Image: Origen teaching his students, etching by Jan Luyken (1649-1712)
It seems every discussion of the authorship of Hebrews must
throw in the quote attributed to Origen by Eusebius: “But who wrote the epistle,
in truth God knows” (Eusebius, EH, 6.25). This is taken to mean that Origen believed it impossible to know who wrote the work.
David Alan Black points out in episode 19 of the Hoi Polloi
podcast, however, that if you read Origen’s works he consistently attributes
Hebrews to Paul. See also his book, The
Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul
(Engerion, 2013).
In On First Principles, for example, before offering a
citation from Hebrew 6:7, Origen writes, “To show more clearly, however, what
we mean, let us take the illustration employed by the apostle Paul in the
Epistle to the Hebrews” (3.1.10).
In his Epistle to Africanus, Origen goes even further, in reference to his interpretation of Hebrews 11, when he says, “However, some one
hard pressed by this argument may have recourse to the opinion of those who
reject this Epistle as not being Paul’s; against whom I must at some other time
use other arguments to prove that it is Paul’s” (v. 9). See also Matthew J.
Thomas, “Origen on Paul’s Authorship of Hebrews, New Testament Studies, Vol.
65, No. 4 (2019): 598-609 (read the abstract here,
which concludes, that Origen’s “surprisingly consistent testimony is that the
epistle is indeed Paul’s”).
JTR
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