Paul (“In the oldest surviving text… (ca.“The question of Pauline authorship has been answered with a resounding ‘no’ from virtually all modern scholars, regardless of theological orientation” – Guthrie Luke was too intelligent to have radically altered Paul’s writing that heavily while translating. (One theory holds that Paul write it in Hebrews and Luke translated it into Greek, but even that I find hard to believe. It doesn’t have his structure, his grammar, or his thought patterns. It is VERY hard to believe Paul wrote it, because it is nothing like his writings. PAUL? Some early church fathers thought Paul wrote it, but many did not. What that said, let’s dive into Hebrews… we’ll ask all the external questions first – who, what, when, where, why, and how – and then we’ll touch on some of the content. Whatever the case may be, Hebrews has an unsettled history in its placement among the New Testament books. Therefore, it was assumed that Paul was the actual author. It has been speculated that at an early time, Hebrews was kept in a box, or capsa, with Paul’s letters. Many attributed it to Paul and thus placed it somewhere among Paul’s letters. Part of the reason can be attributed to the confusion over who authored Hebrews. In a number of ancient manuscripts, Hebrews stands between the Second Thessalonians and First Timothy. In the oldest surviving manuscript copy that contains the Book of Hebrews, P46, it is found after the Book of Romans. In most of the Greek manuscripts we find Hebrews following Philemon. While the Book of Hebrews is classified as one of the universal letters, it is found in a number of different places in the manuscripts of the New Testament often with the letters of Paul. Because it goes well with last week’s discussion.Different manuscripts and other churches have ordered things differently. This matches (purposely or not) the sequence of Galatians 2:9, “And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars…” Did this statement influence ordering? Nobody knows.Īnd none of the above is absolute over time. The Universal Letters generally follow the sequence James, Peter, John, Jude. What follows Paul’s letters are referred to as the Universal Letters, or letters seemingly written to all believers. The general ordering of Paul’s letters is based on size, and Paul’s letters are written to individuals or churches. Some scholars now think Mark might have been written first, but the order remains.Īcts follows as a bridge between the gospels and the letters. The Gospels are ordered in what is/was believed to be the order in which they were written. The very general order is : Gospels, History, Letters, Prophecy. How and why is the NT arranged as we have it? Other churches have added a number of books not included in the Hebrew or Protestant Old Testament:Īmong existing Latin manuscripts, we find about 300 different sequences. This goes back to the Septuagint (the 70 or LXX, translation from Hebrew to Greek.) We count 39 books of the Old Testament. The usual Protestant order is – Law, History, Poetry, Major Prophets and Minor Prophets. L ast Week’s Question: “Does the ordering of the books of the Bible matter?” The short answer is “no, not really”, but the longer answer is much more interesting, especially in light of our overview of Biblical and world history last week. Each of the resulting books were too long to fit on a single scroll, so they were split, giving us 39 books in our OT. Why? Because Hebrew doesn’t have vowels and Greek does. However, when the Septuagint was created by translating the OT into Greek, it got longer. Bonus Question: Why are Samuel, Kings and Chronicles split into First/Second?īonus Answer : The Hebrew Old Testament had 36 books each of these was a single book.
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