Quotations from the Old Testament.

When we come to consider quotations from the Old Testament, we find the Pauline habit of accumulating Old Testament passages, (see Rom. 3:10-18; 9:7-33), often joined together by the characteristic kai palin, ‘and again’, (Rom. 15:9-12; 1 Cor. 3:19,20). We find the same characteristic in Hebrews; compare Hebrews 1:5-14; 2:12,13; 4:4,5; 10:30. In Heb. 10:30, the writer quotes from Deuteronomy 32:35, but does not give a literal translation of the Hebrew nor a literal quotation from the LXX. In Romans 12:19, Paul quotes the same passage and uses exactly the same wording, which is remarkable. The famous quotation from Habakkuk 2:4, ‘The just shall live by faith’, gives the keynote of the Gospel of God’s grace made known through Paul’s ministry. It is absolutely basic to this Gospel, and the epistle to the Romans is written around it. It occurs in Galatians with a slightly different stress (3:11), and is not quoted by any other New Testament writer except the author of Hebrews. The emphasis here is on the word ‘live’, for the great theme of this epistle is the perfecting of the believer through trial and suffering (Heb. 6:1; 10:32-39) with a reward in view. The apostle does not quote the actual words of Habakkuk, but gives his own rendering. It is noteworthy that the words of Romans 1:17 and Hebrews 10:38 are identical.

One of the chief objections to the Pauline authorship of Hebrews is the mode of Scriptural citation in this epistle, which, it is alleged, is very different from that of the apostle. Schulz, De Wette, Bleek and others have maintained that the Pauline habit is to name the human author, whereas the writer to the Hebrews represents the various Scriptural passages much more definitely as utterances of God the Holy Spirit, without any reference to the human instrument by whom it was communicated, and leans to the Alexandrian rather than the Palestinian Biblical method, being akin to the mechanical theory of inspiration held by Philo.

But what are the facts? In the Acts of the Apostles we have specimens of the way the apostle Paul addresses the Jews, and how he varies his mode of introducing quotations from the Old Testament. There are six Old Testament  quotations in his speech at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13), prefixed by ‘He (God) gave testimony and said’ (22), ‘as it is also written in the second Psalm’ (33), ‘He (God) said on this wise’ (34), ‘He saith also in another Psalm’ (35), ‘Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets’ (40), ‘the Lord commanded us saying’ (47). It will be noticed that the human author is not once mentioned. There are only two more occasions in the Acts in which Paul formally quotes Scripture, namely when brought before the Sanhedrin, he reviles the high priest and then repents saying: ... ‘for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people’ (Acts 23:5), and in the last chapter where he quotes for the last time in the New Testament the solemn words of Isaiah 6 to the Jews at Rome. But he introduces the quotation, saying: ‘Well spake the Holy Ghost by Isaiah the prophet’. In neither case is the human writer mentioned by himself.

From an examination of the epistles, it is clear that the apostle had no stereotyped method of quoting Old Testament Scripture. Three times he mentions Moses as the author of his quotation, David twice, Isaiah five times, but all these cases, with two exceptions (Acts 28:25 and 1Cor. 9:9), occur in one epistle, that to the Romans, and there is no evidence that the apostle attributed any particular doctrinal significance to the human authors. The fact is that Paul often used the impersonal way of introducing Scripture as is done in the epistle to the Hebrews. In at least three cases Paul makes God the speaker of a Scripture (Acts 13:35; 2Cor. 6:17; Eph. 4:8), not merely quoting a word of God registered in the Scriptures.

Of the supposed Philonic and Alexandrian influence on the writer of Hebrews, Dr. W. Leonard writes:

‘... A fair estimate of his (Philo’s) method may be deduced from a personal examination of three books, namely, the first book of Allegories, the first book on Dreams, and his work on the Intoxication of Noah. Such an examination, together with tests made on about two dozen quotations occurring in eight or ten different works of Philo show that the affinity of Hebrews with the Alexandrian method of citing Scripture has been very much exaggerated ... As a matter of fact the Alexandrian writer very frequently indicates the human source of his quotations, sometimes by naming the collection of books, law, prophets or hymns, from which he quotes; sometimes by naming the individual authors, specially Moses ... Philo, it is true, had a certain preference for a particular mode of citation, but that mode of citation is found not only in the epistle to the Hebrews, but in St. Paul and also in the Talmudic and Midrashic literature’.

(The Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, pp. 281, 282, 284).

We cannot do better than to quote Dr. Leonard’s conclusion: ‘In regard to the formulae of citation, we have seen once again, how the critics have built on the sand of their own hasty impressions. They have failed to take adequate note of the whole citational formulary of the Pauline epistles; they have neglected the testimony of the Acts, and especially the apostle’s synagogal address at Antioch of Pisidia. They have not recognized that the customary Palestinian modes of citation admitted very considerable variety. They have suppressed some of the facts regarding Philo, namely that he not infrequently names the human authors of Scriptural oracles, cites them under passive formulae, and in the quotation of Scripture uses phrases which our author would in all probability have imitated, had he been to any great extent under Philonic influence. The critics also have misrepresented the epistle to the Hebrews itself, because they have failed to note that the purely Scriptural dicta attributed to God do not exceed a half dozen, whereas direct oracles are predominant. They have not taken the intention of the author sufficiently into account.  They have merely imagined oppositions to Pauline practice and they have drawn conclusions about the author’s notion of inspiration which are wholly unwarranted, because they rest on the double sophism: non causa pro causa and ab uno ad omnes. They suppose that Philo’s mantic view of inspiration must be the reason why he is so little concerned with the secondary human authors and then suppose that our author’s insistence on the uniquely divine authority of Scripture must be due to the same cause.

‘On the contrary, the facts which have been adduced above show that, whereas the mode of Scriptural citation in our epistle furnished no positive argument against its Pauline authorship, that mode of citation coincides with Pauline practice more than once, and is by no means Alexandrian rather than Palestinian’