PRISCILLA AND PLAUSIBILITY
Responding to questions about Priscilla as author of Hebrews
by Ruth Hoppin
The following is the text of a paper I presented at the Pacific Coast Region/Society of Biblical Literature conference at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley in March, 2007.
My field of research is Harnack’s hypothesis that Priscilla is the author of the epistle to the Hebrews. I argue for the theory. There are two main objections to the Priscilla theory that I want to state and refute in order to assure its plausibility.
First, I will acknowledge a couple of minor objections - minor in the sense that they won’t compromise my case. I often encounter the question: why didn’t the author, who named and alluded to women in the roll call of heroes of faith in the eleventh chapter, mention Deborah and certain other women of the Old Testament? Well, I don’t know why, but there had to be a process of selection, and the women named were exemplars of faith who coincided with the author’s intention. J. Rendel Harris replies elegantly, noting the many references to women in chapter 11:
“…what we have found is positive evidence, which silence on certain points hardly affects any further.” (1)
There is indeed positive and multi-faceted evidence for Priscilla’s authorship – a rich context for weighing the omission of Deborah’s name.
Another objection, this time minor in the sense of being unworthy is: women in the apostolic church did not exercise spiritual leadership such as that evinced in the letter. This is circular reasoning that begins with a conclusion. It is reminiscent of Junia, “of note among the apostles,” who was given a whole new male identity because, allegedly, “women could not be apostles.” My response is: we must work our way through the
evidence in order to reach a sustainable conclusion.
The first major objection to which I will respond, stated briefly: “the use of a masculine participle in Heb.11:32 eliminates Priscilla as a possible contender for authorship of the letter.” I will review the reason why dismissal of Priscilla on the basis of 11:32 cannot be justified on grammatical and other grounds. Then I will reply to challenges to my explanation.
The second major objection: “it’s not a letter.”
This is a major objection because it casts Hebrews as an essay or sermon addressed to whom it may concern. Uprooted from its mooring in the history of the mid first century apostolic church, Hebrews is set adrift in uncharted seas of the late first century. There, a multitude of potential authors, essentially unknowable, stake their claim. I will show that Hebrews’ sermonic qualities do not invalidate its epistolary nature.
I. The controversial participle in Heb. 11:32, diegoumenon, or telling,
in the phrase “time will fail me telling…” is routinely cited as masculine – routinely and by rote, because not much thought is given to it and we have the impression that one commentator copies from another. The participle allegedly disqualifies a female author or as one source declares “thereby disposing of Priscilla.” “Disposing of” is strong language. Upon more nuanced reflexion we will see that Priscilla is not gone.
As we know a participle is a verbal adjective. Just as in English, an adjective modifies a noun or pronoun. In 11:32, telling modifies the pronoun me. Just as in English, me is in the accusative case, so that telling is in the accusative case.
This is significant because in the accusative case, the masculine and neuter forms of the participle are identical.
If we had the pronoun I or egw, thus the nominative case, the masculine form would be diegoumenos and the neuter form diegoumenon, the feminine being diegoumenan, differing by only one letter, eta, in next to last position.
But we don’t have the nominative case. What we have is a participle that is either masculine or neuter.
When I wrote my 1997 book, Priscilla’s Letter: Finding the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, I knew that the masculine and neuter forms were identical, but I didn’t realize that the neuter might have been intended. In November 1997 two events occurred. First, through serendipity, I met a Professor of NT Greek at the annual SBL convention in San Francisco, who later informed me he had new evidence for my Priscilla theory concerning the participle in Heb. 11:32. Second, my newly published book was removed from general circulation, paving the way for its eventual reprinting by another publisher in 2000, with inclusion of the new material.
In brief, he said the participle diegoumenon may have been neuter in intention as well as form. According to good classical usage, when the individuality of the author is not crucial in a sentence, the use of the neuter has ample precedent.
Tracing the grammar, we recall that a participle is both a verb and an adjective. According to Blass and Debrunner:
“When the predicate stands for the subject conceived as a class and in the abstract, not as an individual instance or example, then classical usage puts the adjectival predicate in the neuter singular, even with subjects of another gender.” (2)
In Heb. 11:32. time would fail anyone in telling.
In addition to BDF I wish to cite another reference, an earlier work, Herbert Weir Smyth’s Greek Grammar for Colleges published earlier, in 1920.
Yet, there have been objections to the explication of telling as an adjectival predicate intended as neuter. One is “it’s not an adjective; it’s an adverb.” My response is
“it’s not an adverb; it’s an adjective.” An adverb modifies a verb. Where is the verb?
If the participle has an adverbial quality to it, referring to duration of time (Time will fail me telling…) that is an issue in English translation.
When translated from Greek into English, an adjectival predicate can morph into an
adverbial clause. In the phrase, “time will fail me telling,” it is clear that “telling,” which
modifies the pronoun “me” is a verbal adjective. However, English translations sometimes introduce the pronoun “I” and/or change the participle to an infinitive, “to tell.” Thus in the NAB, we have “I have no time to tell,” giving the adverbial sense of time failing “as I tell.”
NT Professor Martin Culy of Briercrest Biblical Seminary (Apr. 13, 2004 b-greek@lists(dot)ibiblio(dot)org) asks “what syntactic basis (in most cases) remains for viewing the participles as adverbial? I would suggest that the only basis relates to English translation rather than Greek syntax…If “adjectival” elements modify constituents like nouns and pronouns, while “adverbial” elements modify verbs, I prefer to label these participles, which go with a pronoun, adjectival and to then ask how that syntax affects our understanding of the text.”
In his article, “The Clue is in the Case: Distinguishing Adjectival and Adverbial Participles,” he writes:
“Adverbial participles will always be nominative, except for absolute constructions or when they modify an infinitive.” (3) Our participle thus remains accusative and adjectival.
However, he has posed a different objection: “It’s not a predicate.” In email correspondence he wrote that the participle, in referring back to the pronoun, is not a predicate, and so does not qualify as an adjectival participle covered by the rule in BDG. According to the first-mentioned Professor of NT Greek, the participle, being part of a “pat construction”, is an adjectival predicate, and is covered by the rule in BDF. According to a recent email from Prof. Carl W. Conrad, the participle is obviously in the predicate, although he disagrees that it is an adjectival predicate under the rule in Blass and DeBrunner.
Prof. Bernard LaMontagne recently reviewed the relevant material, and in his own words: “I read Heb. 11:32 in Greek without any consideration for the English in order to capture the sense of the original…I still do believe that it’s neuter (an impersonal or general reference.)”
Along a slightly different line, Prof. Culy suggested that the idiom, time will fail me in telling, was so common that it may have become “fossilized,” that is, the masculine form might have been used by an author of either gender. This is the “editorial masculine” that Harnack and others considered plausible, that is, the author speaks for herself, for herself and another person, or for people in general. Priscilla may have been speaking for herself and Aquila, as Harnack suggested. Or the “literary masculine” may have been intended. On three other occasions the author refers to lack of time, in behalf of
hypothetical multiple writers: 2:5 about which we are speaking; 5:11 about which we
have much to say; and 9:5 of these things we cannot speak now in detail.
Carl Conrad does not consider the participle “decisive for the possibility of authorship by Priscilla.” He writes that one could use “the generic Greek masculine form just as a writer of American English in the past could have written “he” rather than “she.”
It is plausible that the original document may have had the feminine participle, even
without manuscript evidence for this possibility. At a time when female teachers and
leaders were falling out of favor in the church, the suppression of a feminine participle
would have been essential to gain acceptance for the letter. The plausibility of this scenario increases in connection with substantive evidence for Priscilla’s authorship.
In setting forth grounds for a grammatical resolution of Heb. 11:32 in favor of Priscilla, I acknowledge one more differing viewpoint. According to one professor of NT Greek, we can’t ascribe a neuter intention in every such case. He personally thinks the intention was masculine. However, he agrees that the matter has been thrown into uncertainty, in which case Priscilla cannot be eliminated as a possible author. That is all one needs to show.
.Even if the participle were masculine because the writer was masculine, we would be
looking at a writer of Hebrews who resembles Priscilla in every point of identification - a gifted teacher/catechist/evangelist, a colleague of Paul with a career along the Rome/Ephesus axis, a towering figure in the early church, who was somehow “forgotten,” his name inexplicably lost. Indeed, a Priscilla clone.
II. The second major objection: “it’s not a letter.”
Instead, it’s an essay or sermon addressed to Christians in general.
In this scenario, the original destination of Hebrews cannot yield clues to authorship because the destination was not localized. Thus it becomes difficult to argue for example that the destination city was Ephesus, where both Timothy and Priscilla had a ministry.
Yes, Hebrews has sermonic qualities. The author knows rhetoric, the construction is skillful, almost formal, and the document reads well aloud. Would someone write such a letter? Yes, a serious writer. Or a church leader, when danger of apostasy is imminent, not rhetorical, and one seeks mightily to avert such a catastrophe. This alone could explain why the letter is so carefully thought out and elegantly constructed.
Now, it’s true that in the final or thirteenth chapter, the tone of the discourse changes.
A series of personal comments are interspersed . Some have argued that the change in tone indicates that the thirteenth chapter is an appendage to the original document. I see it differently. After composing a carefully constructed letter, the author changes tone in order to sum up and wind down.
There is no manuscript evidence, nor any other kind of evidence that Hebrews
was ever circulated without the thirteenth chapter.
It is futile to argue that Hebrews is a sermon or treatise but not a letter. Its epistolary nature is self-evident; recipients in a specific region are addressed with direct mention of their geographical separation from the writer. The target audience is linked to the author with bonds of shared experience and affection. In chapters 5 and 6 we have extended
insight into this ongoing relationship. They are gently chided: …though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements…this we will do…we are confident of better things in your case…(Heb. 5:11-6:12).
Adolf Jülicher, who was somewhat sympathetic to Harnack’s hypothesis, wrote:
… complaints about the dullness of hearing…and their lack of progress are…only applicable on the assumption that the author was addressing a circle of readers whose moral and religious development he had sympathetically watched for years, and to whom he was attached by ties of old personal relations. (4)
Such a warning could not reasonably be the subject of a general treatise to churches; churches such as Corinth, fast-growing and exuberant; or Rome, renowned for faith.
Whereas the personal references in chapters 5 and 6 could hardly have been inserted at a later time, some have argued that the entire thirteenth chapter was not part of the original, or that the epistolary comments in chapter 13 were inserted at a later time. There is no evidence for either. We can be confident of the integrity of the epistle because chapter 13 is tied to the preceding portion of the document, first by continuity of thought, and second, by literary links.
In Heb. 13(v.10-16) we have four allusions to the great themes of the epistle: the tent, or Tabernacle (13:10), high priesthood (13:11), the blood of Jesus (13:12) and the heavenly city (13:14). (5)
We have stylistic elements that correspond to the first 12 chapters:
linguistic rhythm, play on words, unusual word order for effect, assonance and alliteration, the use of classical idioms.
According to William Lane, “these stylistic elements constitute a distinct literary
signature that serves to identify the writer as conclusively as would an unsmudged set of fingerprints…precisely the literary signature written across chaps. 1-12.” (6)
Were epistolary elements interpolated at a later time? But these elements are intertwined with the chapter, not grouped together. Yet, one commentator suggested that someone interspersed epistolary elements, not grouping them together, as a ploy to make it appear that the treatise was a letter. If in fact someone undertook such a subterfuge, he succeeded very well.
In verse 22 the author states: “I have written to you briefly,” using a form of the word epistello, which commonly means to inform or instruct by letter, or simply to write. In the absence of external or internal evidence to the contrary, meeting the burden of proof, we have a document that is in fact the Epistle to the Hebrews.
References
(1) James Rendel Harris, Sidelights on NT Research, p. 174.
(2) Blass and Debrunner, Greek Grammar of the NT, p. 72-73, 76-77.
(3) Perspectives in Religious Studies (2003 vol. 30 Issue 4, p. 441-454).
(4) Adolf Jülicher, An Introduction to the NT, p. 152-3.
(5) John Robinson, Redating the NT, quoting Kummel.
(6) William Lane, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 47A, p.lxviii.
PCR/SBL
Berkeley, CA
Mar. 25, 2007
New Testament Texts and Traditions
Section S6