Expanded Traditions in Hebrews
Deuterocanonical and Pseudepigraphal Sources
The letter to the Hebrews draws on a wide range of traditions, many found in the Torah and other narratives in the Hebrew Bible, yet others, perhaps less known, inherited from traditions developed later in the second temple Jewish period. These reflections on the narrative past often reshaped familiar material, filled in perceived narrative or logical gaps, or expanded stories to give a fuller picture of the people remembered for their faith. Over time they gained weight in the life of these communities, and Hebrews treats them as part of the same overarching tradition. In doing so, the letter shows that memory of the past was not fixed to one collection of texts but was carried by many voices that wanted to preserve and retell Israel’s history.
This comes into focus most clearly in Hebrews 11, which recalls a wide range of notable figures by presenting them as examples of faith and encouragement. The passage does more than list familiar names from scripture, because its way of celebrating the past mirrors the style of praising ancestors that was common in Jewish and Greek writings of the period. It reaches into retellings that adjusted timelines, into stories of martyrdom that circulated outside the Hebrew Bible, and even into accounts of prophetic suffering that were taken from other writings. By blending these sources into one continuous history, Hebrews treats them all as part of the same memory, wanting to presenting faith as something to be celebrated and emulated, something shown in the endurance and loyalty of many generations.
Let us now sing the praises of famous men, our ancestors in their generations. The Lord apportioned to them great glory, his majesty from the beginning. There were those who ruled in their kingdoms, and made a name for themselves by their valor; those who gave counsel because they were intelligent; those who spoke in prophetic oracles; those who led the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of the people’s lore; they were wise in their words of instruction; those who composed musical tunes, or put verses in writing ... (Sirach 44:1-5)
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see. For by it the people of old received God’s commendation. By faith we understand that the worlds were set in order at God’s command, so that the visible has its origin in the invisible ... (Hebrews 11:1-3)1
The style of Hebrews 11 follows the pattern of an ‘encomium’, a structured way of celebrating the lives of famous individuals by highlighting their character and accomplishments. This literary form was well known in Greek literature, where it was used to highlight exemplary individuals, such as in the Greek author Isocrates’ Evagoras, which honored a ruler by tracing his ancestry, virtues, and achievements.2 Its appearance in Hebrews shows how the author shaped a distinctly Jewish story with a literary approach already familiar in the wider world. By adopting this style, Hebrews placed the idea of faith into a series of remembered lives, each building on the last to form a continuous reflection.
This was not the first time an encomium was used in Jewish tradition. The book of Sirach offers one of the earliest and clearest examples, devoting a lengthy section to praising the Hebrew ancestors for their wisdom, leadership, and creativity. That passage provided a model for how the form could be taken up to celebrate Israel’s past, and Hebrews 11 follows in that tradition by arranging its account in much the same way.3 What makes this notable is that the form itself, though rooted in Greek writing, had already been reshaped for use within Jewish memory, making Hebrews part of an ongoing process of blending inherited stories with a literary style designed for praise.
They — both of his sons Isaac and Ishmael — buried him in the double cave near his wife Sarah. All the people of his household as well as Isaac, Ishmael, and all their sons and Keturah’s sons in their places mourned for him for 40 days. Then the tearful mourning for Abraham was completed. He had lived for three jubilees and four weeks of years — 175 years — when he completed his lifetime. He had grown old and his time was completed. For the times of the ancients were 19 jubilees for their lifetimes. After the flood they started to decrease from 19 jubilees, to be fewer with respect to jubilees, to age quickly, and to have their times be completed in view of the numerous difficulties and through the wickedness of their ways — with the exception of Abraham. (Jubilees 23:7-9)
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, and he went out without understanding where he was going. By faith he lived as a foreigner in the promised land as though it were a foreign country, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, who were fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with firm foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:8-10)4
In Genesis, Abraham’s story ends before the birth of Jacob is mentioned, which creates the impression that the two never lived at the same time. The book of Jubilees addresses this by reordering the events and adding details so that Abraham’s lifetime overlaps with both Isaac and Jacob. This change not only resolves a chronological tension but also allows Abraham to be remembered as sharing his life with the next two generations, likely because of how the three names are so frequently used in a formula.5 Hebrews reflects this same reading when it describes Abraham as living with Isaac and Jacob, presenting them connected not just as narrative pieces, but theologically, as heirs of the same promise.
What stands out is how these later Jewish texts did not treat the biblical source as fixed or immutable but felt free to adjust and expand it when the story seemed incomplete or inconsistent. Jubilees changes the order of events so that Abraham’s life connects directly with Jacob’s, and Hebrews follows that same line when it depicts the three living together. In both cases, the story is not merely repeated but significantly reshaped, showing how tradition could move beyond the letter of the text in order to produce a version that better captured the meaning these communities wanted to preserve.
Antiochus not only appealed to him in words, but promised with oaths that he would make him rich and enviable if he would turn from the ways of his ancestors, and that he would take him for his Friend and entrust him with public affairs. Since the young man would not listen to him at all, the king called the mother to him and urged her to advise the youth to save himself. After much urging on his part, she undertook to persuade her son. But, leaning close to him, she spoke in their native language as follows, deriding the cruel tyrant: “My son, have pity on me. I carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you for three years, and have reared you and brought you up to this point in your life, and have taken care of you. I beg you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. And in the same way the human race came into being. Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God’s mercy I may get you back again along with your brothers. (2 Maccabees 7:22-29)
Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle, put foreign armies to flight, and women received back their dead raised to life. But others were tortured, not accepting release, to obtain resurrection to a better life. 36 And others experienced mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. (Hebrews 11:33-36)6
Within the long list of names and events that Hebrews 11 recounts, it also invokes narratives not found in the Hebrew Bible, a notable example being the story of a mother and her sons who chose torture and death rather than abandon their hope in resurrection. This specific narrative is preserved in the Maccabean traditions, where the mother urges her sons to remain steadfast even as he faces torture and execution. By placing this story within its sequence of examples, Hebrews shows how it considered it worthy to be included with the most well-known figures of Israel’s past, signaling that the memory of the faithful was not confined to the boundaries of what was known only from Hebrew Bible traditions.
The decision to include this shows how Hebrews regarded such stories as authentic and important enough to be included within its list of faithful examples. The endurance of the Maccabean martyrs is presented in the same manner as the triumphs of earlier figures, reinforcing the idea that later stories could carry the same authority as the older ones. Rather than limiting its scope, Hebrews drew from a much broader range of Jewish memory, here including Greek traditions preserved in the Septuagint collection7, where courage and trust in God in the face of persecution and death were equally celebrated.
… Isaiah answered and said: So far as I have utterance I say: Damned and cursed be you and all your powers and all your house. For you cannot take from me anything except the skin of my body. And they seized and sawed Isaiah, the son of Amoz, in two with a wooden saw. And Manasseh and Belchira and the false prophets and the princes and the people and all stood looking on. And to the prophets who were with him he said before he had been sawn in two: Go you to the region of Tyre and Sidon; for only for me has God mixed the cup. And when Isaiah was being sawn in two, he neither cried aloud nor wept, but his lips spoke with the Holy Spirit until he was cut in half. (Ascension of Isaiah 5:9-14)
Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle, put foreign armies to flight, and women received back their dead raised to life. But others were tortured, not accepting release, to obtain resurrection to a better life. And others experienced mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (the world was not worthy of them); they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and openings in the earth. (Hebrews 11:33-38)8
Hebrews continues with the short but peculiar image of a prophet being sawn in two, a narrative detail absent from anywhere in either the Hebrew Bible or the Septuagint, but found in the pseudepigraphal text the Ascension of Isaiah. While this text was itself written in the first century, roughly the same time as the book of Hebrews, it preserves traditions that included a detailed account of Isaiah’s death under King Manasseh, a version of events that circulated outside any common text traditions established by that time.9 By referencing this specific and unmistakable detail, Hebrews clearly demonstrates awareness of these traditions, and treats them equally a part of the history of Israel’s faithful.
As with the previous examples, Hebrews places this detail alongside the better-known accounts of Israel’s past without any indication that it is less trustworthy. What stands out in this choice is how it shows no hesitation using elements preserved outside of what would be considered ‘standard’ traditions, and treating it as a part of the same lineage of faith, leaving its audience with a picture of faith that is both diverse and continuous. The letter closes this long survey not by narrowing its scope but by widening it, using whatever traditions the author felt necessary to encourage his readers in the middle of their present circumstances.
Poulakos, T. Isocrates’ Evagoras: The Educational Ends of the ‘First’ Biography in Classical Greece in De Temmerman, K. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography, Oxford University Press, 2020
Miller, Merland R. What is the Literary Form of Hebrews 11? (pp. 411-417) JETS 29/4, 1986
van Ruiten, J. Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis 11:26-25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14-23:8 (p. 229) Brill, 2012
Nicklas, Tobias “The Apocrypha in the History of Early Christianity” in Oegema, Gerbern S. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 52-73) Oxford University Press, 2021
Charlesworth, James H. The Pseudepigrapha and Modern Research, with a Supplement (pp. 125-126) Society of Biblical Literature, 1981
Great post! I love how you brought out how Abraham lived witg Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the promise. When reading Hebrews 11, I have often thought about Isaiah and the mother and her 7 sons in 2 Maccabees. Those these have all died, their lives still speak. I hope to meet them all some day!