Book of Hebrews

Click here for the previous book, Philemon.

CHAPTER 1

Now for the odd letter.  The first 13 books of the New Testament are all letters claimed to be written by Paul.  In each of those 13 letters, the letter-writer says he’s Paul – and in at least half the cases it looks like it really was Paul.

Hebrews has no listed author.   From the second century AD, there was a tradition that Paul wrote it, but it was still a matter of debate.  By the fourth century, they figured Paul wrote it, but it’s always been a point of uncertainty.  For example, the letters of Paul are all listed roughly in order of length – beginning with the pair of 16-chapter letters and ending with the sole one-chapter letter.  Then comes Hebrews.  The Bible organizers had some ambivalent about who wrote it.

Biblical scholars now doubt that this is Paul.  The tone is all wrong.  The feel is all wrong.  The focus is all wrong.  And of yeah – Paul never claimed to write it.  This letter probably isn’t even letter, just a description of theology, with a quick bit at the end to make it look like a letter. Likely the author did it because so many of the other early Christian readings were letters that it just seemed like the style.  It was popular, and Paul wrote most of the early letters, so people assumed Paul wrote this.  Probably not.

This doesn’t remind me of Paul much at all.  The approach is all wrong.  It’s an examination of some dry, dull, and forgettable theological details.  Paul was a big picture guy.  He had to be – he was out doing the yeomen work trying to win new converts for Christ.  He had to focus on the big picture to do that.  This is stuff that comes later – working out the theological details and shoring up the foundation.

There is also a lot written in verse/poem form instead of prose.  Yes, Paul did that on occasion, but only on rare occasion. 

The first chapter just notes the Christ is the Son of God (OK, so far so good) and then goes off on an extended digression that the Son is higher than the angels.  See what I mean?  That’s working out the theological details.  This is like a question that arises in a community 20 years after conversion.  Paul wanted people to avoid Jewish law, not deal with things like this.  And things like this are boring.  The Bible is at its best when it is at its most human, and comparing angels to God’s kid is a bit away from that.

CHAPTER 2

People are told to be faithful.  Yeah, I didn’t get a damn thing out of this chapter.  Glancing at it now, it looks like I was just randomly underlining sentences to stay awake.

CHAPTER 3

Jesus is superior to Moses.  Yeah, that makes sense.  I don’t really need six verses pointing that out, though.

Israel has been unfaithful, and that’s nothing new.  So the Christians shouldn’t let that happen to them.

CHAPTER 4

I didn’t get anything out of this one, either. 

You know what this reminds me of?  It reminds me of the Book of Wisdom, a book only founding the Catholic Old Testament nowadays.  It is (not surprisingly) part of the Wisdom Books – and its the least of them.  Like this one, it spends all of its time stuck in fairly pointless theological points that I can’t imagine really do much to speak to the faith of the common believer.  Maybe it helps out with the finer points for the people that really get off on that sort of thing, but otherwise --- pphhhhffffft!

CHAPTER 5

Now we get some talk on how priests should act.  Yeah, aside from the pastoral letters (which no scholars think were actually written by Paul) there is no evidence Paul’s churches had much of a religious hierarchy.  He thought Christ would be here so soon, there was no need for that sort of stuff.

Also, our letter writer says of Christ, “In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears.”  Fun fact: Paul never discussed the teachings and sayings of Jesus.  He died and returned – that was the big thing for Paul. Oh, and he had the Last Supper.  That’s all Paul cared about.  This vague quote above hints at what Jesus did in his life prior to the week before his crucifixion, which is something that never happened in the previous 13 letters.

CHAPTER 6

The letter writer wants priests to know the basics of Christian theology.  Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. 

CHAPTER 7

This is a weird chapter.  It talks at length about some Old Testament priest named Melchizedek.  Was he even in the Old Testament – I don’t recall him.  I assume he was; probably in the boring parts of Leviticus.  Like Leviticus, Hebrews reads like priestly navel-gazing, where the topics are things that matter to priests, but don’t really matter to many others. 

This chapter deals with priestly duties back in the day.  Or something like that – I really can’t tell.  The chapter notes how the priestly class came from Levi, but “our Lord arose from Judah.”  I guess that is some sort of point or something.

CHAPTER 8

We have a new covenant now, so that means the old one couldn’t have been very good.  The author gives an extended quote from Jeremiah, which my footnotes say apparently come from a slightly miscopied version of the Bible.  Heh.  And oops.

CHAPTER 9

More about covenants.  More about Jesus dying.  Basically, the letter writer points out that the old sacrifices couldn’t have been very good.  You’d sacrifice some goats and then a little later you have to sacrifice some more.  But then Christ came, and made his blood the sacrifice.  Now that’s a sacrifice with some real staying power.  So pee on the Hebrew with their lame ass sacrifices.  (Well, he doesn’t put it in quite that terms, but that seems to be the point of the analogy).

CHAPTER 10

The old sacrifices are still inadequate.  This guy really wants to drill that point into our skulls.  Christ?  Now there is a sacrifice.

We also get one of the nastiest depictions ever of Christ that is supposed to be positive: “now he waits until his enemies are made his footstool.”  The hell? Who envisions Christ that way?  What is he – Genghis Christ?  He’s supposed to be the savior, the king of heaven – not the barbarian king.

CHAPTER 11

OK, I’ll give this book this much: Chapter 11 starts off with a really nice statement on faith: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”  Yeah, that is a mighty nice definition of faith.

Then we get  bunch of examples of Old Testament figures acting on faith – Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses – and then he says he doesn’t have time to discuss all the others. But the point is – they all acted on faith.  OK, fair enough.

Also, we get a depiction of heaven that is much closer to modern times than anything else in the letters of Paul: “But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

In Paul’s letters, Christ will come HERE soon, and this will become heaven.  In the quote above, heaven is somewhere else, and Christ is readying it for us to come THERE.  That’s closer to our sense of heaven, but it isn’t Paul’s notion of heaven.

CHAPTER 12

This is various stuff about God.  Oh, and don’t disobey.  That’s bad. 

CHAPTER 13

We should love one another.  Also, the person that wrote this treatise then includes a fake-ending that makes it read like a letter – because most of the important Christian documents were other letters and he’s trying to follow the convention.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Yawn.

What a big nothing.  It’s the worst book of the New Testament so far – and I can’t imagine anything else will be this bad.  Even if the remaining letters are this boring, they’ll at least have the decency to be quicker about it. 

This says very little that’s new, and what is new is dull, pointless minutia about theology and the priesthood.  Blech.  

Click here for the next book, the Epistle of James.