The book of Hebrews is one of the most wonderfully lyrical, theologically rich, and scripturally imaginative texts in our New Testament. But there is so much we simply don’t know about it. And looking for clues in the text itself doesn’t help as much as one would think it would.

Let’s start with who wrote it. Most scholars do not think Paul wrote it even though tradition says he did. The text does not name an author like Paul’s other letters. Nowhere does the author identify as “Paul.” Some of the ideas that Paul and Paul’s students wrote about frequently come out in the text. Echoes of the Christ Hymn in Colossians (1:15–17) reverberate throughout with the idea that Jesus will sustain all things. But Hebrews’ author weaves Old Testament references into the text that don’t sound at all like the Paul we know. In Galatians and Romans Paul explains gentiles’ relationship to God as inevitable because of God’s covenant with Abraham. The writer of Hebrews is more attuned to Moses and Aaron. If Paul didn’t write it, then who did? Some have suggested Priscilla, one of Paul’s followers. But really, we just don’t know.

Then there’s the question of who would have first read it—or heard it, since most people could not read back then. The heading in our Bibles would suggest that it was written to people whose ancestors spoke or identified with Hebrew culture. But the author writes in Greek. It’s quirky Greek, but it’s not quirky in the way that native Hebrew speakers would write Greek. It has a deep awareness of the Greek version of the Old Testament. This means that the first readers were probably Greek speakers with Jewish roots.

Hebrews describes Jesus as the high priest, but not at any temple known in the first century CE when the text was written. Rather, Hebrews describes practices and rituals from the wilderness tabernacle in Leviticus—thousands of years earlier. Hebrews does not describe Jewish ritual or belief in its time (nor does it describe Christian ritual for that matter). If we compare the descriptions of sacrifice in Hebrews to the way Jewish writers describe first-century CE sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple, they don’t match up at all. Whoever wrote Hebrews was interpreting Leviticus and its instructions for sacrifice, not describing how sacrifices happened in the readers’ world. Why does this matter? Too often Hebrews is used to elevate Christians over their Jewish ancestors, to critique Judaism. We should resist this idea. When Hebrews was written, there was no established church, no Christian traditions, no fully developed theology. The writer of Hebrews was trying (much like you and me) to figure out who this Jesus guy was in the lives of the community.

Speaking of when it was written, we don’t exactly know that either. Some scholars think it was written shortly after Paul’s letters (~60s CE). Some scholars think the Jerusalem temple was already destroyed (~70–80’s CE). Some church elders quoted from Hebrews already in the late 90s CE, so we at least know it was written before then. There is, however, no location (city, province, etc.) or significant current event mentioned in the text. That makes it difficult to determine where the first writer was or when the first readers/hearers encountered it. Most of the letters in our New Testament have something to help us identify a more accurate timeframe.

Speaking of letters, Hebrews also lacks many of the markers of an ancient letter. There is no author, no recipient, no thanksgiving, no “grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:2)—the usual way that Paul writes his letters. The last verses greet specific people like other letters, but that could have been added months, years, decades, or even centuries later when the text was copied for friends. Many scholars think Hebrews is an ancient sermon. The beautiful word-images, the repetition of sounds, the attention to parallel sentences—these are all markers of how a preacher speaks rather than how a letter writer writes.

So with all this uncertainty, should we just skip it?! Obviously not! That would make this summer reading series would be very, very short. If Paul didn’t write it, does that mean it is somehow dubious? Not at all. God’s presence in and through the text does not depend on who wrote it. If we don’t know who first read it, does that mean we can’t know what it tells us about God and Jesus? Absolutely not. Scripture does not depend on any kind of scientific or historical certainty in order to speak in our unpredictable, messy, unique context today. Scripture rather depends on us, as a community of faith, encountering the living God in and through its message. Hebrews has been a gift to us precisely because it describes the mysteries of our faith in ways that assure us of God’s unseen presence (Heb 11:1), draws us into a cloud of witnesses across millenia (Heb 12;1), and gives us glimpses of Jesus as the center of God’s eternity (Heb 1:4).