So here’s the deal: Hebrews is most likely not Paul.
Scholars often agree that Titus, 1-2 Timothy, and even Ephesians weren’t written by Paul.
This is supposed to be a really big deal and shake people out of their faith. Progressive Christians love to cite this as proof of biblical error.
Here’s the deal: technically Paul never wrote ANY epistles. Instead, he dictated them to a scribe, as was the first century custom.
Why does this matter? Well the spoken word was considered much more valuable to a first century audience. Socrates said that once something is written down, it loses its power. Greek and Jewish audiences would have felt the same way, and they wouldn’t have trusted any letter unless delivered directly by Paul and read by someone imitating his inflections, mannerisms, and tone of voice.
That’s right: the epistles were specifically written to be read ALOUD, and performed in a way that directly imitated Paul!
So when Paul dictated letters like Romans and Corinthians, his scribe would have written “stage directions” akin to a script and would have both read AND performed the letter in church. (Can you imagine Galatians? Lots of screening 🤣)
Paul knew that the spoken word was valued above the written and he even reminded Corinth and Thessalonia to abide by his spoken word directions to them. Paul gave many lessons orally via tradition to each church he visited; his epistles are reminders and teachings. Paul said many more things than he ever wrote.
“Ok? But what does this have to do with the claim that Paul never wrote certain epistles?”
Simple: Paul didn’t write ANY epistles, technically. He spoke words to a scribe who did.
“But the differences in Greek show different styles!”
Yes. Because Paul used different scribes. Lydia, Timothy, Silas, Phoebe…all of these are potential scribes and performers.
You see, we live in an era which prizes the written word, and our society treats it as much more authoritative than the spoken. We look for errors in writing and the like to discern veracity.
But our bias is just that: OUR BIAS. We think differently than the first century. Yet if we don’t understand the first century, then we will fail to understand the Bible. The manuscripts we have are completely written. The earliest ones that looked like a script are long gone. We don’t know Paul’s inflection, tone of voice, or dramatic pauses.
But what we DO know is that many people use this concept to mislead us. “Paul didn’t write Titus!!” sounds scary until you realize its recipients KNEW he didn’t. They recognized Paul via the “performance” of the reader. To make the case for Pauline authorship to a first century audience, you had to look and sound like Paul. They couldn’t have cared less what the written words were. Written words could be changed; spoke words were truthful.