Occasionally, we notice that magazines carry articles in which a writer assumes that Paul wrote the Letter to the Hebrews. It is an assumption because our Bibles do not provide any note of who wrote that book.

Firstly, as with all books of the Bible, its inclusion in the canon of scripture must stand on its own internal evidence. Hebrews bears the marks of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and its message accords with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Scholars of the last two centuries, both conservative and liberal, including Andrew Murray and Marvin Vincent, have agreed that this is not Paul's letter. They tell us that its language is not of the same style as that of Paul's letters, and this is fairly clear to the layman.

Yet it is also true that the writer must have been familiar with Paul's teachings. But the thrust of Paul's teaching concerned the salvation of Gentiles, and this book is not concerned with that. The style bears the marks of a Jewish writer of much the same educational standard as Paul. In the second century the eastern Church accepted Hebrews as one of Paul's letters, but it was not until the fifth century that it was regarded as Paul's work by the western Church.

Two leaders of the early Church fill the requirements of authorship -  Barnabas and Apollos. Barnabas was one of the most well known figures in the early Church, and companion of Paul in his early years. Apollos was a scholar of Alexandria whose work paralleled Paul's among the young churches. Both of these probably had the academic skills to put such a treatise together. Is such knowledge important? Yes it is, when we realise that God's Spirit takes hold of the natural gifts of a writer and uses them for our benefit, and this is so throughout the Bible. The Christian Scriptures were to be read and studied more than any other book. When God has a job to do, he uses the most suitable 'human tool'.

The Book of Hebrews has puzzled some Christians so that they have given up trying to understand it. That is a tremendous pity because it has a great deal to offer those who are not 'Hebrews'. Apart from anything else, it has much to say about Jesus that is spiritually instructive. It can also help us who have not been brought up in the Jewish faith to understand the Old Testament and its place in our thinking. The function and meaning of the tabernacle became much clearer to me after just one reading of 'Hebrews'. It is a book worth studying individually, and in a group.

We do not know the answer to our question who wrote it, so we must content ourselves with waiting till we meet that person in God's kingdom. But the 'Epistle to the Hewbrews' does tell us valuable things to be found nowhere else in Scripture. It tells us about our Master so that we may become like him— and there is nothing else more important in the whole world.

DN