Thinking on Hebrews
Random, not deep
Our ladies’ group just finished a couple months Bible study in the Book of Hebrews, and I wanted to post some of my thoughts about it. I found it interesting, and enjoyed both the study and the company.
First of all, near as I can tell, Baptists educate their congregations Biblically better than Lutherans do (based on an admittedly small sample). After the first couple of times where people said things either about this book or the book it referenced repeatedly (Numbers) that had me going, ‘huh?’ I stopped worried about being totally prepared for the study. I continued to read, and at least look at the questions, but not spend overmuch time answering them.
Some interesting things that I learned through the study:
I knew going into it that the writer of the Book of Hebrews was probably not Paul. Various reasons they think that is that Paul always signed his letters. Another thing that I picked up is that Hebrews was written in a much higher educated style than Paul used. (Now, writers do vary their style according to their intended audience, so that is not entirely indicative, but does seem probable.) One of the ladies was of the steadfast opinion that the book was actually an anthology, since the same topics were covered repeatedly. I found that too apt a theory to be thrown out immediately.
The verb in Hebrews 5:9 where Christ is made perfect, is the same verb in Greek as the one used for a priest finishing his consecration. Considering that most of that chapter, and following, is about Christ being a priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 10:1 had me going, “Wait a minute! Is he referencing Plato’s Cave?” (Wikipedia link for overview) Then I realized, that in the previous chapters, all the talk about having to make the tabernacle to an exact pattern because it was a representation of the real Tabernacle in Heaven was also an attempt to invoke Plato’s Cave. Even though he doesn’t declare it overtly, my thought is that first-century educated people were familiar with the concept of Plato’s Cave, even if they didn’t understand it, or believe it. Much like until recently educated people knew both the Bible and Shakespeare, at least in general outline.
“The world was not worthy of them” is a wonderful phrase.
One of the ladies made the comment in one of the sessions that she didn’t really think of Jesus as a priest and did any of us? I managed to bite my tongue, and not point out that it was really irrelevant. The author of Hebrews obviously considered it to be a powerful metaphor, and thought that the original intended recipients would also find it to be a powerful metaphor. Presumably the Councils that chose the canon also found it powerful.
One thing that may be contributing to that though is that in the modern-day America (or at least I do), we tend to think about Roman Catholic priest, and the High Priest something like the pope. The Aaronic priesthood was a different animal altogether. His audience would be far more familiar with them.
One final thot, as we talked and discussed, I gradually got the mental image of the author of Hebrews to be somewhat like an English college professor, like C.S. Lewis, or Tolkien. My image of English professors is probably way off as well. But the kind of man who could spend hours in a pub over beers arguing about the meaning of each little item in the temple, and how it would be applied. With an overworked/ underpaid grad student/ clerk/ secretary/ scribe who was hard-pressed to keep him on topic. (Hebrews 9:5 and 11:32 both have him lamenting about not having time to discuss the topics at hand). He spends time complaining that everything he is teaching is so simple, even a baby could understand it. (Hebrews 5:11 through 6:3)
But he seems to be talking at least as densely—and joyously—as Chesterton. Without the humor. Though I am not a scholar. Like Shakespeare I have little Latin and less Greek, though his probably outranks mine by several orders of magnitude. So I willing to be persuaded that there was humor there in the original that didn’t make it through translation.