INTRODUCTION TO HEBREWS, THE GENERAL EPISTLES, AND REVELATION

Neil Elliott

The transition from the Letters of Paul to the “Epistle to the Hebrews” 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 Paul—arranged 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 Paul’s 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 Paul’s 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 “God only knows” 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 apostles—James, 1 Peter, and 1 John—appear immediately after Acts, before the Pauline Epistles. Other epistles that appear in our New Testament today—2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 John—gained 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 Paul’s letters.

The nomenclature of “General” or “Catholic” Epistles (from the Greek kath’ holikos, “general” or “universal”) 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 Jude—though Eusebius acknowledged that several of these were “disputed” by different churches (antilegomena: Eccl. hist. 2.23; 3.25.1–3). Referring to these as “Catholic” Epistles implies a distinction from Paul’s letters: if Paul wrote to specific congregations, these epistles are written to the church “Catholic” or universal. The distinction cannot be maintained, of course, once we recognize that Paul’s letters are also directed to multiple congregations (e.g., the “churches” of Galatia, Gal. 1:2) and consider that early manuscripts of Ephesians do not include the address “in Ephesus” (1:1); indeed, the collection of Paul’s 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 Paul’s death to extend his legacy (or claim his authority) to new audiences, shows a “catholicizing” impulse at work in that collection.

Meanwhile, the Epistle of James and the First Epistle of Peter explicitly address more general audiences (“to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion,” James 1:1; “to the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,” 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 “exile” 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 “rootless” people, as Margaret Aymer shows in her article in this volume (“Rootlessness and Community in Contexts of Diaspora,” 47–61).

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 “To the Hebrews” may well be secondary; it neither indicates that this “word of exhortation” (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 Israel are prominent topics in several of these writings, but as Lawrence M. Wills shows, these were paramount concerns in numerous early churches, over many decades (“Negotiating the Jewish Heritage of Early Christianity,” 31–45).

In short, all of these writings give important glimpses into the convictions and concerns of early believers in Jesus. We can well imagine that their authors and intended readers shared particular knowledge and assumptions that are lost to us now. Their collection into a loose and rather ill-fitting category, “General Epistles,” may obscure important historical connections (for example, between the Johannine Epistles and the Gospel according to John). At any rate, that category, and the place of these epistles and Hebrews “in between” Paul’s letters and the Revelation to John, should not be taken to indicate that their various authors actually aimed these writings at churches “in general.” As the introduction to each of the following entries will indicate, we can make reasonable judgments about the specifics of place, time, and situation surrounding each letter. Taken together, they offer us additional glimpses of the diversity, no less than the commonality, of early churches. But their being grouped together in one part of our New Testament labeled “General Epistles” is little more than a matter of organizational convenience, and readers today should not for that reason consider themselves more included in the implied audience of any of these than of any other New Testament writing. The responsibility for how any of us read ourselves “into” these ancient writings, or read them “into” our own time, remains, at last, with us.