Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

corpus-paul - Re: [Corpus-Paul] Hebrews

corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Corpus-Paul

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "" <khs AT picknowl.com.au>
  • To: corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Hebrews
  • Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:55:34 +0930


Dear Bob,

I don’t have much time to contribute – especially to your list of
questions – but you asked in your first e-mail, “Who were the
Hebrews?” On that I would like to offer a suggestion which, if correct,
may help with some of the other questions.

My view comes out of being convinced that the Revelation was early –
earlier than most of the New Testament (i.e. 62). If I am right about this
then there was a particular problem group in the Church in Asia (and
probably beyond Asia) that was causing considerable harm to the Church. That
group was the Nicolaitans (Rev 2:6&15). Not much is known about the
Nicolaitans which is testimony to how early they operated. Cerinthus was a
contemporary of the Apostle John (e.g. the story of their encounter in the
Ephesian baths). But Irenaeus says that ‘the error of Cerinthus had been
“disseminated among men...a long time previously by those termed
Nicolaitans.”’ (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.11.1).

What he means by ‘a long time’ is not clear but surely we may assume
decades. The point I am making is that if the Revelation was early enough to
precede much of the NT then parts of the NT, especially those letters
written to Asian situations, are likely to have dealt with the Nicolaitan
problem.

1 Tim 1:7, written to Timothy in Ephesus (where the Nicolaitans were active
– and accepting the epistle as authentically Pauline), speaks of some who
desired ‘to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they
(were) saying or the things about which they (made) assertions’. It was
probably the same people who were preoccupied with ‘godless and silly
myths’ (1 Tim 4:7) and ‘endless genealogies…speculation… (and) vain
discussion’ (1 Tim 4:4-6, c.f. Tit 3:9). It is likely that the same or a
similar group were meant in the letter to Titus, there the group was
absorbed by ‘Jewish myths’ (Tit 1:14). In Colossae there were those who
passed judgment on the ‘shadows’ of the Old Testament, ‘food and
drink, festivals, new moon, sabbath’ (Col 2:16-17).

My suspicion is that the Nicolaitans were predominantly Jewish converts to
the Christian faith who had, in the twenty years from Pentecost to Paul’s
mission to Asia, syncretized their Jewish and Christian beliefs with Gnostic
ideas. (They were probably the first of the Gnostics with which the Church
had to deal. Cerinthus, who shared their ideas, was certainly a Gnostic).

Hebrews, then, was written (by Paul, I believe) to counter the powerful and
evangelistic Nicolaitans who sought to teach from the Old Testament
Scriptures but who did not rightly understand them. Rather, they perverted
them with their ‘silly myths’, ‘speculation’ and so on.

Hebrews was not written specifically to a Jewish readership but to the
Church (in Asia in the first instance) which was troubled by the Nicolaitan
perverters of the (O.T.) law etc. For that reason the book deals mostly with
the Old Testament. The relatively short life of the Nicolaitans (I doubt
that any would call themselves Nicolaitans – or than any Nicolaitans would
call themselves Christians, once Nero’s persecutions began) means that the
context into which Hebrews was written was quickly forgotten.

All a bit speculative, perhaps, but it makes sense of what we have.

Best wishes,

Kym Smith
The Anglican Parish of the Barossa
South Australia





  • Re: [Corpus-Paul] Hebrews, , 03/31/2006

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page