Hebrews

Possibly the most interesting thing about this book, before even getting into its famously elegant theology, is its authorship.  For some reason I have a hard time accepting its anonymity, even though there is no way of knowing exactly who wrote this masterpiece.  In fact it really bothers me, more than it should.  I find that I've gotten into the habit of reading these books through the eyes of their authors, and the inability to do that here leaves me feeling a bit adrift.  How often are we able--even forced--to take a text purely on its content? 

1:1-4 The tone of this section is one of review, the statement of generally accepted facts.  If, as by most accounts, it was written around 63 C.E., that speaks to the pretty rapid establishment of such doctrines as the ransom and Christ's relative divinity.  It is worth noting here that that divinity is still only relative, Christ being the exact imprint of God's very being, but not God himself.

1:10 And here it is also seen that the idea of Christ's prehuman existence is generally accepted by the church even at this early date.

2:1 At first I had trouble following this logic, but the author seems to be saying that if people suffered for disregarding the messages of angels, how much more so if they disregard the message of one whom God has placed above angels.

2:6 "someone has testified somewhere" is a rather unconvincing form of citation, but no doubt the audience would have been intimate with the source material in Psalms.

2:9 A parallel between the sufferings of Christ and those of the readers.  Just as Christ had to be lower than angels before his ascension, so to are the readers merely preparing for their ultimate glory.

2:14 This is an interesting bit of theology.  The devil here seems to receive a promotion, from a mere tempter to one with actual power over death.

2:18 In what sense was Christ's suffering necessary to his position as high priest for the descendants of Abraham?  Was it a matter of credibility?  Or training?  Or something more metaphysical?  The implication here is that he needed to understand the human experience fully in order to minister to humans, which is consistent with the theology in this book so far, but not with absolute divinity.  And no mention is made of a ransom in this passage.

3:2 The transition between Christ and Moses is a little shaky here, and feels like a rhetorical necessity to introduce the ideas in v.7.  In general the transitions seem more thematic that logical, not building a logical structure, but telling a fluid story.  This in and of itself is enough to suggest that Paul was not the author.

4:1 Again a thematic, rather than a logical, transition to the new idea.

4:4-9 But a very solid bit of reasoning here, that results in some intriguing theology.  By this logic, we are still in the sevnth day of Genesis, and the days mentioned therein could not possibly be literal 24 hour periods.

4:12 I'm always intrigued by mention of "the word" in the Bible.  Most take it, and especially so here, to mean the Bible itself.  But in this context, an interpretation of the word to mean Christ himself is rather easy to support.  It is even possible, given the context, that the word mentioned here is the same  word spoken in Genesis 2:3, the blessing of the seventh day, or the word of power that swept over the waters of the Earth before giving them shape.  All interpretations are tempting, and a theology that combines the three seems best suited to answer the question.

4:14 The lack of a transition here would imply that it is Christ who has been referred to in the previous verses.

4:16  This is the second mention of boldness and confidence as being virtues for the reader, an idea that doesn't really crop up in other letters.  In fact, in the vast majority of the Greek scriptures, humility is to be preferred.

5:2 Could it really be said that Christ was subject to weakness?  If so, that draws a nice distinction between weakness and sin.

5:11 I laughed inwardly at this.  I wonder aobut the "solid food", the more complex truths that are being withheld here from the dullards in the audience.

6:2 I want to know about their basic teachings!  Don't skip over them!  I am especially interested to know what their version of eternal judgement was, since it was evidently so basic.

6:18  What are the two unchangeable things?  I only count one here: God himself.

7:3 In this way, the author of this book is a bit like Melchizedek as well:  "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life . . ." Yes, I'm still obsessed with the authroship of this book.

7:4 This begins a very different line of reasoning here, altogether more well constructed and persuasive than the first half.  Even the vocabulary is different.

8:9 There's the slightest of chinks in the logic of Hebrews here (it seems appropriate to refer to the book as its own author).  It goes to some lengths (the entirety of chapter 7) to set Melchizedek up as evidence of the flaws in the Levitic code.  In this verse, however, it acknowledges that the fault was not with the code itself, but with the Israelites failure to follow it.

8:11 Now this is a fascinating verse.  "They will not teach one another, or say to each other 'Know the Lord'."  At any rate, this would prevent what went wrong with the first covenant from repeating itself.  But what would that look like?  Watever it is, as Hebrews observes in 5:11 it is still a ways off from the early Christians.

9:14 The logic is pretty compelling here.  If I accepted all of the premises upon which it was based, I might even be convinced of ransom theology, which I am generally inclined to view as silly.

9:17 Stretching the metaphor just a wee bit here

10:1 I can't help but be reminded of the Perfection of Wisdom here.  I wonder if Hebrews is conscious of the fact that even these doctrines are shadows of a celestial reality.

10:26 These verses are a bit troubling taken out of context, but they make perfect sense here.  The problem with the first covenant was that the sins were not erased from the hearts of the Israelites, they were merely covered over.  And like any paint job, it needed regular touch ups.  The sacrifice of the second covenant doesn't cover over those sins, it erases them.  And it replaces them in the hearts of believers with the law itself.  If even after that, they willfully persist in sin, there truly does remain no sacrifice.

10:37 The very little while here certainly has taken rather a long time, however.  And here is the weakness of the exhortations here.  Hebrews' call to confidence, endurance and faith is very effective . . . in the short term.

11:1 People often take this verse as a distinction between faith and hope.  "Faith," such an one might say, "is based on fact--even though the facts have not been witnessed."  But I, for one, fail to see the distinction.  That sounds an awful lot like hope, or worse yet credulity.

11:7 See, what Noah did was not faith.  He had assurances, a concrete warning.  The faith mentioned in 11:1 doesn't fit this definition.

11:8 Which makes it no wonder that Kierkegaard chose Abraham as his model for the real mystery of faith, not Noah.  He acted in faith, and somehow, a terrible bloody intention was purified.  That scene, unsurprisingly, is not mentioned here.

11:13 And just as Abel, Noah and Abraham all died without receiving their promises, so did all those who first read this letter, and all who have since.

11:19 Ahhh, here it is.  The kicker. 

11:23 Here's an interesting riddle.  Hebrews here speaks of Moses; parents displaying faith.  Plural.  What mention is there ever of Moses' father in Genesis though?  An interesting line of inquiry.

11:26 Now surely Hebrews is taking a liberty here.  Moses could not by any stretch of the imagination be said to have had an idea of the Christ.

11:30 And it also seems like a stretch to say that the wals of Jericho were felled by faith.  It was pretty clearly God who did that, not man.

11:35 Those who were tortured here had no idea of a resurrection, though.  They suffered not for hope of something better, for the fulfillment of a promise, but for virtue.  Because it was impossible for them to do otherwise and live.

11:40 I find this verse entirely opaque.  Are they to be joined with the readers then?  Syntactically very unclear.

12:1 The train begun in ch.7 continues to pick of speed here.  Notwithstanding the petty chinks noted above, this is a pretty forceful piece of writing.  I'm almost convinced.  Poetic.  Soaring, even.


12:14 and Hebrews takes a breath here.  Havnig made its point rather unassailably, it relies on that strength to make its final plea.

12:18 Here's an interesting moment.  Hebrews reminds the reader that the reality of God is something at once rather terrifying and wonderful.  Best for the reader to focus on the wonderful, it seems to say.

12:25 And I can't help but feel here that Hebrews finally gets to the things that it referred to in 5:11, the solid food, so to speak.  The Buddha would no doubt approve of this passage, insofar as all creation is shakable and, therefore, not exactly real.

13:1 The denouement.  Be loving.  Be true.  Live simply.  Be steadfast.  Be humble. 

13:18 Who is "I"?!?!?!? Somebody who was on trial, and who knew Timothy, and was in Rome.  Certainly sounds like Paul to me, but the tone and focus are so different.  Nonetheless, the book also closes in the manner Paul was accustomed to.  If not Paul, certainly someone who knew him.  For my part, I choose to believe that Hebrews was written by Melchizidek, who is somewhere still alive, and still writing such beautiful things.