A couple of readers have raised the question as to whether The Letter to the Hebrews is actually a letter at all. One of them asked, “What is the difference between a letter and an epistle?” That’s a good question. One thought Hebrews could be someone’s sermon notes. What do you think? It is certainly hard to conceive of this ‘Bible book’ being a letter. It is a letter as the text and antiquity informs us. What do you think about the purpose of writing it? A question I asked Sandra who responded to the previous Gem and I replied on the website. (See the footer on the previous Gem.) Ponder that question for yourself before the next Gem.
It has been questioned whether Hebrews is rightly called a letter at all. The classic comment made about Hebrews is that the ‘book’ “begins as an essay, proceeds like a sermon, and ends like a letter.”
Let’s address the matter of the difference between an epistle and a letter. The word has two meanings:
- An epistle is an especially long and formal letter.
- An epistle can be a poem or other literary work written in the form of a letter.
The Greek verb [ἐπέστειλα] (epésteila) meaning “I have written” is the standard verb used for writing a letter. That verb is found in Hebrews 13:22. Both of these definitions of ‘epistle’ were used in the past to mean an exceptionally long letter or another kind of literary work posing as a letter.
A glance at the end of the letter will convince you that the classic saying above is indeed true. Hebrews does indeed end like a letter.
Now may the God of peace—who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood – may he equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him. All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.
I urge you, dear brothers and sisters, to pay attention to what I have written in this brief exhortation. I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released from jail. If he comes here soon, I will bring him with me to see you. Greet all your leaders and all the believers there. The believers from Italy send you their greetings. May God’s grace be with you all.
Hebrews 13:20-25
A quick way to find the background issues is via the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE) in E-Sword. You will have to load this resource into E-Sword in order to use it. <File> <Resources> <Download> . You can download E-Sword for free from www.e-sword.net
But unlike all Paul’s letters, it opens without any personal note of address or salutation; and at the outset it sets forth, in rounded periods and in philosophical language, the central theme which is developed throughout. In this respect it resembles the Johannine writings alone in the New Testament. But as the argument proceeds, the personal note of application, exhortation and expostulation emerges more clearly (Heb 2:1; Heb 3:1-12; Heb 4:1, Heb 4:14; Heb 5:11; Heb 6:9; Heb 10:9; Heb 13:7); and it ends with greetings and salutations (Heb 13:18). The writer calls it “a word of exhortation.”
Deissmann, who distinguishes between a “true letter,” the genuine personal message of one man to another, and an “epistle,” or a treatise written in imitation of the form of a letter, but with an eye on the reading public, puts Hebrews in the latter class; nor would he “consider it anything but a literary oration – hence, not as an epistle at all – if the epesteila, and the greetings at the close, did not permit of the supposition that it had at one time opened with something of the nature of an address as well”. There is no textual or historical evidence of any opening address having ever stood as part of the text; nor does the opening section bear any mark or suggestion of fragmentariness, as if it had once followed such an address.
Yet the supposition that a greeting once stood at the beginning of our document is not so impossible as Zahn thinks (Introduction to the New Testament, II, 313 f), as a comparison with James or 1 Peter will show. So unusual is the phenomenon of a letter without a greeting, that among the ancients, Pantaenus had offered the explanation that Paul, out of modesty, had refrained from putting his name to a letter addressed to the Hebrews, because the Lord Himself had been apostle to them. In recent times, Jülicher and Harnack have conjectured that the author intentionally suppressed the greeting, either from motives of prudence at a time of persecution, or because it was unnecessary, since the bearer of the letter would communicate the name of the sender to the recipients. Overbeck advanced the more revolutionary hypothesis that the letter once opened with a greeting, but from someone other than Paul; that in order to satisfy the general conditions of canonization, the non-apostolic greeting was struck out by the Alexandrians, and the personal references in Heb 13:22-25 added, in order to represent it as Pauline.
To resolve this matter we are going to have to determine why this ‘letter’ was written to see if we can account for the form and structure and thence the contents. That will be the focus of the next Gem.
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
C S Lewis
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
Galileo Galilei
With this ‘social media,’ instead of letters you get emails. They’re all written in a hurry, with no punctuation, no paragraphs – it’s one continual stream, with spelling mistakes. Quite frankly I think it’s a world I don’t need. But I have to read them all because people say, ‘Did you get my letter?’ And it’s not even a letter!
Dennis Skinner
Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely.
Pam Brown
The above quotes come from letter writers.