I. Hebrews in Early Church Life
Who the first recipients of the Letter to Hebrews were cannot be answered with unquestioned certainty, but the presence of so many sentences and phrases from it in First Clement, another church document usually dated around ad 96, argues well that believers living in Rome might have been the letter’s original target audience. Written by one Clement of Rome, a major leader in the church there ca. ad 90–100, First Clement is a letter sent by the church at Rome to the church at Corinth after learning about some troubles there that needed correcting. The salutation begins, “The Church of God which sojourns in Rome to the Church of God which sojourns in Corinth,” but the writing person, tradition maintains, was one Clement, who was either the pastor or the leading elder in the church at Rome.1
Clement was profoundly influenced by the thoughts and expressions in the Letter to Hebrews, and his letter to Corinth uses actual quotations from the writing and makes distinct allusions to its message, all of which evidences that the Letter to Hebrews was one of his resources.2 The following list of references provides a ready set of these correspondences.
The traditional dating of ca. ad 96 places First Clement within the sub-Apostolic period, a time within the last one-third of the first century, just thirty or so years after the death of Peter and Paul. If the tradition that Tertullian (ca. 155–220) reported is accepted, namely that Peter was the one who ordained Clement,3 then the document Clement wrote is the work of an immediate follower of that apostle. In First Clement 5:1b, Peter and Paul are lauded as “noble examples of our own generation,” indicating closeness to them in time and, some believe, that Clement was acquainted with the two apostles. That both Peter and Paul were now dead is clear from Clement’s words about each: “[Peter] having thus given his testimony went to the glorious place which was his due” (5:4); “[Paul] taught righteousness to all the world, and when he had reached the limits of the West he gave his testimony before the rulers, and thus passed from the world and was taken up into the Holy Place—the greatest example of endurance” (5:7).4
If Tertullian was correct in reporting that Peter ordained Clement, and since First Clement borrowed so readily from Hebrews, then it might well be presumed that the Letter to Hebrews was written by someone who had also known Peter and/or Paul, as Clement did. While this possibility should not be stated dogmatically as fact, one thing is clear: the borrowing Clement did from Hebrews as he wrote does suggest that the Hebrews letter was known within the setting of the church at Rome before the end of the first century.
A second important source in tracing the history and influence of the Letter to Hebrews in the early church is the ancient ten-volume Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius Pamphili (ca. 260–ca. 339), bishop of Caesarea. Writing to give a detailed report of the succession of orthodox leaders and teachings of the church at a time when heretical and deviant groups were multiplying and bringing the Christian faith under increased attack by critics, Eusebius traced the course of orthodoxy in the most prominent regions of the Empire world and identified as well those persons and groups responsible for erroneous and divisive teachings.
Published in its final form in ad 325, the Ecclesiastical History treats in chronological order the major leaders, events, fortunes, and problems at four major centers of the church from the time of its founding after the resurrection of Jesus down to the time of Eusebius, its writer. Book 1 tells about the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ; Book 2 reports the activities of the apostles and tells how Peter and Paul died. In Book 3, Eusebius reports the traditions about which writings were used in the churches as a basis for teaching, worship, and personal edification, and which writings were either questioned or rejected. In reporting those traditions, Eusebius referred repeatedly to those who were his predecessors in ministry, and many statements from them about the Letter to Hebrews appear in the history he prepared.
The student of Ecclesiastical History will notice Eusebius’s very useful method of treating the same topic or event more than once and the strategy he demonstrated in repeating certain comments and aspects of history in order to shed light on the different periods he covered in reporting about the ongoing history of the church. With respect to authoritative writings, Eusebius stated this as his planned method of reporting about them:
I will take pains to indicate successively which of the orthodox writers in each period used any of the doubtful books, and what they said about the canonical [endiathekon] and accepted [homologoumenon] Scriptures and what about those which are not such.5
In applying this method to what his predecessors had to report about the Letter to the Hebrews, Eusebius began with a presumably early accounting of how the church at Rome viewed the work: “And the fourteen letters of Paul are obvious and plain, yet it is not right to ignore that some dispute the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it was rejected by the church of Rome as not being by Paul, and I will expound at the proper time what was said about it by our predecessors.”6
By “our predecessors,” Eusebius meant certain major leaders honored in the Eastern church: Clement of Alexandria (ca. 155–ca. 220); Origen (ca. 185–ca. 254); and Dionysius the Great (died. ca. 264), bishop of Alexandria from 247 to 264.7 Although Eusebius reported traditions from Western church leaders, it seems that he favored Eastern church views—probably influenced by his schooling under the leaders there—and his comments on the opinions of the leaders there are usually more extensive.
In Book 3 of his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius reported on the recognition accorded the Epistle of Clement (=First Clement) and mentioned as commonly known fact that its writer had borrowed heavily from the Letter to the Hebrews:
In this he has many thoughts parallel to the Epistle to the Hebrews, and actually makes some verbal quotations from it showing clearly that it was not a recent production, and for this reason, too, it seemed natural to include it among the other writings of the Apostle. For Paul had spoken in writing to the Hebrews in their native language, and some say that the evangelist Luke, others that this same Clement translated the writing. And the truth of this would be supported by the similarity of style preserved by the Epistle of Clement and that to the Hebrews, and by the little difference between the thoughts in both writings.8
This comment by Eusebius appears in that section of the history in which he was citing the tradition about those who “first succeeded the Apostles, and were shepherds or evangelists in the churches throughout the world”9—Clement being named among them, along with Luke, and both Clement and Luke were understood to have been part of the Pauline circle. The view that Paul authored Hebrews was widely held among the Eastern churches, and Eusebius included quotes from many Eastern leaders about their views on that authorship.
In his reporting, Eusebius gave testimony that the Eastern church viewed Hebrews as both authoritative and apostolic because it was considered a Pauline writing. Eusebius knew, however, that some churches and leaders in the West did not view Hebrews as a Pauline work. Eusebius honestly reported the controversy because a part of his concern was to tell what the whole church had been saying “about the canonical and accepted Scriptures and what about those which are not such.” As he wrote about all this, Eusebius had before him documents that had preserved the traditions honored in at least four major church centers of his day: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.10
II. Hebrews in the New Testament Canon
It is important to note what was known and honored within the strategic church centers of the first and second centuries because, as we have seen, certain localities became prominent centers of tradition for faith and order. Those centers were also places where collections of authoritative documents were gathered and preserved and copied for use by local or even distant groups of believers. By examining and comparing those traditions, Eusebius traced how specific persons and writings were regarded and why that regard became fixed. Each region and church center tended to honor those writings which possessed “canonicity, or something like it, in a particular church for
