Though the internal evidence points in some cases clearly to St. Paul as the main author, there are also some who believe it most definitely points away from Paul. These objections are the following:
First, since Hebrews is written in elegant, sophisticated Greek and the apostle Paul confessed to being unskilled in his speech, therefore Hebrews was not written by Paul. Douglas Wilson challenges that objection in his commentary on Hebrews. He writes that it is possible that Paul wrote Hebrews in Hebrew—since he knew Hebrew well—and that his friend Luke—fellow-traveler—translated it into Greek. This makes perfect sense, since Luke was eloquent in writings. This is my own personal opinion. But though Wilson says this is likely he prefers the answer that when Paul says he was not skilled in speech, Paul was giving a “self-deprecatory description of his rhetorical abilities”[1] and that we should not understand this as Paul saying he is not able to write in an eloquent fashion. Paul is being humble about his abilities. Wilson raises an important question and that is, “is the writing of Hebrews beyond Paul’s abilities?” He writes that different letters to different peoples require different styles of writings. For instance, consider the writings of Samuel Rutherford. When he is addressing someone who just lost a loved one,[2] he is kind and caring and pastoral. But when he is writing Lex Rex, he is bold and filled with conviction about civil and ecclesiastical matters. If we place both writings side by side, we would never guess they were written by the same person, but they are.
Secondly, the most common internal objection to Pauline authorship of Hebrews comes from Hebrews 2:3 where it reads “…how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard…”
The argument is that this passage teaches that the writer first heard of the gospel through other men. However, Paul says in Galatians[3] that he received the gospel from no man, but from Jesus Christ himself. Therefore, the writer could not have been Paul. There are two answers to this objection. The first answer is that when Paul says “us” he is speaking of himself in “common with those to whom he was writing, few or none of whom probably had heard the gospel from the lips of the Lord himself.”[4] In other words, Paul is simply receiving confirmation from others of what he has already heard from Christ himself. Though Paul had a separate encounter with Jesus (the Damascus Road in Acts 9), Paul received most of the general information about Christ from the disciples who actually saw and walked with Christ in his earthly ministry. This argument actually proves that Paul heard the gospel not only from Christ himself, but that it was confirmed in different places he traveled by other disciples of Christ.
There are other internal evidences against Pauline authorship, but these two are the most commonly heard. Even if these evidences disproved Pauline authorship, whoever wrote Paul was either a close companion or someone who mimicked much of Paul’s writing style and theology. However, it appears safe to conclude in the words of Dr. Robert Reymond that “there is nothing in the content of the letter that Paul could not have written.”[5]
[1] Douglas Wilson, Christ Against His Rivals (Athanasius Press, Monroe:LA, 2008) 164.
[2] The Letters of Samuel Rutherford.
[3] Galatians 1:11-12.
[4] Quoted in Crampton.
[5] Robert L. Reymond, Jesus, Divine Messiah: The New Testament Witness (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1990), 295.
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