Hebrews

I am about to work through Hebrews with my Greek Exegesis class, so I am reminded of a discovery I made in Hebrews a few years ago. I am happy to follow up my post of a couple of days ago with some fresh ideas.

Recently I have discovered two effective ways in which Auctor (Latin for author of the Letter to the Hebrews) exhorts us to recognize the main theme in his book—Jesus. First, twice he calls particular attention to the One who is the real answer to his readers’ problems—Jesus. In 3:1 he writes: “Holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, JESUS.” And in 12:2 he writes, “Fixing our eyes on the Author and Finisher of our faith, JESUS.” These two statements, each from one of the two main sections of the book (1:1-10:18 and 10:19-13:25) are strikingly parallel in their structure.

Fix your thoughts on the Apostle and High Priest of our confession Jesus
κατανοήσατε τὸν ἀπόστολον καὶ ἀρχιερέα τῆς ὁμολογίας ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν

Fix our eyes on the Author and Finisher of our faith Jesus
ἀφορῶντες εἰς τὸν ἀρχηγὸν καὶ τελειωτὴν τῆς πίστεως Ἰησοῦν

Read The series so far.

A pastor asked a good question in response to my suggestion that Jude was the author of Hebrews: “How does one go about determining authorship, when the majority of early, external material attributes authorship to Paul? Apart from the views of Origen, why is Paul not the favorable author?”

Earliest writers on the subject, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, wrote that the Greek in Hebrews was not Paul’s. They could be wrong, but they wrote and spoke the language. In response to the good questions, I wrote to the pastor the following:

The strongest internal arguments against Pauline authorship, in my opinion, are:

(1) Paul’s practice was to mention himself clearly as the author of his epistles, and write it with his own hand (2 Thess. 3:17), because there were many false “Pauline” epistles circulating. Such a practice is lacking in Hebrews.

1. Jude started to write an epistle about the “salvation” he shared in common with his readers but changed to writing his shorter epistle (Jude 3). I suggest that he later completed this postponed work and it is the Epistle to the Hebrews.

2. I also suggest that the short epistle (ἐπέστειλα) Auctor (my name for the author of Hebrews) wrote in a “few words” (Heb. 13:22) is the one attributed to Jude. It is indeed a very short epistle.

3. Many see Hebrews 13:22 as referring to Hebrews, but could Auctor really describe that epistle as brief? It is the third longest epistle in the NT, after Romans and 1 Corinthians.

The suggestion that Auctor is referring to a different document than that which he is now sending them explains the mysterious καὶ at the beginning of his statement: καi γαρ δια βραχεων ἐπέστειλα υμιν (“For I also wrote to you an epistle with few words”). Translators have usually ignored this conjunction. (The NIV and NET do have: “for in fact I have written to you quite briefly,” a translation for καὶ nowhere attested in BDAG or LN). Furthermore, his use of the verb ἐπέστειλα refers to a specific letter that Auctor wrote. He did not use the word εγραψα, which was the way a letter writer in the NT normally referred to his present writing (as in Rom. 15:15; 1 Cor. 5:11, 9:15; Gal. 6:11; Philemon 9, 21; 1 Pet. 5:12; 1 John 2:14, 21, 26; 1 John 5:13; 3 John 9).

When Helen and I were in Dublin in the summer of 2008, we were waiting for our timed entrance to Dublin Castle. When we realized that we had almost an hour’s wait, I saw that the Chester Beatty Library was next door. Now for most folks that may not mean much, but I recalled that the famous Chester Beatty Papyri are housed there. These are some of the oldest copies of NT books in the world! So I dragged the wife (actually, she came willingly) and I feasted my eyes for the first time on these precious documents rescued from a trash heap in Egypt.

One of the treasures there is the oldest copy of the Letter to the Hebrews. Now most know that the author of the letter/sermon did not mention his name, so the work is officially anonymous. But there are some folks who almost base their orthodoxy on Pauline authorship of this book! Recently I engaged in a long discussion with a seminary student who attempted to defend Pauline authorship as if it was part of our doctrinal statement!

While I do have an opinion on this issue (see the next post), I am content with the fact that the Lord and the human author did not intend to make this issue a big one because the author’s name is not mentioned at the beginning or the end or anywhere else in the thirteen chapters.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Both Offerer and Offering

One of the primary concerns of the writer to the Hebrews is the priesthood of Christ. The duty of a priest is to represent humans before God. In order to fulfill this responsibility effectively, the priest must be human himself. The priest must also be sinless. The only priest who has ever met these requirements is Jesus Christ, and He has met them perfectly.

Remarkably, Christ was not only the priest who offered sacrifice, but also the sacrifice that was offered. Not surprisingly, once the author of Hebrews has discussed the priesthood of Christ, he turns his attention to Christ as the offering for sins. In Hebrews 10, he examines Christ as the sin offering, drawing out the meaning of Jesus’ sacrifice by contrasting the person and ministry of Christ with the Levitical sacrifices of the Old Testament.

He begins by observing that the Old Testament offerings were shadows and not ultimate realities, and then notes that those sacrifices could never make the offerers perfect (1). In other words, the Old Testament sacrifices could never actually remove the guilt of sin. If they could have, the need to offer additional sacrifices would have been eliminated (2). If one’s sins have been completely forgiven, then one does not need any further sacrifice. Yet the Levitical sacrifices on the Day of Atonement were made every year, year after year (3). The necessity of repeating the sacrifices should have proved that the blood of animal sacrifices could not remove sins (4).

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

The Order of Melchizedek

The writer to the Hebrews was distressed by the spiritual immaturity of his readers. He wanted to discuss theology with them—specifically, the calling of Christ as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 5:10-14). He made it clear that the Hebrews had been saved long enough (“when for the time”) that they ought to have mastered this topic (“ye ought to be teachers”). Instead, he had to rehearse certain elementary teachings of biblical doctrine (“the first principles of the oracles of God”).

The writer’s disappointment with the immaturity of the Hebrew believers was what fueled the warning passage of chapter 6. Not until chapter 7 did he return to the theme that Christ is a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. When he finally got back to it, however, he penned one of the most difficult and detailed arguments in all of Scripture. This argument is highly instructive concerning the nature of Christ’s high priesthood.

Nothing in Hebrews 7 is really new. Everything in the chapter is inferred from three sources. The first source is the Genesis account of Melchizedek, a three-verse snippet of narrative (Gen. 14:18-20). The second source is a single verse (Ps. 110:4) from a Messianic psalm. The third source is a general knowledge of the history and culture of Israel. From these short sources, the writer constructs an elaborate discussion of the high priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchizedek. So detailed is the discussion that only the outlines can be explored here.

^{Editor’s Note: This article was reprinted with permission from Warren Vanhetloo’s newsletter “Cogitation.”}

Read Part 1.

^{Editor’s Note: This article was reprinted with permission from Warren Vanhetloo’s newsletter “Cogitation.”}

^{Editor’s Note: This article was reprinted with permission from Warren Vanhetloo’s newsletter “Cogitation.”}