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The Letter to the Hebrews. Jon C. Laansma
Читать онлайн.Название The Letter to the Hebrews
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isbn 9781498293228
Автор произведения Jon C. Laansma
Жанр Религия: прочее
Издательство Ingram
Israel’s story is invoked by the preacher both in particular allusions (OT quotations) and sweeping gestures, both in its telling moments and in its whole arc. In the history of Israel we are in the lives of the Patriarchs, in the exodus, at Sinai, in the wilderness, on the borders of the land, occupying the land, and at the Most Holy Place. Two demonstrations of this can be mentioned as illustrative: The exhortation of 3:7—4:11 based on Ps 95:7–11 is unmistakably set against the story of Israel’s apostasy when they stood at the border of the land and refused to enter (Num 13–14). More fittingly we should say that the churchly readers are to find themselves with Israel in Deuteronomy now looking back on that earlier apostasy (Deut 1:9–46). The generation that rebelled at Kadesh had died, their children now stood again at the border, and they were being commanded to live in obedience. Moses reminds them that they have not yet “come to the rest and to the inheritance that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Deut 12:9). When they do arrive the Lord promises that he will give them rest from their enemies and choose a place for his Name where they will bring their offerings (12:10–11). This history carries forward to David in 2 Sam 7:1–29 and on into the son of David, Solomon (1 Kgs 5:3; 8:56; see further on Heb 3:7—4:11 and 12:18–29). It is into this history that Ps 95:7–11 fits, but now, in the context of Hebrews, it is recognized that the true history being enacted was that of the Son who is the pioneer for his fellow seed (Heb 2:10) and that the resting place was to be the whole world made God’s Most Holy Place. The promise remains (Heb 4:1, 6) and enduring faith that does not replicate Israel’s rebellion is the need of the hour. But how can they, unholy, enter God’s holy presence? That is what the long exposition of 4:14—10:25 will unfold.
Again, the exhortation of Heb 12:4–11 based on Prov 3:11–12 is finally to be set against the sweep of Israel’s experience of God’s disciplinary measures by which she would be purged of her sin and made fit to inherit what had been promised, especially as this is seen in the great prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The frame of reference is not that of a Jewish or Greco-Roman household as such, as if merely to put an encouraging spin on the experience of hardship. The point is to assure these Christian men and women of faith that they are the genuine children of God’s household, Abraham’s seed, the people of Israel and of Judah with whom God has established his new covenant (Heb 8:7–13), and that just for this reason they find themselves on the difficult Way of God (Heb 12:12–13). The need is to persevere in obedience, just as their elder brother did (Heb 5:7–10), and not to forfeit their covenantal birthright as did Esau. For they are come to Mount Zion itself (12:22) and nothing but the conclusion remains (12:25–29).
Hebrews is the great retelling of Israel’s entire story now successfully summed up and concluded in the career of the Son, in whose footsteps we walk with the support of our enthroned, empathetic high priest and on the basis of the covenant concluded in his blood once for all. The path before us is, however, God’s Way that must be travelled to the end or everything is forfeited.
By locating us so thoroughly in heaven’s drama is Hebrews so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good? It has certainly not received its due from earthly-minded historians of early Christianity frustrated by its indifference to their project. It has admittedly appealed to the philosophically-minded speculators of theology. There is, however, every reason to expect that its original readers grasped its point for their lives on their Roman streets. Its call to “go . . . outside” (13:13) had nothing to do with escapism but would take them right into the hurly burly of their cities. We may suspect that those of its readers through the centuries who have found strong encouragement in its teaching have been of the same ilk. No doubt they have found here, too, strong meat in the way this gospel robs the usurping powers of the shrine and basilica of their authority by ushering the person of faith straight into God’s presence on the power of Jesus’ atonement alone, by identifying their brother Jesus as the sole mediator in this matter, and by locating their citizenship foursquare in the promised inheritance. Truly the one who had the power of death was broken, and with that all the instruments by which he ruled their lives are made useless.
The Preacher and the Philosopher
As we continue to look into and through Hebrews’ vision, it is helpful to observe what could be considered the mode of thought represented in Hebrews. What is the relation of Hebrews’ author to his cognitive environment? In what ways does this thinker share in the thought patterns of his own context? A comprehensive treatment of such questions would take us on book-length detours, so we will limit ourselves to a particular parallel that has exercised a strong influence on interpreters.
Partly because of the uncertainty over author, readers, location, and timing, the question of how Hebrews relates to its environment’s thought worlds has garnered much attention. Such questions have always mattered, but moderns have a peculiar interest in such things. In part, however, Hebrews’ contents thrust the question upon us. Its language carries numerous parallels with (among other texts) the first-century Alexandrian Jew, Philo (c. 20 bc–ad 50), who wedded his Jewish traditions with Plato’s thought and read the OT in an allegorical fashion. For him, this involved among other things a strong metaphysical dualism that correlated the “heavenly” with the eternal, stable, unchanging realm of ideas, and the “earthly” with what is inferior, secondary, shadowy, and transient. A range of theories posit some sort of connection between Hebrews and the pattern of thought represented in Philo and related thinkers, while a range of alternative theories contend against anything more than parallels of expression that substantially differ in meaning. The view of this commentary is closer to the latter end. Covenantal, apocalyptic, historical patterns bound to christological convictions are what are expressed in Hebrews through wording that sometimes reminds of the Alexandrian’s writings (e.g., 8:5; 9:9–10, 23–24; 10:1; 11:3, 8–16; 12:27). Hebrews’ conceptions themselves are at bottom one with Paul, Peter, and Revelation, though of course the teachings and emphases are distinctive. Our commentary will explain further what this means.
One important part of this conversation relates to how Hebrews interprets the OT. Is he reading “allegorically”?12
There is a range of ways of reading “allegorically” and not all are objectionable (admitting that “objectionable” reflects the standpoint generally represented in this introduction and commentary). The more objectionable form dissolves both history and literature in a strong ideological mixture, a form not absent in Philo. Isolated events, persons, and phrases become symbols in their own right so that alien thought structures can be “discovered” in the “code,” as if they had always been there. For this approach, if a divine, all-knowing voice is behind the text, all the better.
By way of illustration, Philo approvingly describes the reading approach of a group known as the Therapeutae:
And these explanations of the sacred scriptures are delivered by mystic expressions in allegories, for the whole of the law appears to these men to resemble a living animal, and its express commandments seem to be the body, and the invisible meaning concealed under and lying beneath the plain words resembles the soul, in which the rational soul begins most excellently to contemplate what belongs to itself, as in a mirror, beholding in these very words the exceeding beauty of the sentiments, and unfolding and explaining the symbols, and bringing the secret meaning naked to the light to all who are able by the light of a slight intimation to perceive what is unseen by what is visible. (Philo, Contempl., 78 [Colson, LCL])
When, over the church’s history, strains of this reading strategy pushed their way from the periphery to the center there was eventually a reaction, particularly among the Reformers and their heirs. In retrospect we would say that the gospel itself would not tolerate that type of allegorical reading because that strategy did not agree with the nature of the Scriptures, not merely that there had been underlying philosophical shifts reshaping the interpretive dispositions of the Reformers. Yet, even since that time at least pockets of the church have preserved the sounder instincts that tend toward the “allegorical” and that explain why it developed and held sway as long as it did. There was a baby in the bath