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INTRODUCTION TO HEBREWS, THE GENERAL EPISTLES, AND REVELATION
Neil Elliott
The transition from the Letters of Paul to the âEpistle to the Hebrewsâ and the General Epistles that follow offers an opportunity to reflect on the organization of writings that we call the New Testament. Although early Bible manuscripts show a number of different ways of organizing the collection, from the fourth century onward the pattern began to take hold in different codices that we see in our current New Testament.
First appear the four Gospels, then the Acts of the Apostles (though this followed the Epistles of Paul in the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus). Note that the gathering together of Gospels means the separation of the two-volume work Luke and Acts. Then come the Letters of Paulâarranged roughly in order of length, rather than chronology, with 1 and 2 Corinthians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians being put together, and with letters to churches preceding letters apparently written to individuals (though note that Philemon, the last of the Pauline Epistles, is also addressed to a church). Hebrews was often included among Paulâs letters, following Romans (for example, already in P46, c. 200), presumably on the assumption, held for example by Augustine and Jerome, that Paul had written it. Its present position following Paulâs letters (as it appears already in Sinaiticus) may be the result of its dislocation from that collection as doubts about its authorship gradually arose. (The third-century theologian Origen quipped that âGod only knowsâ who penned the epistle, but he usually quoted the letter as if it came from Paul, and commended churches who held it to be from the apostle. He also knew of a tradition that the epistle had been written by Clement of Rome: Eusebius Hist. eccl. 6.25.)
In the Syriac Peshitta (c. second century CE), the letters appearing under the names of the most prominent of the apostlesâJames, 1 Peter, and 1 Johnâappear immediately after Acts, before the Pauline Epistles. Other epistles that appear in our New Testament todayâ2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 Johnâgained currency relatively late in the first centuries of Christianity; they were not included in the Peshitta or in early lists of the New Testament writings. The fourth-century Codex Vaticanus arranges all the General Epistles before the Epistles of Paul; Sinaiticus puts Acts and the General Epistles together, but following Paulâs letters.
The nomenclature of âGeneralâ or âCatholicâ Epistles (from the Greek kathâ holikos, âgeneralâ or âuniversalâ) was first used by Alexandrian scholars to refer to 1 Peter and 1 John, then by the fourth-century bishop and historian Eusebius to refer to James; 1 and 2 Peter; 1, 2, and 3 John; and Judeâthough Eusebius acknowledged that several of these were âdisputedâ by different churches (antilegomena: Eccl. hist. 2.23; 3.25.1â3). Referring to these as âCatholicâ Epistles implies a distinction from Paulâs letters: if Paul wrote to specific congregations, these epistles are written to the church âCatholicâ or universal. The distinction cannot be maintained, of course, once we recognize that Paulâs letters are also directed to multiple congregations (e.g., the âchurchesâ of Galatia, Gal. 1:2) and consider that early manuscripts of Ephesians do not include the address âin Ephesusâ (1:1); indeed, the collection of Paulâs letters shows that they were perceived by some Christians, at least, as relevant and useful for churches beyond their original addressees. Colossians 4:16 assumes an interchange of letters between churches. And the probability that some of those letters are pseudepigrapha, created after Paulâs death to extend his legacy (or claim his authority) to new audiences, shows a âcatholicizingâ impulse at work in that collection.
Meanwhile, the Epistle of James and the First Epistle of Peter explicitly address more general audiences (âto the twelve tribes in the Dispersion,â James 1:1; âto the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,â 1 Pet. 1:1), but these letters were nonetheless written in specific circumstances with particular goals in mind. Furthermore, the characterization of addressees in terms of âexileâ and Diaspora may have a particular rhetorical function. It hardly distinguishes these as the only two writings in our New Testament written to communities of immigrants or ârootlessâ people, as Margaret Aymer shows in her article in this volume (âRootlessness and Community in Contexts of Diaspora,â 47â61).
Neither should we assume that the reference to Diaspora is evidence that these writings both addressed Jews (see the introductions to each epistle). Similarly, the title âTo the Hebrewsâ may well be secondary; it neither indicates that this âword of exhortationâ (Heb. 5:11; 6:1) was intended for Jewish readers or that it enjoyed particular popularity among them. To be sure, the status of the law, the temple, and the covenant with ...
