Christianity in Herculaneum

On 24 August 79 AD/CE Mount Vesuvius in Italy began to erupt, spewing out large rocks and streams of molten lava.  The Roman communities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Oplontis were destroyed as well as several nearby villas.  The port of Herculaneum was smaller than the port of Pompeii and existed as a resort town for the wealthy.  The towns were covered by 13 to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice.

Excavations at Herculaneum and the other towns yielded multitudes of intact buildings after the ash was removed.  Since a 1939 excavation at Herculaneum found only the bodies of a few women and children, it was thought that the town was successfully evacuated during the cataclysm.  It was not until 1981 that over 300 skeletons were found huddled together in cluster of buildings.

During the 1939 excavation of Herculaneum it was proven that Christianity had made inroads in the area when a wooden cross was found nailed to a wall in one of the houses.

Be Careful Interpreting Biblical Facts

Some modern scholars have decided that Paul didn't write all the books normally attributed to him. For a discussion of this you should read What Paul Meant by Garry Wills. I personally am not convinced by his arguments.

The question of whether or not Paul wrote Hebrews is a different matter. I don't think he did. He always put his name into his letters as a way to stress the teaching authority of his letters, but no name is attached to "To the Hebrews.(ΠΡΟΣ ΕΒΡΑΙΟΥΣ)"

The book reads as a scholarly and well-written, logically constructed essay; Paul's letters read like they were poured out of the intellectual volcano that was Paul. He was, after all a Pharisee, and his letters sound like a preacher speaking extemporaneously, throwing out question after question, piling paradoxes on top of one another, sometimes sarcastically insulting his opponents, sometimes sounding gentle and fatherly. Just when he seems like he may go too far, he pulls back and asks "does this mean?" questions. His repeated answer; "God forbid!"

One of the arguments used to decide that Paul didn't write Hebrews is the fact that the book uses 112 Greek words that are not found anywhere else in the New Testament.

Moses Stuart (1780-1852), an attorney, pastor, and linguist (Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, and German) countered this argument with the fact that everyone agrees that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians yet it contains 230 words found nowhere else in Paul. In other words, the unusual words in Hebrews probably prove nothing about its authorship.

The non-Pauline author most commonly mentioned for Hebrews is Apollos (Acts 18:24-27; 1 Corinthians 3:4-6, 16:12, Titus 3:13). The fact that no writer's name is placed on the book has led some to think it may have been written by a woman.