The Pauline History of Hebrews

The Letter to the Hebrews is a confounding book in the New Testament. For one, it is not really a letter. Nor is the author of this indistinctly-titled letter named or identified. In fact, many of the rudimentary questions surrounding its intended audience, date, and provenance seem impermeable.

Undeterred by these gaps, critical scholars have been transfixed by the anonymity of this text for more than just a few centuries, posing solutions with no foreseeable consensus. This historical-critical tradition has produced a litany of candidates for the author of this ＂letter＂ who now live on as customarily recycled ideas in obligatory ＂Introductory＂ genres for work on Hebrews.

Rather than see anonymity as an unresolved problem, as a lack in the text that needs to be resolved, Warren Campbell embraces anonymity as a vantage point from which to observe the Pauline history of the Hebrews in a new way -- that is, how Hebrews was made to be Pauline. It moreover discusses how later readers variously configured Paul’s Jewishness in light of having this epistle in their collection of Pauline letters. It also takes up a crucial point in the critical study of Hebrews by exploring how prefacing Hebrews in the manuscript tradition functions as a reading guide that predetermines the purpose and function of Hebrews. In this groundbreaking and thoroughly researched book, Campbell brings to bear new material on the memory of Paul’s Jewishness, helping to start to lay the groundwork for a more nuanced and perceptive understanding of the Letter to the Hebrews.

Warren Campbell is BKT Assistant Professor of Religion at Wabash College. He has published work in several journals, including New Testament Studies, Harvard Theological Review, and Vigiliae Christianae.