Talk:To the Hebrews

Raymond Brown commentary

Nathan, I'm in the market for a good New Testament commentary--how strongly would you recommend Raymond Brown's book? Are there others you'd recommend? Anyone else have any recommendations? Thanks in advance. --RobertC 04:59, 25 Feb 2006 (UTC)

Robert, I am not such a great person for this. I like Raymond Brown, although his work is less of a commentary than a text book on New Testament studies. For a straight commentary, I went with the New Jerome Biblical Commentary. My understanding is that the first edition of this commentary was essentially the first English-language post-Vatican II Catholic commentary. It contains a nihil obstat from the Catholic Church. In other words, it is scholarlly and sophisticated, but also religiously sensitive in a Catholic sort of way. I really like it. --Nathan Oman 17:51, 27 Feb 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the recommendation—and for the new Latin phrase (nihil obstat = official approval, literally "nothing hinders"). --RobertC 03:24, 28 Feb 2006 (UTC)

Authorship

Do we have any idea who wrote this? I've heard several different names, but no evidence for any of them. At the end of the letter in my quad, it says "Written to the Hebrews from Italy by Timothy", but it doesn't say that on the church website. --Mjberkey 03:37, 30 July 2007 (CEST)

There seems to be little to work with in any attempt to discover "the" author of Hebrews. At the same time, there seems to be little reason to be concerned with the identity of the author: the arguments and the spirit of the work seem to speak for themselves. It is, as Nate has written in the commentary, quite clear that Hebrews played an important role in Joseph Smith's thinking, and that is recommendation enough for me. --Joe Spencer 06:27, 30 July 2007 (CEST)

Joe, I agree. To quote one of the commentaries I checked out of the library on Hebrews, "The Spirit of God has seen fit to use numerous unnamed writers in giving us our Bible. Neither external nor internal evidence is sufficient to solve the problem of identifying the author of Hebrews. God spoke through him, however, and his message was designed to edify the Church of Jesus Christ." But, is there no hope of discovering the author, then? --Mjberkey 14:57, 30 July 2007 (CEST)