Scholars today are largely agreed that the Epistle to the Hebrews circulated independently for a lengthy period before gaining admission to the canon, which came about only through the fiction of Pauline authorship. The view that the Pauline corpus and Hebrews were known and used independently of one another prior to the latter's incorporation in the former is so widely accepted that one hesitates to question it. Yet, when the basis of this position is examined, it is a bit surprising to find how slender is the evidence on which the present consensus is based. Moreover, such evidence as there is does not point unequivocally to the conclusions now so commonly drawn, or is capable of other interpretations. Therefore, there may be grounds for a review and reappraisal of the evidence of the sources.

This short work was published by S. Hovsepceancc, and the present translation is made from that text. The only previous English translation is that of J. Issaverdens, from which this rendering differs at a number of points. A German translation based on three MSS was published by E. Preuschen. Since he offers neither an Armenian text nor any information at all about his MSS or their location, use has been made as far as possible of his translation and notes. Significant variants reflected in his translation have been recorded in the notes on the translation offered here. For convenience a system of verse numbering was introduced.

Whenever Western Semitic people, i.e., primarily Phoenicians and Hebrews, and later Jews, considered it advisable or faced the necessity to adjust their social groupings to virtually superior institutions of the Greek-speaking realms of the Eastern Mediterranean, they were soon confronted with the problem of how to reproduce the respective Greek sociological terms in their native tongue.

Regarding this kind of Semitization of terms as a consequence of Hellenization, my interest was recently drawn to the relationship of hayyaḥad and to koinon. This apparently deserves further examination.