Who Wrote Hebrews? The Case for Paul as Its Author
I believe Paul wrote Hebrews, though the book does not name its author. That conclusion needs an explanation, especially when some passages seem to point to someone else. The reference to Timothy is particularly suggestive, and the way Hebrews reasons from Scripture fits Paul’s training and ministry. I find the combined evidence persuasive, but we don’t strengthen the case by brushing aside the objections.
Let Hebrews Set the Question in Its Proper Place
Hebrews was written to persuade people to remain faithful to Christ. Its first readers appear to have been Jewish believers under pressure to turn back, and the writer addresses them as people who know Israel’s Scriptures and worship. His lengthy explanations of the priesthood and sacrifices are meant to show them what they would be abandoning. Christ had accomplished what the animal offerings could only anticipate.
Jesus is greater than the angels and Moses, and His priesthood surpasses the Levitical order established under the Law. Returning to that old system would not give these readers something Christ lacked. They would be turning from the Son to the things that had pointed toward Him. The book’s opening directs them to the One through whom God has now spoken:
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.
The Son is the heir of all things, the One through whom God made the worlds, and the brightness of His glory. Having purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of Majesty. Throughout Hebrews, the writer brings his readers back to this Son and His finished sacrifice.
Yet he never introduces himself with “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ,” as Paul does in several letters. We should acknowledge that difference plainly. God used real men in history to write His Word, and knowing the writer’s circumstances can help us understand his audience and purpose. But God inspired and preserved Hebrews, so its authority doesn’t depend on my ability to identify that man. I can examine the evidence for Paul without making the book stand or fall with my conclusion.
The Clues Inside Hebrews Point Toward Paul
Hebrews required a writer thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament and able to explain its fulfillment in Christ. Paul had been trained in Scripture before his conversion, and the risen Lord then confronted and commissioned him. Acts 9 records that encounter; in Acts 22 and 26, he explained his call before very different audiences. His ministry gave him ample reason to address Jewish hearers from the Law, Psalms, and Prophets, as Hebrews does at length.
In 2 Peter 3:15-16, Peter calls Paul “our beloved brother Paul” and describes how unstable people distort his letters as they do “the rest of the Scriptures.” He recognizes both the wisdom God had given Paul and the scriptural standing of his writings. Hebrews contains difficult passages of the kind Peter describes, but he does not identify it as one of Paul’s letters.
Hebrews itself tells us what kind of work its author intended to send:
And I appeal to you, brethren, bear with the word of exhortation, for I have written to you in few words.
The Greek phrase translated “word of exhortation,” logos tes parakleseos, describes an appeal that can encourage and warn. Similar language appears in Acts 13:15, when synagogue leaders invited Paul and his companions to speak after the reading of the Law and Prophets. Paul stood and addressed them. A sustained message built around Scripture was a form of ministry he knew well.
Hebrews reads like such a sermon, but its author also says, “I have written to you.” He knew the readers, expected to see them again, and sent personal news at the close. This combination of sustained exhortation and personal correspondence helps explain why the work opens and develops differently from Romans or Galatians. The explanations of Christ’s priesthood serve an urgent appeal to draw near and hold fast, while the warnings confront people who are drifting or refusing to listen.
The closing also places the writer within a familiar circle of Christian workers:
Know that our brother Timothy has been set free, with whom I shall see you if he comes shortly.
Timothy was Paul’s trusted coworker, whom he regarded as a beloved son in the faith. Paul sent him to serve churches, included his name beside his own in several letter openings, and addressed two inspired letters to him. The writer of Hebrews speaks of Timothy naturally, expecting his readers to know him and planning a visit that could include him. Other workers knew Timothy too, but this reference fits Paul’s ministry particularly well.
Greet all those who rule over you, and all the saints. Those from Italy greet you. Grace be with you all. Amen.
The closing grace agrees with Paul’s regular practice, and Italy fits his Roman connections. The greeting doesn’t tell us exactly where the writer was. He could have been in Italy, or people from Italy could have been with him elsewhere. What we can identify is a writer who knew Timothy, had an Italian connection, and closed with a greeting familiar from Paul’s letters. These details reinforce the case for Paul, whose training and pastoral work already fit the book.
The Main Objections Are Real but Not Decisive
Hebrews 2:3 raises the most difficult internal objection because the writer includes himself among people to whom others confirmed the message:
how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.
Paul insists in Galatians 1:12 that his gospel came through revelation from Jesus Christ, not through instruction from a man. Hebrews says the message “was confirmed to us by those who heard” the Lord. Some readers take that to mean the author learned the gospel secondhand and therefore could not have been Paul. I understand why they raise the objection; Paul’s direct revelation was central to his defense of his ministry.
I read the passage in Hebrews in its context, as a warning that the community must heed a message confirmed by witnesses. The writer joins his readers in the appeal not to neglect salvation, then describes the testimony of those who heard the Lord. The next verse adds God’s confirmation through signs and gifts of the Holy Spirit. I understand him to be explaining why they must receive that message, rather than recounting his own conversion. Paul could appeal to that shared apostolic witness without denying that Christ had revealed the gospel to him directly.
The Greek style presents a different difficulty. Hebrews is more polished and arranged more like a formal sermon than Paul’s ordinary letters. Some variation is to be expected when the audience and purpose change. A careful explanation of Israel’s priesthood will develop differently from an urgent rebuke of Galatian legalism or a letter correcting disorder at Corinth. Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews, trained under Gamaliel, and Acts repeatedly shows him reasoning with Jewish hearers from Scripture. He had the background for this kind of appeal.
The way a letter was put into writing could also affect its final form. Romans gives us a named example of someone helping Paul:
I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, greet you in the Lord.
Tertius put Romans into writing, though the letter remained Paul’s. A secretary could likewise have helped with Hebrews, and a translator could have affected its Greek wording. Hebrews names neither, so I cannot tell you that either explanation describes what happened. What Romans does establish is that Paul used help with his letters. That leaves room for a different style without requiring a different author, though it cannot settle the question by itself.
We also need to account for Paul’s missing name. Acts 22 describes a crowd that turned against him as soon as he mentioned being sent to the Gentiles. If his Gentile ministry had also aroused suspicion among the Hebrew readers, leaving out his name could have allowed his argument a fair hearing. I consider that a reasonable possibility, though Hebrews does not explain its unsigned opening. Paul’s willingness to adapt his approach is well established:
and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law.
Paul wanted people to hear the truth, and he could adjust his approach without changing the gospel. Leaving his name out of this unusual exhortation could fit that concern. It would not, by itself, identify him as the writer, but the lack of his customary introduction need not exclude him either.
Early Christian Witness Strengthens the Pauline Case
Early Christians were already discussing the missing name and the difference in style. Eusebius preserves Clement of Alexandria’s explanation in Church History 6.14: Paul wrote in Hebrew and Luke translated the work into Greek. Clement thought Paul omitted his name because of prejudice against him. He also passed on an explanation involving Paul’s humility and respect for the Lord’s mission to the Hebrews. Hebrews itself confirms none of those details.
In Church History 6.25, Eusebius quotes Origen, who attributed the thoughts to Paul but the wording to someone who remembered his teaching. Origen commended churches that received Hebrews as Paul’s, yet said only God knew who wrote it. He mentioned Clement of Rome and Luke as proposed writers. His testimony supports a Pauline connection while leaving the final composition uncertain. It should not be presented as an unqualified claim that Paul personally composed the Greek.
The record was not unanimous. Tertullian, writing in On Modesty 20, associated Hebrews with Barnabas. Alongside the early suggestions of Luke and Clement of Rome, later discussions have also proposed Apollos. I don’t find an alternative that explains the whole pattern better than Paul, but the doubts among Western Christians were real. We would misrepresent the evidence if we said the early church had never questioned the attribution.
An early manuscript gives us a different kind of evidence. P46 is a papyrus manuscript containing a corpus, or collection, of Paul’s letters. It is generally dated to the late second or early third century. The University of Michigan’s manuscript exhibit shows Hebrews placed directly after Romans. Whoever assembled that collection treated Hebrews as belonging with Paul’s letters.
I give that placement historical weight because it shows an early association, especially alongside the strong Pauline tradition in the East. A copyist’s arrangement cannot supply a signature missing from the text, and an early teacher cannot overrule Scripture. Even so, their testimony gives us evidence about how the book was received. We can value it without pretending we know every step between its composition and those surviving copies. The study on the Textus Receptus examines how the Greek New Testament was transmitted.
Paul’s Gospel and the Purpose of Hebrews Belong Together
The agreement in teaching is especially persuasive to me. Hebrews presents the Son as God’s final revelation, while Paul proclaims Him as the image of the invisible God, in whom all fullness dwells. Hebrews explains why animal sacrifices could not perfect the worshiper; Paul places redemption in Christ’s blood and justification in God’s grace received through faith. Both require us to abandon the idea that we can earn acceptance with God through works of the Law.
Hebrews respects the Law while explaining how its priesthood, sacrifices, tabernacle, and covenant are fulfilled in Christ. Paul reasons from the Old Testament in a similar way when he explains Abraham’s justification by faith and the Law’s role in exposing sin. Hebrews 9-10 and Romans 3 approach the subject from different directions, but each shows why the old system cannot provide the finished salvation accomplished in the Son. The study on Melchizedek considers Hebrews’ explanation of Christ’s priesthood more fully.
Other apostolic writers proclaimed the same Savior, so agreement in teaching cannot identify Paul by itself. It does, however, fit the man whose training and connections we have already considered. The writer also joins warning with encouragement as Paul does in his letters. His hearers are tempted to retreat, and he gives them reason to continue in faith: Christ has opened their access to God through His blood. Going back would disregard the One who fulfilled what the old offerings anticipated.
The finished sacrifice Hebrews explains rests on who Jesus is and what He willingly gave. He is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and entirely sinless. He offered Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked men tortured and killed Him, but the Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on His Son. The Father and Son were united in providing our redemption. Christ completed His sacrifice through His shed blood and death before He was buried and rose bodily from the dead.
He died for the whole world, so God’s offer of salvation is genuine for everyone, though a person can resist His grace and reject the Savior. Everyone who repents and believes is forgiven, justified, and born again. To be justified means that God declares the believer righteous. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals that believer, whose eternal life is secure in Christ. Calling ourselves Christians does not prove we have been born again, and assurance gives us no permission to persist in lawlessness. Hebrews calls its hearers to real faith and exposes false profession; it does not teach that a genuinely born-again believer repeatedly moves in and out of salvation. With Christ’s finished offering before them, believers are invited to draw near to God with assurance:
let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
This invitation follows the explanation of Christ’s sufficient offering and His service as our great High Priest. We can approach God with a conscience cleansed through His blood, confident in what He has accomplished for us.
I believe Paul wrote this exhortation, rather than someone else merely producing a work influenced by him. His training and ministry fit its sustained handling of Scripture, and its reference to Timothy fits the close working relationship recorded elsewhere in the New Testament. The objections leave questions about the writing process, but they have not persuaded me to set Paul aside. The early witnesses and manuscript collection reinforce that conclusion without making a possible secretary or translator a fact.
My Final Thoughts
I don’t want to become so occupied with the name of the writer that I neglect the Savior he preached. Understanding why I attribute Hebrews to Paul should help me read the book, not become a substitute for obeying it. Christ has completed His sacrifice and opened the way to God. I need to draw near through Him and take seriously His warning against treating that salvation carelessly.