[sword-devel] Paul's epistles

[Chris Little]

> I see that the default for Sword is that "Paul's Epistles" 
> includes Hebrews. Does anybody seriously believe that Hebrews 
> is by Paul?

We also call the books of the Pentateuch 1-5 Moses respectively in many
of our localized book names.  Does anybody seriously believe that the
Pentateuch was written by Moses and is not an amalgam of four major
sources?

We include Daniel with the prophets, despite his exclusion from that
group in the Hebrew canon itself.  Does anybody seriously believe that
Daniel lived during the Babylonian exile, despite his apparently not
knowing that the Medes never ruled Judea and the fact that he apparently
can't decide whether he prefers Hebrew or Aramaic, then forgets them
both and starts writing in Greek around the end of his composition?
There's a case to be made that Daniel should be removed from the
prophets purely on the basis of it belonging to the apocalyptic genre.
So then, if we created an apocalyptic category, where do we put Ezekiel
& Isaiah?  Maybe both?  Maybe 1st Isaiah goes to the prophets, 2nd
Isaiah goes to the apocalyptic?

My point is that scholarship challenges many traditional notions of
Biblical authorship.  At one point, Pauline authorship of Hebrews was
the prevailing view.  That view is, indeed, still maintained by plenty
of people today.  There's not even a claim to be made on the basis of
the age of questioned authorship because the traditional authorship of
the Pentateuch has been doubted for centuries and of Daniel since the
4th century.  Modern Bibles don't typically group Hebrews with the
catholic epistles either, so we might as well group it with the Pauline.

NB: any persons seeing this as an invitation to theological debate may
argue amongst themselves at news://crosswire.org/crosswire.fireside.

--Chris