Q. A friend and I recently read out loud through the book of Hebrews using The Books of the Bible. I can definitely recommend this way of experiencing the Bible.
We do have a question, though. Your introduction says that the recipients of this letter “seem to have lived in Italy.” But as we read through Hebrews, it seemed to us that it was addressing instead a pre-70 A.D. Jerusalem audience—people who needed encouragement to stand strong while on the receiving end of persecution from temple-observant Jews. This seemed to us to account better for the letter’s encouragement to persevere and endure persecution.
We thought that the reference in the letter to people “from Italy” sending their greetings was actually describing people who were in Italy at the time, and not, as you say, people who used to live there who were now sending greetings back to their friends in Rome.
We don’t know any Greek and we haven’t looked in any commentaries; this is simply two reasonable laymen looking at each other and reflecting on what we’ve read—both in the text, as well as in the preceding intro.
It strikes me that the questions you’re asking are the kind of broad and comprehensive ones that arise naturally from the consideration of an entire book. You and your friend clearly got the big picture as you read through and listened to the book of Hebrews. All the more reason to present the Bible in a format that encourages that kind of experience!
Questions like yours, about the background to a whole book, won’t necessarily lead you to a “gem of the day” devotional thought that you can carry around with you. But they still matter tremendously. As Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart write in their book How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth, we can never really recognize what the Bible is saying to “us now” until we appreciate what it was saying to “them then.” All of the biblical documents arise out of real-life experiences of communities of believers. The better we can understand those situations, the more clearly we can hear how the word of God was speaking into them, and so into our situation as well. Anything less does not do justice to the believers whose faith and courage in following Jesus brought us the New Testament in the first place.
You’ve raised an interesting question about the book of Hebrews that other readers and interpreters have also posed. Why couldn’t the audience of this book have been in Jerusalem, where we would expect the strongest opposition from those who wanted to maintain temple observances and sacrifices? Why couldn’t the greetings of “those from Italy” be from people who were actually living in Italy, meaning that the book was sent from there, not to there?
The answers to these questions don’t depend on knowing Greek. The Greek phrase translated as “those from Italy” could mean either people who live in Italy or people who came from Italy. But there are some other things in the epistle that suggest it wasn’t written to people living in Jerusalem:
– The writer says near the beginning, “This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.” So neither the writer nor the audience were eyewitnesses of the ministry of Jesus. If this letter was addressed to believers in Jerusalem before AD 70, it’s almost certain that some of them would have seen and heard Jesus when he was alive on earth.
– From the rest of the New Testament we know that the believers in Jerusalem were very poor. (This is why, for example, Paul took up a collection from wealthier believers elsewhere in the empire to help them.) But the writer to the Hebrews notes, “You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you had better and lasting possessions.” This would fit the wealthy situation in Italy much better.
– The writer also says, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” This also wouldn’t fit the situation of the Jerusalem believers, who had already seen some of their number killed for their faith. But there was a large and strong Jewish community in Rome, and Hebrews could be reflecting the threat that was beginning to be perceived from them.
– Finally, as I note in the introductory session to Hebrews in my Deuteronomy/Hebrews study guide, “At the end the author calls the whole work a ‘word of exhortation,’ the technical term for a sermon or homily in the Jewish synagogue.” There were, of course, synagogues in Palestine as in other parts of the empire, but if the question is whether the letter arises out of Diaspora Judaism or temple observance in Jerusalem, the synagogue language points more naturally towards the Diaspora.
None of these considerations are, of course, absolutely conclusive, but they are the kind of things that lead me to believe that Hebrews was written to the community of Jesus’ followers in Rome, not in Jerusalem.
Good Question 
I’ve often wondered if the book was written at least partly with an audience of either Hellenized Jews or Samaritans or both. From what I understand, neither group (and certainly not the latter) was particularly fond of the Jerusalem/Temple-based elite. The book uses the tabernacle, not the temple, for its extended motif. The narrative of the faith heroes in Hebrews 11 cuts off at David, just before Solomon built the temple — as does Stephen’s similar narrative in Acts 7, which not only ends at David but denounces the idea that God could live in a fixed house. And my understanding is that Stephen was a Greek name, and he was picked to help serve the Hellenized Jews who were being marginalized. And immediately after Stephen’s martyrdom, his fellow deacon Philip goes to Samaria. The only reference to Jerusalem I can find in Hebrews comes late, and emphasizes the heavenly nature of Zion. So again, the book appears aimed at an audience that shares an appreciation of the tabernacle but not of the temple. What do you think?
This makes a lot of sense. The New Testament writers as a whole define what it means to follow Jesus over against the physical temple. This likely reflects the way that followers of Jesus were marginalized by those who controlled the temple system. The synoptic evangelists all pointedly describe Jesus walking away from the temple and predicting its destruction. For Paul the true temple is the community of Jesus’ followers. For John the true temple is Jesus’ body, raised up on the third day. For the author of Hebrews it’s the heavenly sanctuary, of which the earthly temple is only a copy and shadow. And the author of Revelation is looking forward to a city that has no need of a temple, because God dwells in the midst of its people. In his vision of heaven he sees “the temple” but the specifies that he means “the tabernacle of the covenant law.” So it shouldn’t be surprising that Hebrews seems to address an audience that appreciates the tabernacle but not the temple, as this is the wider audience for the entire New Testament. We can narrow the audience down further through some of the indications given in the book, although as I say this can’t be done conclusively. One hint I didn’t discuss in the blog post (since I said a knowledge of Greek wasn’t necessary) is that the author of Hebrews consistently uses the Septuagint, even resting on readings in that translation that differ from the Masoretic text. This might suggest an Alexandrian origin of the epistle, even if it has a Roman destination. A fascinating book that presents many puzzles to try to solve. (Thanks for your comment!)
Thanks, Chris!
I know this thread is 4 years old but I have a burning question about Hebrews which is ignored by every commentary I have read. Most scholars point to Rome as the most likely destination for the epistle and also say the author was likely connected with Paul (in the “Pauline circle” as they say). And yet I have seen no comment whatsoever as to whether the author or the audience was familiar with the epistle of Romans. I would think this would be an obvious question to any commentator who addresses the background of Hebrews (which would be ALL scholarly commentaries). Even if they said, “There is no evidence one way or the other”, at least they would be saying something.
Why such a lack of interest in this topic of the Hebrews awareness of Romans? And what would be your take on the question.?
Thank you.
Well, you bring up an excellent point. I have written a study guide to Hebrews myself but I didn’t think to address this question in it. I suppose, in my case at least, this was because Hebrews seems to have been written to such a different audience than Romans that I imagined the two letters were sent to two different communities that, even if they were in the same city, weren’t necessarily sharing letters back and forth (the way Paul told the Colossians and Laodiceans to do in their nearby cities). Romans could have been written ten or more years before Hebrews, but even so, it might not have begun to circulate widely by the time Hebrews was written. The audience of Hebrews is very much Jewish-Christian, very familiar with the Old Testament and typological argument. The audience of Romans is, by Paul’s own declaration, mixed Jewish and Gentile, but culturally more Greco-Roman, since Paul uses a “diatribe” style in addressing them. It appears to me at least that Paul assume less OT background on their part. It’s nevertheless intriguing that the author of Hebrews refers to “our brother Timothy,” suggesting that there’s a connection with the Pauline circle. I agree with you that this is a very pertinent question that should be addressed in commentaries and study guides, even if we don’t have a good answer to it.