Ehrmann asks, given the large number of versions of early Christianity, why did the one we know today become dominant? He suggests three crucial factors -- the three C's.
This unified front involved (a) developing a rigorous administrative hierarchy that protected and conveyed the truth of the religion (eventuating, for example, in the papacy), (b) insisting that all true Christians profess a set body of doctrines promoted by these leaders (the Christian creeds), and (c) appealing to a set of authoritative books of Scripture as bearers of these inspired doctrinal truths (the "New" Testament; see Chapter 1). Or to put the matter in its simplest and most alliterative terms, the proto-orthodox won these conflicts by insisting on the validity of the clergy, the creed, and the canon.
We had another look at Hebrews 10-13. Chapter 10 continued the complicated metaphor of Christ as priest, and again ascribed passages in the Old Testament as sayings of Jesus, reinforcing the suspicion that a collection of sayings was being used, rather than scripture itself. Chapter 11 is known among English evangelicals as the “Westminster Abbey of the Bible”, with its great collection of vignettes of OT characters, rather like the Irish lists of saints. The reference at the end to saints “sawn in two” is puzzling; there is a statement in the “Ascension of Moses” that Isaiah was so treated, but this apocryphal work is thought to be later than the epistle, if not medieval.
The imagery of the final chapters reaches great heights -- as we have noted before, more like a speech or a sermon than a letter, though there are some personal references at the end. Did someone send out a transcript of a sermon, and add a few greetings?