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Editing of the apostolic writings took place prior to their elevation to the status of Scripture. An apparent addition to the text in Mark 16:9-20 is suggestive of Peter�s review and editing of the material before sanctioning it as Scripture.
If the gospel of Luke already had been authorized as Scripture, which appears to be the case,F1 there was no need to edit it. But if Luke�s second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, had not been previously transmitted to Peter in its final form, then it would have been subject to edit as well before being sent with John Mark to Peter.
Editing is apparent in Acts of the Apostles, as it ends abruptly without a conclusion at Acts 28:31, and without the usual "amen," at the point in the account where Paul was under house arrest in Rome ca. CE 62 preaching God�s way of life unhindered. This editing, consisting in part of the removal of any further material, was a conscious decision of Paul and his associates.F2 Their rationale is unknown but the implication is that the remainder of the material was not germane to purposes of the Scriptures.F3 Pauline review and editing of a manuscript of one of his principal associates would have been normal and expected for purposes of accuracy, clarity, and detail.
Luke was not "a witness" of the events recorded in Acts except for the limited periods of Acts 16:10-40 and Acts 19:23-28:3, as required by Luke�s use of the second person singular tense "we" as opposed to the plural "they." Luke had to rely on the accounts of others and what original documents he could access. Peter was an eyewitness of much contained in these works, and he had the option of editing the material and further correcting any item that was not precise prior to their release as Scripture.
An example of extensive redaction of a Pauline letter was Paul�s editing of Hebrews. His purpose in so doing may be inferred from traces of his editing and the location of Hebrews within the Pauline corpus. The prescript and the thanksgiving were parts of the ancient letter form and usually followed by Paul in his letters.F4 According to Calvin Roetzel:
The salutation is one of the most stable elements in the ancient letter. The form is rather precise. Unlike our modern letter, the salutation includes the names of both sender and recipient, as well as a greeting. (Roetzel 1975:19.)
In referring to the thanksgiving he writes:
...the thanksgiving is a formal element of most Pauline letters and it terminates the letter opening, signals the basic intent of the letter, and may serve as an outline of the major topics to be considered. (Roetzel 1975:21.)
Writing in New Testament Studies, Lindars maintained that the rhetorical analysis of Hebrews confirmed that it was a letter for:
Once it is seen that Hebrews is dealing with a pressing practical problem of the readers, its character as a letter is decisively reestablished. It is a letter, consisting of a homily, sent to the church of destination, because the author is not able to address the recipients in person, and the absence of a formal epistolary opening does not negate its essential character as a communication to specific persons from a distance. (Lindars 1989:383 at fn. 2.)
Customarily, in the prescript of his epistles, Paul identifies himself as the author, or co-author, designates recipients, and provides a greeting with a thanksgiving appearing immediately thereafter. As preserved, Hebrews contained neither the prescript nor the thanksgiving. The omission was obvious and deliberate. As preserved in the Scriptures, Hebrews commences with the body opening and concludes in the normal fashion of Paul�s other epistles.
Placement of Hebrews in ancient manuscripts was immediately after the epistles to the seven churches, sometimes referred to as the public letters, and immediately before the pastorals, often termed the private letters, indicative of their Pauline authorship even though it remained unstated. It is untenable to place a work by another author in between Paul�s other works.
Some scholars suggest that Hebrews is more in the character of a sermon than an epistle. Apparently this impression was the effect Paul intended to convey by removal of the prescript and thanksgiving, making the epistle a message to all of the church. Nevertheless, it was originally a letter. Deletion of the prescript and the thanksgiving makes this letter, which was originally addressed to a specific local church congregation, a letter applicable to the whole church. It keeps it distinct from the nine Pauline epistles addressed to the seven named churches. Those epistles made up a specific subset purposed to deal with the basic tenets or first principles of Christianity.
The local church congregation to which Paul originally addressed Hebrews is not clear. It likely was the Judeo-Christian congregation at Rome. The content of the epistle, which encompasses issues pertinent to Judeo-Christians seemingly in anticipation of the cessation of Temple worship, suggests a mature and fairly well-established congregation with a significant contingent of Christian Jews.
The epistle of Hebrews summarizes, in the first six chapters, the material on being a Christian. It then proceeds into far more mature doctrinal subject matter focusing upon the superiority of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, the Levitical priesthood, and Christ�s return and Millennial rule. Paul summarized the subject matter of these first six chapters in Hebrews 6:1-3 as repentance, faith, baptism, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment to which he refers as "elementary teaching" (Hebrews 6:1 NASB).
In Hebrews Paul chose to use the Septuagint, the LXX, throughout which implies its original writing in Greek and not Hebrew (or Aramaic). When Paul wrote "I shall see you with Timothy soon," he insinuated that the recipients of this congregation in ca. CE 67:
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knew who Timothy was and that this fact was relevant to the group;
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knew that Timothy was imprisoned; and
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could expect a visit from the apostle Paul shortly after receiving the epistle.
All of this appears to rule out the Jerusalem church as the original addressee, but it could have been the church at Antioch of Syria or perhaps more likely the church at Rome. The work also had to have been completed prior to II Timothy and Paul�s arrest in ca. 67.F5 The lack of a personal greeting to his Roman acquaintances suggests the immediacy of the intended visit to Rome. Paul alluded to this imminent visit at Hebrews 13:23.
As John A. T. Robinson pointed out the phrase "Those from Italy greet you" strongly suggests the writing of the letter at a Roman colony where greetings were sent by the local church people to the brethren at the imperial capital and not visa versa (Robinson 1976:206-207).
F1Inferred from Paul�s quotation from I Timothy 5:17 from Luke 10:7 as Scripture.
F2The so-called lost chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is fraudulent.
F3Justo Gonzales suggests as a theological reason that the account Luke related in Acts would not come to an end until the end of history (Gonzales 1984:xvii).
F4See Erich Fascher, "Briefliterature, urchristliche, formgeschichtlich" in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (T�bingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 3rd ed. [Paul Siebeck], I, cols. 1412-1416.
F5Paul�s arrest was probably in the Summer of CE 67. This allows for his removal to Rome and II Timothy before the winter of 67-68. The trip to Spain and the west would have returned Paul to the area ca. 66. Thus 66-67 appear to be likely years for the writing of Hebrews. The necessity of having manuscripts and parchments brought to Rome may infer that his arrest occurred before he had really gotten into the project of assembling his writings. The arrest and circumstances Paul reported in II Timothy may have caught Paul by surprise requiring a rather hasty compiling approach to the Pauline corpus. Should this have been the case Paul�s object would have been to chose which materials were to be preserved rather than be concerned with editing.
Taken from The First Christians by
Michael P. Germano and edited for the world wide web.
Copyright �1992, 1993,
1995, 1996, 2000 by Michael P. Germano. All Rights Reserved.
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