the epistolary closing of hebrews and pauline imitation 285
other early Christian letter closings of his day than that he intentionally
mimicked paul’s letters.
Conclusion
many aspects of the epistle to the hebrews remain a mystery to schol-
ars. for at least the last century, arguments for understanding hebrews
as pauline pseudepigraphy have emerged as a possible option regarding
the epistle’s origin and reception. while a possible scenario, the question
is whether it is the most likely one. as i have attempted to argue in this
paper, a more likely scenario is that hebrews demonstrates familiarity
with not only letter closings of paul but of other early Christian writings
as well. in this light, many parallels between hebrews and paul are pres-
ent since both authors utilized, and very likely transformed, letter-writing
conventions. it is possible that some of these elements originated with
paul and were available for the author of hebrews—the divine source
“god of peace” in the peace benediction, for example. This, however, dem-
onstrates pauline influence and not necessarily pauline imitation. There
are also telling differences between the letter closings of hebrews and
paul’s letters. any marks of the author intending to appear pauline are
overshadowed by missed opportunities and departures from distinctively
pauline elements. while beyond the parameters of this paper, one might
further ask why there is no similar pauline epistolary opening if the author
wanted to pass the epistle off as from paul. why did he not utilize the fairly
common convention of an autograph by paul?80 The more likely answer is
that the author of hebrews was influenced by paul—possibly within the
same circles as him—but was not trying to write under his name.
80 Koester, Hebrews, 582: “[s]omeone intending to give the impression of pauline
authorship would almost certainly have created for hebrews an epistolary opening similar
to those of paul’s letters and would probably have mentioned paul’s name.”