Who wrote Letter to Hebrews?

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faithful437

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I noticed in an old commentary (Catholic) that it is atributed to St. Paul, but now it is commonly accepted as anonymous?
 
I still believe it was Paul, although there has always been some credible doubt regarding the author. Although its written in a different style then Paul’s other letters, this could be attributed to a different scribe. Hebrews certainly has all the depth that Paul has in his Epistles!

I think Paul never mentions his name in the Letter to the Hebrews (one of the reasons his authorship is doubted) is because Paul had such a bad reputation among the Jews, and many of the Jewish Christians. After all, he persecuted them for some time.
 
I wish I could remember who it was, but an early Church Father I read the other day believed it to be Paul written through a different author. Either keeping in the tradition of Paul if not dictated. Similar to the latter parts of Isaiah (called deutero-Isaiah and trito-Isaiah) likely written after his death as I recall.
 
There has never been consensus on who wrote Hebrews. The topic has been hotly debated since the Patristic period. There are those who believe it was written by St. Paul. There are those who believe it was not written by St. Paul. If memory serves me correctly, St. Jerome did not think it to have been written by St. Paul.
 
This is what the NAB says in its introduction to Hebrews:
Usually Hebrews was attached in Greek manuscripts to the collection of letters by Paul. Although no author is mentioned (for there is no address), a reference to Timothy (Heb 13:23) suggested connections to the circle of Paul and his assistants. Yet the exact audience, the author, and even whether Hebrews is a letter have long been disputed…As early as the end of the second century, the church of Alexandria in Egypt accepted Hebrews as a letter of Paul, and that became the view commonly held in the East.
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Pauline authorship was contested in the West into the fourth century, but then accepted. In the sixteenth century, doubts about that position were again raised, and the modern consensus is that the letter was not written by Paul. There is, however, no widespread agreement on any of the other suggested authors, e.g., Barnabas, Apollos, or Prisc(ill)a and Aquila. The document itself has no statement about its author.
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Among the reasons why Pauline authorship has been abandoned are the great difference of vocabulary and style between Hebrews and Paul’s letters, the alternation of doctrinal teaching with moral exhortation, the different manner of citing the Old Testament, and the resemblance between the thought of Hebrews and that of Alexandrian Judaism. The Greek of the letter is in many ways the best in the New Testament.
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I have read similar thoughts by various Bible scholars, Catholic and otherwise. The likely possibility that Hebrews was not written by Paul does not change its value or importance.
 
faithful437 said:
I noticed in an old commentary (Catholic) that it is atributed to St. Paul, but now it is commonly accepted as anonymous?
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It has been suggested by Tertullian that Barnabas wrote it. Martin Luther suggested it was Apollos a Jew from Alexandria. No one knows for sure,but either way, it is a lovely epistle.
 
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