlier, both Josephus and Philo talk about the three great parties of the Jews, not just two of them, the three great parties of the Jews. And the irony of ironies is that the third great party that Josephus and Philo mention is never mentioned by name in the New Testament. You read a New Testament, you wouldn't even know they existed. Who were they? They were called the Essenes. We knew next to nothing about them until the great discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the late forties in archaeology and all the literature that was found at Qumran. And we know that the Essenes were very much interested in the future, very much concerned with eschatology, very ascetic. They withdrew from this society, they went out into desert, and they didn't just live at Qumran, but there were different groups of them throughout Palestine. But one of the most important beliefs of the Essenes was that God was going to send not one Messiah, but two Messiahs. One would be a priestly Messiah and the other one would be a kingly Messiah. And that those two Messiahs would both ultimately surrender their authority and honor and dignity to the one who ruled over both of them, who was Michael the Archangel. So here you have Essenes running around teaching a view of two Messiahs, one political, one liturgical, both under the supremacy of an angel. And that idea would completely subvert the biblical portrait of Jesus the Messiah. And the theory is that the whole book of Hebrews is written to combat that heresy, to show the supremacy of Christ over the angels, and that the Messiah is both king and priest at the same time. Well, with that background, we'll leave the question marks as yet unanswered. But one thing we know for sure is that whatever the issue was, whoever wrote it and to whom it was written, the central passion of this book is the supremacy of Christ. And that comes through with crystal clarity as we will see as we take up the content of the Book of Hebrews.