JETS 67.1 (2024): 47–66 HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? AN ANALYSIS OF THE HARNACK-HOPPIN THESIS OF PRISCILLAN AUTHORSHIP OF HEBREWS BRIDGET JACK JEFFRIES Abstract: This article evaluates the Harnack-Hoppin thesis that Priscilla is the primary author of Hebrews, examining (1) the historical evidence pertinent to Priscilla’s candidacy for authorship; (2) the probability of a woman in antiquity composing a work of oratory, rhetoric, and philosophy of the caliber of the Epistle to the Hebrews; (3) the inductive argument that the text “feminizes” or otherwise contains internal evidence that it is the work of a feminine mind, and (4) the author’s self-referential use of the participle διηγούμενον in 11:32. An examination of these four elements demonstrates that advocates of the Harnack-Hoppin thesis have not adequately addressed the difficulties posed by historical questions about Priscilla’s candidacy, they have not refuted the apparent verdict of the masculine participle at 11:32, and their inductive argument for a feminine author is critically flawed and unsustainable. The article concludes that Priscilla is not a serious contender for primary authorship of Πρὸς Ἑβραίους. Key Words: Hebrews, authorship of Hebrews, female authors in antiquity, ancient rhetoric, Prisca, Priscilla There may be no mystery in New Testament studies as enduring as the identity of the author of Hebrews. Pantaenus (ca. 120–ca. 200), his student Clement (ca. 150–ca. 215), and Clement’s student, Origen (ca. 185–ca. 253), were all of the Alexandrian school and all attributed the epistle to Paul, although they also suggested Luke or Clement of Rome (ca. 35–99) as a collaborator or translator. Origen further provided the detail that the letter’s authorship was disputed in his time. Indeed, Origen’s contemporary Tertullian (ca. 155–ca. 220) attributed it to Paul’s companion Barnabas, while Hippolytus of Rome (ca. 170–ca. 235) claimed it as the work of Clement of Rome. Acceptance of Pauline authorship by Athanasius (ca. 296/298– 373) and Jerome (ca. 342/347–420) helped secure its place in the canon, but this consensus later came under scrutiny from the Reformers. Martin Luther (1483– 1546) proposed Apollos of Alexandria (Acts 18:24) as the author, while John Calvin (1509–1564) rejected Pauline authorship and narrowed the candidates down to Luke or Clement.1 Modern-day scholars generally reject Pauline authorship on the  Bridget Jack Jeffries is a PhD student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. She may be contacted at zbmeyers@tiu.edu. 1 Hebrews studies are saturated with accounts of what commentators from the early church through the Reformers said about the authorship of the text; as such, the primary sources need no recounting here. As examples, see F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, rev. ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 14–20; Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the 48 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY basis of the form, vocabulary, and content of Hebrews when compared with the writings of Paul as well as the author’s own statement on being a second-generation believer who had not heard from the Lord directly (Heb 2:3), which would seem to contradict Paul’s own accounting of himself (1 Cor 15:1–11). A majority hold that the author is both unknown and—based on current evidence—unknowable. A controversial modern contender in the authorship arena is Priscilla (Acts 18:2, 18, 26; Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Tim 4:19), a woman mentioned by name in the New Testament more often than some of the Twelve.2 Her candidacy for authorship originated with Adolf von Harnack in 1900, where it had several early proponents before falling into disfavor after a 1911 rebuttal by Charles Cutler Torrey.3 It was eventually taken up by Ruth Hoppin, who has authored a number of essays and a book on the case for Priscillan authorship.4 Hoppin has been the most prolific proponent of this thesis, although a few scholars have supported it along- Hebrews, ed. Helmut Koester, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 1–6; Donald Guthrie, “Epistle to the Hebrews,” ISBE 2:665–67. However, note Thomas’s relatively recent contention that Origen’s statement, τίς δέ γράψας τὴν πἐιστολὴν τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς θεὸς οἶδεν, is frequently misrepresented in Hebrews studies. Thomas argues that Origen was consistent in attributing the epistle to Paul and that his oft-cited “God only knows” comment, in context, refers to Paul’s translator or collaborator, and not to the actual author of the text. Matthew J. Thomas, “Origen on Paul’s Authorship of Hebrews,” NTS 65.4 (2019): 598–609. 2 Priscilla is mentioned by name six times, as Πρίσκιλλα or Πρίσκα. This is more often than Simon the Zealot (Matt 10:4; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13) or Matthias (Acts 1:23, 26) and as often as Thaddaeus, although we must assume that Thaddaeus (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18), Judas son of James (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13), Judas-not-Iscariot (John 14:22), and Jude (Jude 1:1) are all one and the same to arrive at six named mentions of him. I have opted to call our candidate by her diminutive pet name (found only in Acts) because that is what most proponents of this theory have called her, but her proper and most common name in the New Testament is Prisca. 3 See Adolf von Harnack, “Probabilia über die Adresse und den Verfasser des Hebräerbriefs,” ZNW 1 (1900): 16–41. For an English translation by Emma Runge Peter, see Adolf von Harnack, “Probability about the Address and Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in Lee Anna Starr, The Bible Status of Woman (New York: Revell, 1926), 392–415. For early proponents, see Friedrich Michael Schiele, “Harnack’s ‘Probabilia’ Concerning the Address and the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” AmJT 9.2 (1905): 290–308; J. Rendel Harris, Side-Lights on New Testament Research: Seven Lectures Delivered in 1908, at Regent’s Park College, London (London: Kingsgate, 1908), 148–76; and Mildred A. R. Tuker, “The Gospel According to Prisca,” Nineteenth Century 73 (1913): 81–98. For the rebuttal by Charles C. Torrey, see “The Authorship and Character of the So-Called ‘Epistle to the Hebrews,’” JBL 30.2 (1911): 137–56. 4 Hoppin is the author of a scholarly essay advocating for Priscillan authorship of Hebrews, “The Epistle to the Hebrews Is Priscilla’s Letter,” in A Feminist Companion to the Catholic Epistles and Hebrews, ed. Amy-Jill Levine with Maria Mayo Robbins, FCNTECW 8 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 147–70. She appears to have first entered the Hebrews authorship debate with Priscilla: Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and Other Essays (Jericho, NY: Exposition, 1969). Unless otherwise noted, my critique here primarily interacts with Priscilla’s Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Fort Bragg, CA: Lost Coast, 2009), which is the most recent and expansive iteration of her arguments. Hoppin’s work sometimes misquotes and misattributes sources, and her argumentation frequently consists of decisively citing scholars from the early part of the twentieth century who adopted the Harnack thesis, as if that settles the matter. Often she relies on rhetoric, bluster, or even sarcasm instead of circumspect argumentation (for example, belittling the “many commentators” who have come to believe “that Mr. Nobody wrote Hebrews,” pp. 75–76). However, I will limit my critique to her overall ideas and arguments, with occasional reference to other adopters of the Harnack thesis. HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 49 side her.5 A more mixed reception of the argument is found in a feminist essay on Hebrews by Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, with Kittredge offering both support for and disagreement with elements of Hoppin’s argument.6 At first glance, Priscilla is potentially an attractive candidate in that she was a known teacher (Acts 18:26), church planter (1 Cor 16:19), and missionary in the early church, as well as a member of the circle that included Paul, Luke, and Timothy (2 Tim 4:19). Priscillan authorship would make the Epistle to the Hebrews the longest continuous work of prose authored by a woman to survive antiquity, so the Harnack-Hoppin thesis ought to be of great interest to feminist historians and those performing retrieval work on women’s voices in antiquity.7 Yet despite its provocation and potential, the Harnack-Hoppin thesis has received surprisingly little attention from Hebrews commentators. Most dismiss it in a sentence or two, or even in a single footnote.8 Mere citation of the self-referential masculine participle at 11:32 supplies the most common vehicle for dismissing Priscilla’s candidacy, which is a disservice to Hoppin, who does address the participle in her work.9 In concurrence with Kittredge that the Harnack-Hoppin thesis “deserves to be taken seriously,” this article evaluates the argument that “Priscilla is the author of Hebrews and that it is her gender that accounts for the anonymity of the work.”10 In particular, it examines (1) the historical evidence pertinent to Priscilla’s candidacy for authorship, or lack thereof; (2) the probability of a woman in antiquity composing a work of oratory, rhetoric, and philosophy of the caliber of the Epistle to the Hebrews; (3) the inductive argument that the text “feminizes” or otherwise contains internal evidence that it is the work of a female mind, and (4) 5 See Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles: What the Bible Says about a Woman’s Place in Church and Family, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 248–50; Bilezikian, “Beyond Sex Roles: Priscilla as the Author of Hebrews,” Priscilla Papers 31.4 (2017): 37–38. Bilezikian endorsed and wrote the forward to the later versions of Hoppin’s book. Historical theologian Mimi Haddad also supported the theory in “Priscilla, Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews?,” Priscilla Papers 7.1 (1993): 8–10. Finally, F. F. Bruce seemed neutral if not receptive to the Harnack-Hoppin thesis (Hebrews, 18–19). 6 Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, “Hebrews,” in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commentary, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, vol. 2 (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 428–52. 7 Several researchers have compiled the few extant writings of women from antiquity. See I. M. Plant, ed., Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004); Jane McIntosh Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017); and Bartolo Natoli, Angela Pitts, and Judith P. Hallett, Ancient Women Writers of Greece and Rome, Routledge Sourcebooks for the Ancient World (London: Routledge, 2022). Per these authors, no continuous treatise known to be authored by a woman in antiquity remains extant; the longest extant writings by women come from late antiquity in the form of the poetry of Proba (AD 4th cent.) and the diary of Egeria (AD 5th cent.). Most other work is fragmentary, paraphrased, or extremely brief. 8 For example, Gareth Lee Cockerill—Bruce’s successor to the Hebrews volume of NICNT— dismisses the theory in a footnote on the second page of the commentary. See Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 2n1. Other relevant dismissals are discussed in the conclusion of this article. 9 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 49–52. 10 Kittredge, “Hebrews,” 432. 50 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY the author’s self-referential use of the participle διηγούμενον in 11:32. In examining these four aspects, this article shows that advocates of the Harnack-Hoppin thesis have overstated the benefits of the silence found in (1), have not addressed the difficulties posed by (2) or (4), and that their inductive argument for a feminine author (3) is critically flawed and unsustainable. It will conclude there is no reason to believe Priscilla was the primary author of Πρὸς Ἑβραίους, and plenty of reasons to believe she could not have been. I. HISTORICAL EVIDENCE Scholars generally concur that the author of Hebrews had a Pauline association.11 In part through a process of elimination, Hoppin takes this a step further and argues for Priscilla as the best candidate for authorship. She asserts that the author of Hebrews must have been mentioned in the canon of the New Testament—“As one of Paul’s inner circle, [the author] is certainly named in Scripture”12—then proceeds to find all the canonical male candidates (Paul, Clement, Luke, Barnabas, Apollos, Silas, Epaphras, Philip) lacking for some reason or other, leaving Priscilla as the last “man” standing in her methodology. For example, in evaluating Apollos, she quotes the observation of an earlier commentator that the supposition of his authorship was “never made by any of the ancient churches, and first ventured upon, … by Luther.… We have no external evidence in favour of it; no voice of antiquity being raised to testify.”13 Of course, all these things and more could be said of Priscilla’s candidacy. She was not suggested as the author of Hebrews by any of the ancient churches, and no one ventured to proffer her until Harnack, over three-and-a-half centuries after Luther suggested Apollos. We have no ancient external evidence in favor of Priscilla, and no voices from antiquity pointing to her as the author. This silence is acceptable in Priscilla’s case where it is not for the male candidates, Hoppin argues, because the ancients were prejudiced against women and would have rejected the epistle had they known of its female provenance.14 She compares the alleged mas- 11 Some, however, would say that the final greetings to Timothy were added by a redactor in an attempt to make the epistle seem like the work of Paul or a Pauline associate. See, for example, Torrey, “Authorship and Character,” 145–53. 12 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 75–76. Harnack is not nearly as strident or explicit in making this claim, although the idea is certainly implied; see Harnack, “Probability,” 399. Hoppin is hardly correct in this assertion as many significant figures find little to no elaboration in what became the canon of the New Testament. For example, none of the seventy(-two) of Luke 10 are ever named, while most of the Twelve disappear from the narrative after Acts 6, and Jesus’s mother is not heard from again after Acts 1. As much as Hoppin disparages the suggestion that the author of Hebrews is never named in the New Testament, her ridicule does not make for a convincing argument that this could not have happened. 13 Moses Stuart, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (London: H. Fisher, R. Fisher, & P. Jackson, 1834), 240. Hoppin misattributes this quote to a 1939 work by William Leonard. See Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 66, 78n39. 14 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 4. HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 51 culinization of the author of Hebrews to the demonstrable masculinization of Junia in Romans 16:7 and Nympha in Colossians 4:15.15 In this, Hoppin oversimplifies both the prejudices of ancient Christians against women and the nature of the evidence for a feminine Junia and Nympha. It is true that patristic authors typically espoused a degree of prejudice against women, and that women such as Junia and Nympha were the eventual victims of masculinization. Priscilla herself was masculinized as “Priscus” as early as 𝔓46 despite being clearly designated a γυναῖκα in Acts 18:2, while commentators and copyists frequently “corrected” the typical order of Priscilla and Aquila’s names in the New Testament, listing Aquila’s name first.16 Certainly there is warrant for reading ancient texts with consideration for the possibility that passages dealing with women were tampered with. To surmise from these considerations that all evidence of Priscilla as the author of Hebrews must have been surgically excised from the historical record, however, constitutes a conspiratorial non sequitur, and this becomes especially apparent when compared with the supposedly similar cases Hoppin references. In the case of Ἰουνιαν in Romans 16:7, evidence of a feminine referent not only survived antiquity, but overwhelmingly dominated; a clear masculine version of the name is not attested until the Ἰωνιας of Anonymus II in the fifth or sixth century, while Origen/Rufinus (344/345–411), John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407), Jerome, and Theodoret of Cyrus (ca. 393–ca. 458/466) all attested the feminine.17 Evidence is less decisive in the case of Νύμφαν of Colossians 4:15, as the accusative form can in fact be either a man’s or a woman’s name. Indeed, the patristic witness is divided: Ps-Ignatius (4th c.) and Ambrosiaster (4th c.) took the feminine, while Chrysostom definitively took the name as masculine. 18 Likewise, the manuscript tradition at Colossians 4:15 witnesses variations of the feminine “her house,” the masculine “his house,” and the gender-inclusive masculine plural “their house;” scholars have, for the most part, come to prefer the feminine possessive pronoun despite the mixed evidence, as it constitutes the lectio difficilior and provides the best explanation for how the variants occurred in the first place.19 In any case, what we see in the reception history of Junia and Nympha is not the women’s deletion from the texts, Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 50; “Priscilla’s Letter” (2004), 148. See Richard G. Fellows, “Early Sexist Textual Variants, and Claims that Prisca, Junia, and Julia Were Men,” CBQ 84.2 (2022): 252–78. Fellows has a forthcoming article in JSNT arguing that a switch was also made at 1 Corinthians 16:19; unpublished draft tentatively titled “The Interpolation of 1 Cor 14:34–35 and the Transposition of Prisca and Aquila at 1 Cor 16:19,” shared with me on 9 July 2022. 17 Bridget Jack Jeffries, “Junia among the Seventy: A Re-examination of the Index Discipulorum” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the ETS, Denver, CO, 16 November 2022), currently being revised for submission. 18 Ps.-Ignatius, Ad Heronem 9 (PG 5:917c); Ambrosiaster, In ep. Col. 276 (PL 17:441b–42a); John Chrysostom, Hom. Col. 12.413 (PG 62:381). However, each of these is more likely an indication of manuscript variation in the commentator’s source material than an indication of whether he thought the name was masculine or feminine. 19 See J. J. Hughes, “Nympha,” ISBE 3:570. 15 16 52 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY but their transformation into masculine versions of themselves, wherein evidence of the sabotage survived. In contrast, the Epistle to the Hebrews is never credited as the work of Priscilla’s masculine doppelgänger Priscus despite “his” early appearance in the historical record, nor do we ever encounter a feminine manuscript variant for any portion of the work in question. Furthermore, demotion and masculinization were far from the only ways that disturbed scribes, copyists, and commentators attempted to “correct” for their own discomfort with prominent women in biblical texts, as evidenced by other examples in church history. Had the epistle originally borne the prescript Πρίσκα καὶ Ακύλας … τοῖς οὖσιν Ῥώμῃ—as posited by Schiele in support of Harnack’s thesis20—it is certainly not impossible that a misogynistic redactor would have reacted by removing the entire prescript. Yet this is far from the most probable of the possibilities. Our redactor might also have simply reversed the order of their names, as happened frequently in manuscripts and among commentators who mentioned Priscilla and Aquila, transforming Aquila into the primary author of the composition. Or he might have deleted only Priscilla’s name, leaving Aquila as the sole author of the work. He might have rationalized that certain types of teaching by women are acceptable, as John Chrysostom later did.21 Or he might have assumed that Aquila was merely using Priscilla as a scribe or amanuensis, just as Origen would later employ female copyists.22 In any case, Torrey is correct in observing that while the absence of historical attribution to Priscilla is perhaps explainable, the absence of attribution to Aquila as a proxy for her is far harder to explain.23 Finally, it is worth noting that some of the most robust evidence for the activity of women in early Christianity comes not from the early Christians themselves, but from pagan detractors who ridiculed Christianity for it. Pliny the Younger (61– ca. 113) reported to the Emperor Trajan (53–117) that he had tortured two female slaves called ministrae (most likely, deaconesses or female deacons), insinuating that a religion that granted such status to slaves and women was ridiculous. 24 The Epicurean Celsus (2nd c.) scorned Christianity as a religion that could sway only τοὺς ἠλιθίους καὶ ἀγεννεῖς καὶ ἀναισθήτους, καὶ ἀνδράποδα, καὶ γύναια, καὶ παιδάρια.25 Yet we have no evidence of pagan detractors belittling Christianity for heeding the epistle of a woman, nor did Christian skeptics of the letter attempt to discredit it on the basis of feminine origin. Thus the Harnack-Hoppin thesis has no external historical evidence to recommend it, and it is missing historical evidence where we otherwise might expect it. 20 Schiele, “Harnack’s ‘Probabilia,’” 308. Note that Harnack and Schiele believed Hebrews to be an epistle to Rome, while Hoppin believes it to be an epistle from Rome to Ephesus. See Harnack, “Probability,” 411–15; Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 123–75. 21 John Chrysostom, Hom. Rom. 31.746–47 (PG 60:668–69). 22 As recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea, Hist. eccl. 6.23 (PG 20:576b). 23 Torrey, “Authorship and Character,” 138–40. 24 Pliny the Younger, Ep. 10.96 (LCL 59:288–89). 25 Meaning “the stupid and low-born and senseless, and slaves, and women, and little children.” As reported by Origen, Cels. 3.44 (PG 11:977a). HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 53 Other observable textual tampering with the women of early Christianity mostly involved demotion or masculinization of the women in question, not their complete removal from the texts. Moreover, while the absence of attribution to Priscilla may be understandable, the absence of an attribution to Aquila as a proxy for Priscilla is just as problematic as the absence of an attribution for Apollos, Silas, or any other biblical candidate that was not proposed in antiquity. Likewise, no hostile evidence suggests a woman may have been involved in its composition. Harnack, Hoppin, and Kittredge are all correct that female authorship is one possible explanation for the anonymity of the text, but anonymous authorship was common in both early Christianity and texts of the Old Testament, which the author was so thoroughly versed in.26 The silence of the text, in itself, is not a strong argument for female authorship. I now turn to the next significant historical problem with the HarnackHoppin thesis: the probability of a woman acquiring the education and training in rhetoric, oratory, and philosophy needed to author the epistle to the Hebrews in the first place. II. FEMALE EDUCATION AND AUTHORSHIP IN ANTIQUITY A study of female authorship in antiquity is a study in scarcity. Extant writings thought to be genuinely authored by women are so rare that approximately six percent are found in the graffiti of one of the Colossi of Memnon statues.27 Most collections of the works of women in antiquity feature small surviving fragments of poems or (less commonly) prose, often preserved only in the larger works of the men who wrote about them.28 Then again, the low number of surviving writings by women is perhaps understandable when one considers how seldom women were educated versus their male counterparts. This presents several problems for the Harnack-Hoppin hypothesis, as Hebrews is considered one of the finer compositions in the New Testament canon; Jobes characterizes the author as someone who “most likely had the most advanced literary education of any of the New Testament writers.” 29 The author further showcases not just education in general, but a powerful grasp of the Septuagint, philosophy, rhetoric, and oratory.30 Hoppin herself concurs that the author “knows rhetoric, the construction is skillful … and the document reads well aloud.”31 Fe- 26 See Kurt Aland, “The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries,” JTS 12.1 (1961): 39–49. 27 Peter Keegan, Graffiti in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2014), 58. 28 See footnote 7 of this article. 29 Karen H. Jobes, Letters to the Church: A Survey of Hebrews and the General Epistles (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 39. 30 This feature is well-covered in literature on Hebrews, but see, for example, James W. Thompson, Strangers on the Earth: Philosophy and Rhetoric in Hebrews (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2020). 31 Ruth Hoppin, “Priscilla and Plausibility: Responding to Questions about Priscilla as Author of Hebrews,” Priscilla Papers 25.2 (2011): 26. 54 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY male education in the first two categories (Septuagint and philosophy) was possible, although far less common than male. For example, Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BC– ca. AD 50) spoke of the Therapeutae, an ascetic Jewish group near Alexandria that included both male and female adherents.32 He “regarded their allegorical interpretation of Scripture as a form of philosophy and characterized the Therapeutae as learned philosophers.”33 Likewise, Snyder records that “philosophy attracted many female exponents,” although “little, if anything … survives from the works of these women.”34 Certainly Priscilla had no known connection to the Therapeutae, nor do the mentions of her in Acts and the Pauline epistles place her at or near Alexandria, but the case of the Therapeutae does show that communities of relatively learned Jewish women were possible in antiquity. It is in the second two categories—rhetoric and oratory—that the case for a female author of Hebrews becomes bleak. When it comes to female rhetoricians and orators, Snyder is able to locate just one alongside two other women noted for elegance with words, all mentioned in the account of Quintilian (ca. 35–ca. 100): Laelia, Cornelia, and Hortensia, the latter being the daughter of the famous Roman orator Quintus Hortensius Hortalus (114–50 BC). Nothing from Laelia survives, but several fragments of letters exist that may be genuinely from Cornelia, and a paraphrase of a public speech given by Hortensia, one in which she advocated against a tax that she felt wealthy women should not have to pay.35 The occasion for Quintilian’s mention of these women, however, is to note how educated women might better instruct their children, and he limits the women to rather feminine spheres; indeed, Hortensia’s speech was in advocacy on behalf of herself and her wealthy female peers, while Cornelia’s letters are exhortations to her children. It would seem that no women were noted for being general orators who exhorted the public with specificity, let alone with any kind of regularity.36 The poet Juvenal (ca. AD 55–ca. 138) also complains of wives who could best teachers of rhetoric in conversation at the dinner table (vincuntur rhetores), but given the hyperbolic and satirical nature of this poem, it is difficult to draw out from it how common the “problem” of female rhetoricians really was.37 Certainly very, very few were both known and named. Philo, Contempl. 3.32–33 (Colson, LCL 363:130–33). Joy A. Schroeder and Marion Ann Taylor, Voices Long Silenced: Women Biblical Interpreters through the Centuries (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2022), 6. 34 Snyder, Woman and the Lyre, 100. 35 Snyder, Woman and the Lyre, 123–27; see also 99–100. She quotes Quintilian, Inst. 1.1.6–7 (Russell, LCL 124:66–69). See also Lynn H. Cohick, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 36, 240; Susan Hylen, Women in the New Testament World, Essentials of Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 131, 140. 36 In the New Testament writings, we find the prophet Anna speaking of the infant Jesus Christ to a crowd gathered at the temple (Luke 2:36–38), while Paul speaks of women prophesying publicly in the assembly at Corinth (1 Cor 11:2–16). But speaking in public is not the same as being a trained orator and rhetorician, as the author of Hebrews certainly was. 37 Juvenal, Sat. 6.438 (Braund, LCL 91:276–77). See also Cohick, Earliest Christians, 36, 201; Hylen, New Testament World, 135–36. 32 33 HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 55 Among Harnack and Hoppin and Kittredge, none directly acknowledges the improbability of Priscilla achieving the education and rhetorical skill necessary to write Hebrews. Both Harnack and Kittredge seem satisfied that Priscilla’s instruction of the highly educated Apollos is enough to establish her educational acumen and potential for Hebrews authorship, 38 but the text of Acts tells us only that Priscilla and her husband instructed Apollos ἀκριβέστερον in τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ θεοῦ (18:26). That the couple understood the teachings of Jesus Christ better than Apollos hardly tells us they had any sort of training in rhetoric or oratory as the author of Hebrews had. Hoppin appears at least somewhat aware of the problem, but never explicitly concedes the extent or severity of it.39 Instead, she addresses it by embarking on a dubious trek through archaeology and “tradition” to connect the apostle Peter to Priscilla—to the extent that the latter was “his [Peter’s] disciple”— and, from there, uses Eusebius of Caesarea’s (ca. 260–339) questionable account of Peter’s acquaintance with Philo in Rome to argue that “Priscilla, living in Rome, had a chance to read Philo’s works, to talk with him and to use some of his ideas.” 40 She asserts that “the Jewish philosopher-theologian Philo of Alexandria, whose writings are echoed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, had long conversations with Peter in Rome,” and that “Priscilla, being on the scene, was in on the discussions, we can be sure.”41 She also posits that Priscilla may have been from gens Acilia, a family of Roman nobility with consuls and senators attached to it, and that this was how she acquired a knowledge of rhetoric and oratory. “In a wealthy family, [Priscilla] was sure to study Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and rhetoric. The ancient world valued oratory. Those who took part in it were expected to excel. We can see how and why she was trained for this role,” Hoppin enthuses.42 In actuality, Hoppin’s first three proposed events—that Priscilla was a disciple of Peter, that Peter was acquainted with Philo of Alexandria, and that Priscilla had long table talks with the two of them—form a diminuendo of improbability, with each being less likely than the previous. Together, the Book of Acts and Paul’s epistle to the Galatians have Peter traveling around Judea, Syria, and Antioch until the midpoint of the century, which is the approximate time of Philo’s death. Paul’s reference to followers of Peter in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 1:12 probably means Peter got as far as Corinth at some point between 44 and 49, but Paul’s failure to greet Peter in his long list of salutations at the end of Romans (ca. 57–58) suggests Peter had not yet made it to Rome.43 Meanwhile, Aquila hailed from Pontus and Harnack, “Probability,” 410; Kittredge, “Hebrews,” 433. Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 84–89. 40 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 95–96; the account of Eusebius is found in Hist. eccl. 2.17 (PG 20:173b), but even Eusebius noted that the matter was only one of λόγος ἑχει. 41 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 95. 42 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 102; for her argument about Priscilla’s status in gens Acilia, see 99–103. 43 Note that Hoppin subscribes to the text-critical theory that Romans 16 was originally appended to a copy of the epistle meant for Christians in Ephesus. Under this theory, there would be no reason for Paul to greet Peter in Romans 16. See Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 105. However, most commentators and scholars now reject this theory, and hold that the list in Romans 16 is both original to the epistle 38 39 56 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY appears in Acts 18:1–2 meeting Paul in Corinth after being exiled from Rome (pre51). Hoppin has the couple being baptized by Peter in Rome, but unless the couple was converted by Peter in Corinth, it is unlikely they were his disciples. 44 In any case, as Johnson noted in his review of Hoppin’s book: “More support than endnotes referencing Eusebius is required to confirm the Petrine connection with Philo; placing Priscilla at the table during those conversations demands more than an assertive ‘we can be sure.’”45 Hoppin’s argument that Priscilla may have been of gens Acilia—and that this accounts for her training in oratory—is similarly strained. Prisca was among the twenty most popular cognomina for women in the Roman Empire in this time period, while its diminutive variant Priscilla made the top sixty. 46 These names would be found among most of the Roman nobility, and from there passed on to lower-class members such as freed slaves and artisans; Priscilla’s possession of the name does not serve as an indicator of nobility or connection to any particular family or archaeological finding. It must also be regarded as curious that Luke—who mentions Roman gens names, connections, and status more than any other New Testament author, and seems to enjoy calling attention to powerful converts and sympathizers (e.g., Luke 2:1; 3:1; Acts 10:1; 11:28; 13:7, 50; 17:4, 12; 18:7; 23:26; 27:1)—has nothing to say of this Acilia Prisca’s noteworthy connections.47 Even if we do grant that Priscilla was the wealthy daughter of a consul or senator, there were many consuls and senators in the Roman empire, most of whom had female relatives, yet very few women were ever noted as having studied oratory or rhetoric. It is difficult to share in Hoppin’s confidence that the biblical Priscilla was an Acilia Prisca, or that she would have been trained so thoroughly in rhetoric and oratory even if she was. It should be noted that making the author of Hebrews a woman is not the only curious choice Hoppin argues for. Scholars usually limit their candidates for authorship to Hellenistic Jews, but Hoppin instead makes the epistle’s author a Gentile.48 The biblical texts do not say whether Priscilla was a Jew or a Gentile, and intended to greet Christians in Rome. See Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, ed. Roy David Kotansky and Eldon Jay Epp, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 4–9. 44 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 95. 45 Richard W. Johnson, review of Priscilla’s Letter, by Ruth Hoppin, RBL 4 (2002): 443. 46 See Tuomo Nuorluoto, “Roman Female Cognomina: Studies in the Nomenclature of Roman Women” (PhD thesis, Uppsala University, 2021), 251. 47 Ἀκύλας could technically be the Greek transliteration of the nomen Acilios instead of the cognomen Aquila, but men were usually called by a cognomen or praenomen, not a gentilicium. See F. F. Bruce, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans: An Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed., TNTC 6 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 256n1. The claim that the first-century consul M. Acilius Glabrio was executed for conversion to Christianity is very late in the historical record, and the archaeological finding linking him to the Christian Catacomb of Priscilla (cited in Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 98) appears to have been discredited. See Monique Dondin-Payre, Exercice du pouvoir et continuité gentilice: Les Acilii Glabriones du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. au Ve siècle av. J.-C, Collection de l’École française de Rome 180 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1993), 205–10. 48 Hoppin, Priscilla … and Other Essays, 66–68. HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 57 they specify only that Aquila was a Jew (Acts 18:2), leaving open the possibility that Priscilla was either. Yet Hoppin falls firmly on the side of a wealthy Roman Priscilla and must find other solutions for how an educated Gentile wrote a letter so saturated with expert knowledge of the Septuagint that it became known as Πρὸς Ἑβραίους.49 Why not instead argue that Priscilla was a Jew? This may have something to do with the fact that, while records of educated Roman women in antiquity are uncommon, records of educated Jewish women are exceptionally rare. In an essay devoted to the subject, Tal Ilan is able to name only three: the exegete Moso (2nd or 3rd c. BC), the physician Salome (1st c. AD), and the chemist Maria (1st or 2nd c. AD). Of any works the three produced, only fragments of Maria’s survive.50 Of course, Ilan may be correct that these three “are just the tip of the iceberg,” but it remains the case that historians have very little idea of what educated Jewish women in antiquity were like and whether one ever composed anything like the Epistle to the Hebrews. 51 Making Priscilla a Gentile diminishes the problem of Priscilla’s education, but at the expense of creating another problem. That said, Hoppin overstates the extent to which the education of a wealthy Gentile woman can explain the composition of Hebrews. Very few elite Roman women became authors despite their access to education, only a few were ever noted for their elegance with words, and none are known to have composed anything close to a work showing the rhetorical sophistication of Hebrews. Based on educational requirements alone, a Roman female author of Hebrews remains very improbable. Yet one may ask, why do Hoppin and other authors conclude that this anonymous text is the composition of a woman at all? The author never overtly selfidentifies as female, so what reason is there to attribute it to a woman? This has to do with the inductive argument that the text is “feminine” or “feminizes” and exhibits the thinking of a female mind, which is the focus of the next section. III. DOES HEBREWS “FEMINIZE”? In his original article, Harnack briefly noted that the list of heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 contains three mentions of women (vv. 11, 31, 35), which he held as unusual, for Sarah and Rahab as examples of faith “are rather far-fetched,” and “the Old Testament offers very incomplete examples for [female faith].”52 In 1908, archaeologist J. Rendel Harris delivered a lecture in support of the Harnack thesis in which he argued that the text “feminized” in its eleventh chapter. He used Clement of Rome’s commentary on Hebrews to argue for the author’s implied inclusion 49 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 84–85, 105–10. Note that Bilezikian characterizes Priscilla as a “Jewish leader” and “scholar of Jewish background” in apparent divergence from Hoppin. See Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles, 248. 50 Tal Ilan, “Learned Jewish Women in Antiquity,” in Religiöses Lernen in der biblischen, frühjüdischen und frühchristlichen Überlieferung, ed. Beate Ego and Helmut Merkel, WUNT 180 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 175–90. Moso sometimes suffered the Prisca-Junia-Nympha fate of being misidentified as a man. 51 Ilan, “Learned Jewish Women in Antiquity,” 188. 52 Harnack, “Probability,” 415fn52. 58 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY of Judith and Esther.53 He also added, by way of allusion, the mother praised in 2 Maccabees 7:20.54 Gilbert Bilezikian further argues that the author’s mention of Barak, Jephthah, and Samuel implies the “discreet ministries” of Deborah, Jephthah’s daughter, and Hannah.55 Hoppin accepts all this and then adds to the list Moses’s mother (by mention of his “parents” in v. 23).56 She also includes a chapter arguing for a “psychological profile” in which the author is found to be “feminine.”57 As to the latter, Hoppin’s case that the author is a woman relies almost entirely on editorialization by herself and the authors she cites, and her arguments generally depend on appeals to modern sensibilities of what constitutes masculine and feminine. For example, regarding 13:17, “Does it seem to you that a woman, more likely than a man, would express concern for the happiness of church leaders?”58 Or in regard to 12:7–11: “Such a nostalgic reflection on the brevity of childhood strikes one as maternal rather than paternal.”59 And in respect to the author’s mention of Pharaoh’s daughter (11:24): “A woman, more likely than a man, would think of the riven relationship between Moses and Pharaoh’s daughter.”60 The author is characterized as being concerned with education, marriage, the rearing of children, compassion, gentleness, human weakness, and tenderness, and these are all viewed as feminine traits.61 Apart from brief contrasts drawn to Paul (Col 3:20– 21; Eph 6:21) and Jesus ben Sirach (2nd c. BC), little attempt is made to compare or contrast Hebrews to the works of male authors in antiquity—whether biblical or extrabiblical—and certainly no attempt is made to compare it with what has survived from female authors of antiquity.62 Allowing for the sake of argument that all the female examples that Hoppin and her predecessors wish to add to Hebrews 11 are valid and were truly implied by the epistle’s author (and this is generous, as some of the additions are very strained). Can we truly then say that the text “feminizes” in a meaningful way and must, therefore, be the work of a woman? Does the text of James feminize when it says 53 Harris, Side-Lights, 168–74. Clement’s expansion of the list in Hebrews to explicitly name and include several more women than the author of Hebrews does ought to show, in itself, that one need not be a female author to “feminize” a text in this way, but Harris and Hoppin never address this point. 54 Harris, Side-Lights, 163. 55 Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles, 250. 56 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 39–40, 46. See also Harris, Side-Lights, 173. 57 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 24–34. 58 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 32. 59 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 28. 60 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 27. 61 Per the previous section of this article, the author’s interest in education is arguably a masculine trait rather than a feminine one, so I will instead address the question of marriage and family. 62 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 28, 36; see also Harris, Side-Lights, 164–65. Torrey pointed out in his 1911 rebuttal to Harnack and Harris that ben Sirach was “remarkably caustic” toward women even by ancient standards and is therefore not the best choice for comparison; yet Hoppin repeats Harris’s ben Sirach comparison without interacting with Torrey’s critique. See Torrey, “Authorship and Character,” 143–44; Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 36. HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 59 that the Father of Lights “gave birth to us” (1:17–18, πατρὸς τῶν φώτων … ἀπεκύησεν ἡμᾶς), when it calls for the care of widows (1:27), or when it specifically mentions “a brother or a sister” (2:15, ἀδελφὸς ἢ ἀδελφὴ)? Does the Gospel of Matthew feminize in its description of Mary’s plight as an unwed mother-to-be (Matt 1:18–25)? Does Luke-Acts feminize in its account of the pregnancies and deliveries of both Elizabeth (Luke 1:5–23, 39–45, 57–66) and Mary (Luke 1:26–56; 2:1–19), in its dismissal of traditional female roles in favor of discipleship (Luke 10:38–42; 11:27–28), and in its repeated use of women as positive exemplars (Luke 2:36–38; 7:50; 8:48; Acts 9:36–41; 16:11–14)?63 Does Romans feminize when nine of the twenty-six individuals greeted in chapter 16 are women? And can we really say that the author of Hebrews is more compassionate, tender, and gentle than the “elder” who wrote the Johannine epistles, who calls his disciples his own “children”? Can we say that an interest in marriage and family signals femininity when Jesus and Paul—both of whom were apparently unmarried—repeatedly addressed both subjects (Matt 19:3–9; Mark 12:18–27; 1 Cor 7; Eph 5–6), and Paul even went so far as to suggest a level of mutuality between husbands and wives (1 Cor 7:4–5)? Either a monstrous regiment of women posing as men wrote much of the New Testament, or Harris and Hoppin simply fail to consider that the things they call “feminine” were instead part of a subversive masculinity recently birthed by the new religious movement.64 Most of the items they regard as the author’s “feminizing”—such as the inclusion of women (and Rahab especially) among the heroes of faith, and the author’s choice to credit the faith of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kgs 17:7–24) and the faith of the Shunammite woman (2 Kgs 4:8–37) with the resurrections of their sons—are better explained by the influence of the life and ministry of Jesus on the author.65 Rahab is included in the genealogy of Jesus found in Matthew (1:5), and Jesus commended the faith of specific women (Matt 9:22; 15:28; Luke 7:50).66 In the Gospels of Luke and John especially, Jesus seems to utilize women in his ministry, interact with them, value them, and give them enormous credit for their faith and works. One need not posit that the author of Hebrews was female to explain the inclusion of women on the list of the heroes of faith or the ways in which the author credits the women’s faith; that the author belonged to the movement started by Jesus of Nazareth is explanation enough. Then again, perhaps the best argument against the notion that the text of Hebrews “feminizes” and reveals the workings of a feminine mind is that no one in antiquity recognized it as See also Johnson, review of Priscilla’s Letter (by Hoppin), 442. For example, see Brittany E. Wilson, Unmanly Men: Refigurations of Masculinity in Luke-Acts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 254–55. 65 One could argue that the Gospels were not written and in circulation at the time of the composition of Hebrews, but the information about Jesus that eventually became the Gospels certainly was. 66 Kittredge concurs that Rahab’s “presence here in Hebrews is not evidence of female authorship but is an indication that a fairly widespread tradition in early Christianity saw Rahab … as an exemplar of faith.” See Kittredge, “Hebrews,” 446. 63 64 60 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY such, and they presumably had access to more works by women (now lost to us) with which to compare it. I will close this section by noting two ways in which the author of Hebrews is arguably unfeminine. The first has been noted by others, and Hoppin dismisses it as a “minor” objection to her case, but I maintain that she understates the problem: that the author is, at times, arguably callous toward and dismissive of women.67 The author calls attention to Rahab’s status as a πόρνη or prostitute, makes heroes of faith out of several problematic men known for their womanizing or mistreatment of women (Samson, Jephthah, David), puts Barak on the list instead of Deborah or Jael, and fails to make explicit mention of several Old Testament women wellknown as exemplars of faith, such as Ruth, Abigail, Hannah, and Esther. Even the inclusion of Sarah is a problematic choice, given her mistreatment of another woman, Hagar. To borrow Hoppin’s favorite rhetorical device—would a woman not have more empathy and compassion for the plights of Hagar, Jephthah’s daughter, Michal, Bathsheba, and Tamar? Would a woman not at least qualify the inclusion of these men (and Sarah)? Does it not strike one as masculine rather than feminine how the author calls attention to Rahab being a πόρνη but says nothing about the sexual deviance of Samson and David? The list of heroes of faith constitutes the centerpiece of the Harris-Hoppin case for Priscillan authorship of Hebrews, yet on cross-examination, while this list certainly includes women, it hardly reads like a “feminized” text. Kittredge is well aware that perceptions of masculinity and femininity can be debatable and subjective; hence in her feminist evaluation of Hebrews, she departs from Harnack, Harris, and Hoppin on this point, surmising that it is “problematic” to try to assess what “a ‘feminine mind’ would have been in the ancient world.”68 Ultimately, she concludes that “the use of women as examples of faith [cannot] be interpreted as proof that the author of Hebrews was a woman.”69 Finally, it should be noted that the letter is missing a feature that is relatively common among the few extant letters authored by women. Women in antiquity worked and moved in each other’s worlds so that when they did write letters, they often mentioned and addressed other living women. The brief letter of Ḥarqan to her brother (3rd–8th c. AD), the earliest example of a Jewish woman’s writing in her own hand, sends prayers for “Mariam my sister, your partner and (the life of) your sons.”70 Theano of the Pythagorean school (6th c. BC) wrote to Eurydice, as did Myia to Phyllis. 71 Paula and her daughter Eustochium (4th c. AD) wrote to Marcella, while Egeria’s diaries (5th c. AD) recorded a meeting in Jerusalem with “the holy deaconess Marthana.”72 Yet the author of Hebrews sends no greetings to Hoppin, “Priscilla and Plausibility,” 26. Kittredge, “Hebrews,” 450. 69 Kittredge, “Hebrews,” 450. 70 As quoted and explained in Ilan, “Learned Jewish Women in Antiquity,” 177–80. 71 Snyder, Woman and the Lyre, 110–11. 72 The letter of Paula and Eustochium is preserved in Jerome, Ep. 46 (PL 22:483); for the quotation from Egeria, see Snyder, Woman and the Lyre, 147. 67 68 HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 61 or from women in Ephesus or Rome, even though Priscilla must have worked with many women over the course of her extensive ministry, and Priscilla’s associate Paul often sent such greetings or mentioned women in these cities. Instead, the author—as an individual—expresses a wish to reunite with the male Timothy and travel with him (13:23), something that even Harnack admitted was “striking” against his theory.73 I have now examined the relevant external historical evidence (or lack thereof), the problem of female education in antiquity, and the question of whether the text “feminizes” or is feminine in any meaningful way. I turn now to what is perhaps the most significant and oft-cited counterargument to the Harnack-Hoppin thesis: the masculine self-referential participle διηγούμενον in 11:32. IV. DOES THE AUTHOR SELF-IDENTIFY AS MALE? Greek is a grammatically gendered language wherein an author may signal male or female identity simply by applying certain pronouns, adjectives, or participles to himself or herself. In the case of Hebrews, the author appears to identify as a man with a relatively straightforward ἐπιλείψει με γὰρ διηγούμενον ὁ χρόνος in 11:32, with the accusative masculine singular participle διηγούμενον modifying the enclitic accusative με. The pronoun με could hypothetically be masculine or feminine, but in this case is made masculine when modified by διηγούμενον; if it were feminine, the participle would read διηγούμενην. The syntax reads clearly and is not ambiguous as some other parts of the Greek of Πρὸς Ἑβραίους; as Torrey wrote over a hundred years ago, “The gender of the participle here tells a perfectly plain story; the writer or speaker, whether actual or imagined, is a man, not a woman.”74 For this reason, addressing the participle at 11:32 would seem to be the most pressing matter in constructing an argument that the author is a woman rather than a man, but most proponents of this theory have treated the matter as an afterthought. Harnack’s original essay did mention this verse, but Harnack seemed more concerned with how it makes the author an “I” instead of a “we,” since his theory had Priscilla and Aquila writing as a couple, with Priscilla as the primary author. Harnack posited that the construction found in 11:32 may be a “literary plural,” but cited no comparable examples of such a “literary plural form” in Greek, and said nothing of the problem of the participle being masculine.75 Examining the matter 73 Harnack, “Probability,” 415n54. See also Johnson, “Review,” 442: “Would a married woman travel without her husband, but with another man?” Literature on Junia (Rom 16:7) and the nature of her ministry with Andronicus often points out that it was “scandalous” in this era for a woman to “fraternize” or travel with a man she was not related to. See Ben Witherington III, “Joanna: Apostle of the Lord—or Jailbait?,” BRev 21.2 (2005): 12; Craig S. Keener, Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, NCCS (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009), 186. 74 Torrey, “Authorship and Character,” 144. 75 Harnack, “Probability,” 401. Both Smyth and BDF speak of a “collective singular,” but the examples given are nothing like Hebrews 11:32. See Herbert Weir Smyth and Gordon M. Messing, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 269; BDF §131 (77). 62 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY eight years after Harnack, Harris very candidly admitted that “the masculine grammar” of this verse was “perhaps fatal” to Harnack’s hypothesis, and that “this masculine participle is the real rock in the track, if we want to refer the Epistle to the Hebrews … to Priscilla.”76 Harris expressed hope that a feminine variant would eventually be found among the manuscripts. We know, from the vantage point of 115 years later, that this has not yet happened, and is now unlikely to happen. Hoppin wrote the first iteration of her work in 1969 with the advantage of knowing about this criticism of Harnack’s theory from other sources, yet she devoted less than a page to the matter. She briefly suggested that Priscilla may have intentionally concealed her sex, or some malefactor may have changed “a single letter” to make the feminine participle masculine, or Priscilla may have used the phrase with the masculine because it is “common … in classical literature” and “is euphonious in Greek.”77 Kittredge likewise took the participle as a nonissue and concurred with Hoppin that “the masculine ending might be used to comply with convention or be used deliberately to suppress the author’s identity.”78 Hoppin’s argument expanded to a few pages in a later version of her work, but the only substantial additional argument was that the participle could be neuter and constitutes an “adjectival predicate in the neuter singular.”79 She cited Matthew 6:34 as a case of “a neuter adjective with a feminine subject” and 2 Corinthians 2:6 and Acts 12:3 as “examples of non-agreement in gender.”80 I will address Hoppin’s supporting examples first. All these verses (or their variants) do contain nonagreement in gender, with ἀρκετόν modifying ἡ κακία in Matthew 6:34, ἱκανόν modifying ἡ ἐπιτιμία in 2 Corinthians 2:6, and ἀρεστόν modifying ἡ ἐπιχείρησις in Acts 12:3D, and these are examples of predicate adjectives in the neuter singular such as Hoppin wishes to argue for in Hebrews 11:32. In these verses, the neuter adjectives (ἀρκετόν / ἱκανόν / ἀρεστόν) function as nominative substantives, which is why they are able to be taken as predicates to ἡ κακία, ἡ ἐπιτιμία, and ἡ ἐπιχείρησις, respectively. Smyth clarifies, however, that this sort of mixed-gender construction generally applies to broad abstractions rather than to individuals: “A predicate adjective is neuter singular when the subject is an infinitive, a sentence, or a general thought.… A predicate adjective referring to a masculine or feminine singular subject is often neuter singular and equivalent to a substantive. This occurs chiefly in statements of a general truth, where the subject refers to a whole class, not to an individual thing.”81 We see this pattern in the adjecHarris, Side-Lights, 174–75. Hoppin, Priscilla … and Other Essays, 32. 78 Kittredge, “Hebrews,” 432. 79 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 52. 80 Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, 52. Hoppin’s citation of Acts 12:3 is confusing as the main text does not contain non-agreement in gender. It is in a few variant manuscripts, mainly Codex Bezae, that η επιχειρησις αυτου επι τους πιστους is added, allowing the neuter adjective ἀρεστόν to modify the feminine η επιχειρησις. I will cite this as Acts 12:3D. 81 Smyth and Messing, Greek Grammar, 276. For Hoppin’s use of these sources, see footnote 84 of this article. 76 77 HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 63 tival neuter predicates in all three of Hoppin’s example verses: Matthew 6:34 speaks of sufficient wickedness, 2 Corinthians 2:6 speaks of sufficient punishment, and Acts 12:3D speaks of pleasing assault.82 In none of these do the neuter adjectives modify actual people, as the adjectival participle does in Hebrews 11:32. That construction speaks of a recounting self, in stark contrast to the three examples given. Blass, Debrunner, and Funk further specify that “in particular assertions, however, the pronoun is brought into [gender] agreement.”83 The participle in Hebrews 11:32 is a particular assertion about time running out for the writer or speaker, and it involves a pronoun. As such, the participle should have been brought into gender agreement, and διηγούμενον can hardly be an example of a predicate neuter adjectival participle taking a feminine object. Ultimately, the examples Hoppin cites provide poor support for her thesis. None involve individuals, none involve pronouns, and all clearly follow the mixed-gender construction rules laid out by Smyth: they are broad truths or assertions about wickedness and the attacking of the Christian faith and punishment.84 Having apparently continued to receive pushback regarding the participle in 11:32, Hoppin addressed the matter in 2011 in a follow-up article for Priscilla Papers. In it, she shared interactions with three scholars of classics or New Testament and one seminary professor of Greek; the latter, the late L. Bernard LaMontagne, was the only person Hoppin cited who thought Hebrews 11:32 was a neuter singular adjectival predicate, the theory having apparently originated with him. 85 The other three scholars she corresponded with, Carl W. Conrad, Martin M. Culy, and John C. Laansma, all disagreed with LaMontagne’s assessment in some way. Culy thought the participle in 11:32 was not predicate, Conrad thought it was not an adjectival predicate of the sort LaMontagne advocated for, and Laansma thought it was intentionally masculine. That Hoppin, in defending her work, could not find scholars to concur with LaMontagne on his neuter adjectival predicate theory (despite, it seems, having sought for like minds) shows that LaMontagne’s proposed solution to the διηγούμενον problem was a poor one. 82 Blass, Debrunner, and Funk also note that ἀρκετόν and ἱκανόν here seem to be holding the same function in these verses as the indeclinable Latin adjective satis, which is another reason they take the neuter and present as mixed-gender constructions instead of declining to match the feminine. See BDF §131 (73). 83 BDF §131 (73). 84 Hoppin cites this rule in both BDF and Smyth, then argues that they “concur” with her because “time would fail anyone in telling,” but this does not change that the supposedly neuter participle here is not modifying an abstract concept such as time. Instead it literally modifies an individual, με, contra the rule she cites in both BDF and Smyth. She states that, “according to good classical usage, when the individuality of the author is not crucial in a sentence, the use of the neuter has ample precedence, ” yet she cites no similarly situated examples of authors applying neuter participles to themselves as stand-ins for a broad class. Furthermore, the examples given in the grammars she cites are nothing like the construction seen in Hebrews 11:32; all of the feminine objects modified by neuter adjectives in these examples are abstractions or concepts with feminine grammatical gender, not female individuals. See Hoppin, “Priscilla and Plausibility,” 26. 85 See Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter, x; Hoppin, “Priscilla and Plausibility,” 26. 64 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY Culy provided Hoppin with one last rhetorical option: that the phrase ἐπιλείψει με γὰρ διηγούμενον ὁ χρόνος “was so common that it may have become fossilized, such that the masculine form might have been used by an author of either gender.”86 This is very similar to the “literary masculine” and “editorial masculine” advocated by others, or the “euphonious in Greek” theory advocated by Hoppin herself in the first iteration of her work. The difficulty here is that Hoppin produces no examples from classical Greek literature of the phrase being used by women, or even of women applying masculine participles to themselves at all. It is true that, as previously discussed, very few works by female authors have survived antiquity, but classical Greek literature is full of feminine figures speaking through poetry, plays, and philosophical prose. If women used the “literary masculine” or “editorial masculine,” there should be examples of it in classical Greek literature. Perhaps a better case can be made here, but no one has yet made it. That said, while I am not a proponent of this theory of authorship, from a historical perspective I can see one small option for reconsidering the apparent verdict rendered by the masculine participle of 11:32, although Hoppin paradoxically self-sabotages it. Scholars have long debated whether the epistle to the Hebrews is a sermon or homily that applies to no specific audience and was always meant for circulation, or a letter intended for a specific congregation that somehow ended up circulating. Hoppin is adamant that it is the latter.87 Consider for a moment the possibility that it is the former, and that our author (whether male or female) composed it with an eye to its circulation as a sermon to be read in early Christian churches. We know that early Christianity had an office called “reader,” akin to an elder or a deacon, and of the readers we know of, only men are designated—perhaps, at least in part, because literacy rates were higher among men.88 In this light, ἐπιλείψει με γὰρ διηγούμενον ὁ χρόνος could reflect the author’s expectation that, in most local congregations, a man would be reading the sermon. As such, it would not matter whether a man or a woman wrote the sermon since the sermon was written for a man to read. Under this theory, there is no reason to believe that Priscilla wrote Πρὸς Ἑβραίους, and plenty of reason to think she did not—as per Hoppin, “Priscilla and Plausibility,” 27. Hoppin, “Priscilla and Plausibility,” 27–28. 88 See the discussion in Justo L. González, The Bible in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 65–66. Considerable secondary literature on the New Testament makes the claim that Phoebe, as the apparent courier of Paul’s letter to the Romans (Rom 16:1–2), also served as its reader in a congregational setting; see, for example, Rebecca Lindsay Ann Nickens, “Finding Phoebe: The Role of Phoebe in Rom 16:1–2” (ThM thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 2019), 41. This claim was contested by Peter M. Head, “Phoebe the Letter Carrier and the Delivery and Initial Reception of Romans” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the SBL, Chicago, IL, 20 November 2012); a summary of Head’s objections appear on his blog, “N. T. Wright on Phoebe,” Letter Carriers and the Pauline Tradition (blog), 27 November 2012, https://tychichus.blogspot.com/2012/11/nt-wright-on-phoebe.html. See also the discussion by Ian Paul, “Phoebe, carrier of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians,” Psephizo (blog), 1 December 2012, https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/phoebe-carrier-of-pauls-letter-to-the-roman-christians/. Even if one allows that Phoebe was the reader of Paul’s letter to the Romans, it is still true that most readers serving in congregations appear to have been men. 86 87 HEBREWS, SHE WROTE? 65 the first three sections of this article—but a slim hope that she did may perhaps persist. Then again, also under this theory, statements such as Hebrews 2:3 are not narrowly rendered autobiographical details about the author, but rather things the author felt would generally be true of the average Christian reader living in the early decades of the church’s life. If this is the case, then a large number of male candidates whom Hoppin disqualifies are back on the table. In contrast, under Hoppin’s methodology, where the details found in Hebrews are rendered personally and narrowly with male candidates being disqualified over the slightest dissidence from the text, consistency would seem to demand that the participle at 11:32 eliminate Priscilla from consideration. Regardless, Harris spoke candidly and truthfully in 1908. The participle is very likely fatal to the Priscillan theory of authorship. V. CONCLUSION In closing, it is worth noting that several authors whom one might expect to embrace the Priscillan theory of authorship have instead rejected it. Ian M. Plant included Perpetua (ca. 182–ca. 203) in his lineup of early Christian female authors, despite doubts as to whether she wrote the account of her captivity before martyrdom, yet he called Hoppin’s work on Priscilla “fanciful.”89 Ben Witherington III, a staunch advocate for the evidence of women’s leadership in early Christianity, rejects the Harnack-Hoppin hypothesis because, among other reasons, “much stands against it, including the grammar of Heb 11:32,” and “the author of this document is both very literate and well educated, which was a rarity for Jewish women of this era, who when they had education were not expected to do advanced studies in the Septuagint or rhetoric!”90 David deSilva explains, “The early church was quite open to female leadership, removing any need for a female author to ‘disguise’ her gender.”91 And Luke Timothy Johnson opines, “It would be pleasant to have a female author of a New Testament composition,” but he finds the Harnack-Hoppin thesis unlikely for some of the same reasons I discuss at length in this article.92 Many of us are sympathetic to the suggestion that Priscilla wrote Hebrews, but we must reject it because, contra the central argument hinted at in the title of Harnack’s original “Probabilia” essay, the possibility turns out to be extremely improbable. I have offered the olive branch of one possible way that a slim hope for Priscillan authorship could be preserved, if one views the composition as a general sermon that was written for a man to read, although even under this theory, the Plant, Women Writers, 164–65, 187. Ben Witherington III, Letters and Homilies for Jewish Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Hebrews, James and Jude (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007), 22n13. Although, as discussed in this article, Hoppin holds that Priscilla was Gentile, not Jewish. 91 David A. deSilva, The Letter to the Hebrews in Social-Scientific Perspective, Kindle ed., Cascade Companions 15 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012), 27n5. 92 Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 41. 89 90 66 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY thesis of Priscillan authorship remains farfetched. If the anonymous writings of Scripture had unknown female authors and collaborators, they will most likely be found among compositions of poetry and prophecy, as these were the genres that women most commonly broke into in antiquity.93 A work of oratory and rhetoric like Πρὸς Ἑβραίους is among the least likely candidates for discreet female authorship. I will also offer this: in her article on educated Jewish women in antiquity, Tal Ilan concluded, “Every once in a while some wise woman was able to transcend all the limitations of the society she lived in and produce some scholarly contribution.”94 I have no doubt Priscilla, whether Jew or Gentile, was one such wise woman who transcended the limitations placed on her by society, and I have no doubt she made remarkable contributions to the incipient Christian church. I simply think the composition of Πρὸς Ἑβραίους was not among them. 93 The pseudepigraphal Testament of Job (1st c. BC) offers support for this proposition in that it has Job’s daughters composing prophetic hymns and prayers that were then written down. See T. Job 11. 94 Ilan, “Learned Jewish Women in Antiquity,” 188.