Prof: We last week
talked about the issue of women
and early Christianity,
and I obviously didn't address
all the different texts in early
Christianity that are relevant
for your discussion last week on
women.
We concentrated on the Pastoral
Epistles,
I and II Timothy and Titus,
as representing one kind of
early Christian way of handling
women in their early
communities.
 
Then we talked about the
Acts of Paul and Thecla
as a very different kind of way
to do that.
We're going to shift gears for
this week.
This week will also have
something of a theme about it,
and the theme this week is the
interpretation of scripture.
How do you interpret texts?
 
I'm going to change gears from
what could be the basic method
I've been using in the class all
along,
which is the historical
critical method,
which I've talked about
sometimes and explained what
that is.
 
We're going to talk about,
is that the only way for
Christians to interpret
scripture?
Today I get into that by
talking about the letter to the
Hebrews as one very good
example,
from the first period of
Christianity,
of the interpretation of
scripture themselves.
This is how Christians
themselves interpreted their
scripture in the ancient world.
 
This will be a lecture on
Hebrews to kind of talk about
the content of the letter of the
Hebrews,
but the main--it's also used to
shift our gears away from a
purely historical critical
analysis of scripture and show
how ancient people did it
themselves.
Then next class period,
on Wednesday,
we'll talk about medieval
exegesis, late ancient and
medieval
exegesis--interpretations of the
Bible.
 
Now I got the feeling last
week, when I was lecturing about
the Acts of Paul and
Thecla,
that there were quite a few of
you in attendance who perhaps
had not printed out and actually
read the Acts of Paul and
Thecla.
 
I had a few blank faces and
blank eyes when I was bringing
up things from that text.
 
I know it's going to take work
for you actually to download the
reading for Wednesday,
because it's not in your Bible.
Download it--I would actually
prefer if you don't carry your
computer around and can read the
text because I want you to look
at the text as we're talking
about it on Wednesday,
just like I want you to look at
Hebrews today.
Print it out if you need to and
bring it to class because I will
be talking about that,
and your reading for Wednesday
is not part of the Bible.
 
It's from a very,
very, very important book,
one chapter,
which you probably should all
rush right out and buy.
 
It's so brilliant and so
wonderfully written.
I published the book last
summer, it's called,
Pedagogy of the Bible,
and I'll set that in a little
bit of context.
 
What that is,
is I actually went around and
studied ten different seminaries
and divinity schools around the
country,
all Protestant seminaries,
but very different.
 
Some of them were very
conservative,
with conservative denominations
in churches;
some were very liberal and
progressive.
What I did was I interviewed
both professors and students,
about fifty professors and
about fifty students,
most of whom were planning to
be ordained into the ministry of
some sort.
 
Most of these students are
people who are studying theology
and scripture precisely because
they will end up preaching about
this and working in churches for
most of their cases.
I asked them,
how are you taught to study the
Bible?
 
I reported that material back
in the first chapter of that
book, Pedagogy of the
Bible.
I basically have said,
here is what I've found,
and the main thing I found was
that,
almost all these people,
although they were really being
taught--
they were supposed to be taught
how to read this text as a
theological document for modern
Christians.
 
They actually are pretty much
only being taught historical
criticism,
what the text meant in the
ancient world,
just like I am teaching you in
this class.
 
Now I think that this makes
perfect for me to use the
historical critical method to
teach you because this is a
secular environment.
 
I don't assume that you're
Christian,
I don't assume that you're
religious at all,
I don't assume that you're
coming into this class with the
interest of studying the New
Testament as a document for your
faith.
 
For some of you that's clearly
the case, but that's not the
structure of this course,
as I explained from the very
beginning of the semester.
 
I use the historical method as
the way to introduce you to this
material simply because it's an
easy way to introduce modern
students to a historical
document as we approach it that
way.
 
I've also said several times in
the class, that's not the only
way to read these texts.
 
What we're going to talk about
this week is,
what are other ways to read
these texts?
That's what I did in that book.
 
Then in the second chapter of
that book was introducing
theories of interpretation,
some of which I'll do today,
textual theory and
interpretation theory.
The third chapter of the book
was pre-modern interpretation of
scripture, which is the chapter
that I'm asking you to read.
That's where I take certain key
figures among the church
fathers,
such as Origen,
Augustine, the Venerable Bede
in England,
Bernard of Clairvaux in the
Middle Ages,
and Thomas Aquinas.
 
I show how those people read
the Bible before the invention
of the modern method of
historical criticism.
I don't just do that because I
think it's interesting.
I'm putting it in that book
because I'm trying to advocate
in that book how schools should
change their curriculum,
how Christian theological
schools should change their
curriculum so that it will
better teach people who are
going to be ministers how to
interpret scripture
theologically and not just
historically.
The third chapter is pre-modern
stuff.
The fourth chapter of that
book, which you won't read,
unless you rush right out and
order it from Amazon.com and
read it on your own time,
is on theological
interpretation.
 
What does it mean to talk about
a theological interpretation of
text that's not the same as a
historical interpretation?
I explained that,
I give examples of it,
and then in the last chapter of
the book,
the fifth chapter,
I lay out what I would propose
as a new curriculum for
theological education and what
the role of scripture should be
in that.
I talk about that precisely
because I want you to know that
when you're reading that chapter
for Wednesday,
and I do want you to read it
ahead of time,
I'm not going to cover
everything of that chapter,
so please read it ahead of time
before you come to class on
Wednesday.
 
I'll use examples from it.
 
You'll realize that that's part
of a bigger project that I had,
which was to address the
difference between historical
interpretation and theological
interpretation.
That's one of the things that
I'm going to talk about today is
some of the stuff also that you
would have gotten in chapter 2
of that book had I assigned it.
 
What does the text mean?
 
How do you ascertain what a
text means?
We talked about this a bit
already in the course but we're
going to concentrate on it
today.
When there are different and
even contradictory
interpretations of a text,
whether it's the Bible,
the Constitution of the United
States,
state laws, a contract in
business,
when we have disputes about the
interpretation of the text,
how do you settle those
disputes?
Two honest people,
both of good will,
both basically intelligent,
read the same text,
and think it means something
different.
How do you adjudicate disputes
about a text's meaning?
Where does a text's meaning lie?
 
Is it with what the author
intended the text to mean?
Is it in somehow the literal
words, how they would be read by
an educated, intelligent,
native speaker?
Are texts allowed to have
multiple meanings?
What kinds of text are
interpreted in what manners?
All of these things fall under
the philosophical field of
hermeneutics or hermeneutical
theory,
which is just a fancy word
meaning "interpretation
theory,"
and especially the term
"hermeneutics"
in theological education means
the interpretation of the Bible
and how that should be done.
I talked about,
one time previously,
adoptionist Christology.
 
Remember this?
 
I said there were obviously
some early Christians who
believed not that Jesus had
always been divine but that at
some point in his life he was
adopted by God,
either at his birth,
or at his baptism,
or his resurrection.
 
In fact I cited Luke 3:22,
where, according to Luke's
version of the baptism of Jesus,
a voice comes from heaven,
and at least in some of the
manuscript says,
"Today I have begotten
you."
Remember that?
 
Of course that is a quotation
from Psalm 22.
But the person quoting it is
implying that Jesus was adopted
by God, or begotten by God at
his baptism, not at his birth or
before.
 
Now if you disagreed with that
interpretation,
and if you're a good orthodox
Christian you should disagree
with that interpretation because
that's not now Christian
orthodoxy.
 
Orthodoxy in the way we think
of it now, it didn't exist of
course in the first century in a
fully defined way.
It took a few centuries to
develop.
At that this time if you're an
orthodox Christian you're not
supposed to believe that Jesus
was simply adopted by God at his
baptism.
 
If someone came to you with
that reading of that text in the
Gospel of Luke arguing for an
adoptionist Christology,
how would you argue against
that interpretation?
You might have argued,
for example,
by saying, let's look at how
this story is told in say the
Gospel of Mark or in other
places,
where that "today I have
begotten you"
is not found.
 
You say, well we're supposed to
use Mark in order to interpret
Luke,
but the other interpreter could
just come back and say,
well Mark didn't include it but
that's not a denial of it.
 
Luke obviously included it for
some other reason.
You could also say,
well that's probably not what
Luke meant,
what the author of Luke meant
to say,
because Luke seems to have
other passages in Luke and Acts
where it seems he's accepting
that Jesus was divine in some
sense before his baptism,
maybe even at his birth,
because the angels announce it,
and there's the worship of
Jesus that happens then.
You might say,
well we have to look at other
parts of Luke in order to
interpret this verse and not
just take this verse.
 
They could just come right back
and say, well,
who says?
 
I mean this is the clearest key
in Luke of when precisely Jesus
actually becomes the Son of God.
 
It's not contradicted by
anything else in Luke,
so you should take this verse
much more heavily than what
you're willing to take it.
 
One of the ways,
I don't know if I mentioned
this before is--
did I talk about how some
ancient Christians pointed out
that the dove descends upon
Jesus at his baptism in these
texts,
right?
 
The Greek word for
"dove"
is peristera;
did I talk about this already?
I can't remember what I talked
about in my different lectures
on this and what I don't.
 
The Greek word for
"dove,"
and that's in the text when the
dove comes down on Jesus'
baptism.
 
Some of these Christian
exegetes said,
well if you took all the Greek
letters here--
you know how Greek letters are
just like Hebrew letters have
numerical value--
if you give each of these
letters its numerical value and
you add them all up,
it equals 801, that's proof.
 
It's right there in the text,
801.
You don't know what 801 is?
 
You don't know your numerology
very well?
What if I told you that 801
also is the addition of alpha,
because it's obviously one,
and what do you think 800 would
be?
 
You want to make a guess?
 
Omega.
 
Alpha plus omega is 801.
 
And what do we know about alpha
plus omega?
That's the nature of God,
that's the numerical value of
God and Christ at the end of the
book of Revelation.
They went to Revelation,
the last part of Revelation,
where God at one point says it
and Jesus says it,
"I am the alpha and the
omega," alpha/omega equals
801.
 
Peristera added together
equals 801,
that proves that the fullness
of God,
the alpha and the omega,
came upon Jesus in the form of
this dove at his baptism;
numerical, textual proof of
their Christology.
 
It's right there in the text.
 
You could say,
but that's not what the text
says, but they could just say,
of course it says it,
it's right there,
add up the numbers,
you idiot.
 
You see how we would not accept
that interpretation of this
text, right?
 
Because we don't practice that
kind of textual interpretation
most of the time.
 
That just sounds too foreign to
us.
We just say that's not what the
text means;
you're just playing with the
text.
You're getting these numbers
and you could make numbers mean
all kinds of things.
 
Do you know there are actually
a good many people in the modern
world, Christians in the modern
world, who still do this sort of
thing?
 
You can buy a book called
Theomatics that adds up
all the letters of the Bible in
different ways and shows you how
different things in the Bible
numerically refer to other kinds
of prophecy events and all this
sort of thing.
There are actually religious
people now who still practice
this form of interpretation.
 
How would you argue against
that form of interpretation,
if you just want to say that's
not what the text says?
There's nothing you could do
that would basically prove to a
person who believes that,
that that's not what the text
says.
 
You can't just go to Mark and
say,
but look let me read it to you,
that's not what it says,
and they could just say,
no you read it of course that's
what it says.
 
You just read it;
the numbers were there when you
read them.
 
There's no way just appealing
to a text itself can settle
disputes about the meaning of a
text unless you and the other
person doing the arguing share
the basic presuppositions about
what counts as a good
interpretation and what doesn't
count as a good interpretation.
 
You have to share assumptions
about method of interpretation
before you can even come to an
agreement about the meaning of
the text.
 
What that proves is that the
text can't control its own
meaning.
 
The meaning of the text is not
contained there in the text
simply to be passively seen by
someone.
You have to interpret it,
and you have to learn the
methods of interpretation that
are appropriate in your society
for a particular text.
 
So the fact,
though, is the way ancient
people interpret a text,
as this example shows,
is not the way I have been
teaching you in this class to
interpret texts.
 
What we want to do is put our
imaginations back,
what counted for early
Christians as a good
interpretation of the text,
and see what methods they used,
and stretch our imaginations a
bit more.
It's not hard to do because the
New Testament writers themselves
are repeatedly interpreting
scripture for themselves.
Now remember,
the New Testament writers
aren't interpreting the New
Testament as scripture because
they are writing the New
Testament.
The New Testament didn't exist
yet as scripture.
When we read a Gospel writer
who has Jesus interpreting
scripture,
the scripture he's interpreting
is what Christians would call
the Old Testament,
or what Jews would call the
Hebrew Bible.
For them it was just scripture,
Jewish scripture,
that was all the scripture that
existed for the earliest
Christians was Jewish scripture.
 
When they're interpreting what
we today might call the Old
Testament,
they're not interpreting the
New Testament,
but this is great because we
have New Testament writers who
now occupy the scripture for
Christians interpreting other
scripture that was scripture for
them,
so we can see how they did it.
Look, for example,
at Psalm--well,
I've already done that I'm not
going to do that.
Psalm 22, if you want to look
at that at some point,
is the Psalm that talks about
Jesus--see I did it myself.
It's not talking about Jesus;
Psalm 22 in its historical
context is talking about King
David or some heroic figure
who's suffering,
a righteous man who suffers.
It talks about someone's hands
and feet being pierced,
it talks about them dividing
his garments and casting lots
for his clothes,
it talks about drinking vinegar
and gall mixed together,
or wine, and it sounds like
someone being crucified.
 
And sure enough early
Christians interpreted that
Psalm as a prophetic Psalm about
the crucifixion of Jesus.
In fact, when you see the
crucifixion of Jesus,
the different things that
happen in the Gospel accounts
for the crucifixion of Jesus are
echoing the things in that Psalm
because the later writers said,
well Psalm 22 must be talking
about Jesus' crucifixion,
so we'll add details to the
account to make it fit Psalm 22.
 
In that case what you already
got is Christian writers,
followers of Jesus,
very quickly interpreting the
text,
their holy text,
to be not about the historical
Jewish king that the text
originally referred to,
or that we as historical
critics would say.
 
Historical critics would say,
no Psalm 22 was not about
Jesus;
it's about some king in the
ancient near eastern situation,
centuries before Jesus.
That's not the way the early
Christians did it.
They said, no,
it's got to be about Jesus,
so they're already doing
something that modern historical
critics would then reject.
 
It my lecture next time on
medieval exegesis,
I'm actually going to walk you
through some of the basic
presuppositions of modern
historical critical method that
you've been learning in this
class,
and I'm going to make it
explicit what you've already
been learning so you'll have the
method clear in your head.
I'm also going to talk about
how did this method arise in the
modern world and why did it
arise in the modern world,
so we'll talk about that a
little bit later.
Let's just look at how New
Testament writers then interpret
text.
 
Look at Mark 10,
this is when some Pharisees
come and they question Jesus
about divorce.
Is it okay, in his teaching,
for a man to divorce his wife?
Now of course,
notice it's already put in a
patriarchal context because it's
not about how a wife can divorce
her husband,
or how both of them can divorce
one another.
 
We're already in a patriarchal
context because the question is
phrased as, is it alright for a
man to divorce his wife?
Look at 10:3,
"He answered them,
"'What did Moses command
you?'" Ah,
that's a good thing.
 
Let's just look at scripture.
 
Scripture will probably tell us
whether divorce is allowed by
God.
 
"They said,
'Moses allowed a man to write a
certificate of dismissal and to
divorce her.'"
Jesus says,
well there's your answer.
No that's not what Jesus says,
right?
"Jesus said to them,
'Because of your hardness of
heart he wrote this commandment
for you,
but from the beginning of
creation God made them male and
female.'"
Well that sounds like a
quotation,
where is that a quotation from?
I can't hear you.
 
Students:  Genesis.
 
Prof: Thank you.
 
I'm not asking these questions
to hear myself talk.
I know they're rhetorical
questions but just answer them
anyway, okay?
 
That's one quotation from
Genesis, but then the next one--
"For this reason a man
shall leave his father and
mother be joined to his
wife."
That's also from--say it.
 
Students:  Genesis.
 
Prof: Genesis,
but are these two quotations
from the same part of Genesis?
 
No, they're from two separate
chapters.
Notice what's going on here,
Jesus first says,
what did Moses write?,
which seems to show he's
saying,
okay we'll just go to scripture
and scripture will tell us and
that'll give us--
read scripture like a rulebook
and it'll tell us whether
divorce is allowed.
 
Then they quote back what is
exactly the proper scripture.
They're quoting Deuteronomy 24,
the twenty-fourth chapter of
Deuteronomy,
in the law of Moses,
it says, if a man wants to
divorce his wife that's fine,
but what it says,
he has to give her a written
certificate of divorce,
send her away,
she's free to remarry somebody
else.
But if she's divorced from the
second husband she can't go back
and be joined again to the first
husband.
In other words,
the law is, you can divorce
your wife, but once you've
divorced her,
and she ends up with another
guy, you can't take her back
again.
 
That was the ruling in the Law
of Moses.
They cite a text that's
actually about divorce.
Jesus doesn't accept that text,
and his interpretation sets
aside that law--
that rule by saying,
oh well that was a concession
that Moses did for your hardness
of heart,
that really wasn't God's will.
God's will on this is seen in a
different text,
and I'll quote you that text.
 
But where in Genesis 1 and 2 is
divorce ever mentioned?
Nowhere.
 
The Genesis passage that Jesus
quotes here is not about
divorce, it's about marriage.
 
Genesis doesn't forbid divorce
explicitly, it just says,
men and women will get together
and get married.
God made them male and female,
man will leave his parents and
come to his wife.
 
There's nothing in
Genesis--Jesus is basically
breaking one of the major rules
of textual interpretation of
hermeneutical theory that's not
only around in the modern world,
but also was around even the
ancient world,
which is: interpret the obscure
by reference to the clear.
In other words,
if you have a text that you're
not clear about the
interpretation of it,
it's okay in ancient
interpretation theory to go to
another text that might shed
light on that cloudy text.
If you've got a text that's
clear, don't go looking for a
more obscure text and try to
illuminate the clear text with
the obscure text.
 
That of course is against
common sense,
right?
 
But that's exactly what Jesus
is doing here.
He feels that he has the
liberty to basically set aside a
clear teaching that permits
divorce,
and he goes and looks for two
other texts that don't say
anything about divorce,
and he uses them to express
God's will.
 
Of course what he has to do is
add to the text.
He basically has to add to the
Genesis text that not only is
this a teaching about marriage,
but therefore,
it is implicitly therefore a
teaching against divorce,
whereas, you and I might read
that Genesis text and not see
anything about divorce in it at
all.
What this shows is Jesus
himself is presented as
interpreting scripture in ways
that would be completely
unacceptable in a modern context
to most scholars of the Bible
who are going to say,
no, you're breaking several
rules about interpretation.
 
There's all kinds of things on
this.
Remember when we talked about
Galatians?
I read you Paul's
interpretation of the Hagar and
Sarah story from Genesis.
 
Remember how the story goes?
 
Abraham's married to Sarah,
but she's not having any
children, she's barren.
 
At least that's--in the ancient
world it was always the women--
woman's fault,
it was the woman who was
barren,
never the man in common ways of
thinking.
 
Of course we know differently
than that now,
but they always present it as,
Sarah was barren.
Abraham has a child with Hagar,
Sarah's slave.
Then Paul, instead of taking
Sarah as representing Judaism,
the Torah, Moses,
the law, and Jerusalem,
he makes Hagar represent the
law, the current Jewish people,
and Jerusalem,
Jerusalem of the Jews.
Paul also seems perfectly free
to turn this text of Genesis,
which seems like simply a
historical talk about how did
Abraham start having his
descendants,
one through his wife and one
through his slave,
and he flips that around into
being an allegory about Gentiles
and Jews and how non-Jews would
be taken into Israel and at
least some of Israel would be
rejected by God and the law
would be put aside.
 
Paul also interprets scripture
in ways that seem to us not only
very free but actually rather
bizarre in some ways,
if you're not used to seeing
this in the ancient world.
Let's look at Hebrews now
because what Hebrews is,
is one long extended sermon
that is also an interpretation
of Jewish scripture.
 
What's really odd is that
Hebrews is a text that uses
interpretation of Jewish
scripture to argue against the
superiority of Jewish worship
and tradition.
First thing,
what is Hebrews and what is it
not?
 
I said from the very beginning
of the semester,
it was called the Epistle to
the Hebrews, the Epistle to the
Jews, and I said it's not really
either.
It's not a letter.
 
In fact, it even tells you in
chapter 13 that it's a sermon of
admonition;
it says a speech of
encouragement,
he says in 13:22.
It's not a letter really,
it has a letter closing added
to it a bit,
but it's not really a letter,
it's a sermon,
and it even looks like it quite
possibly could have been written
to be spoken out loud as a
sermon.
 
It's also not by Paul.
 
Now it doesn't claim to be by
Paul,
but some Christians throughout
the centuries have assumed that
it was by Paul,
and that's why it's included in
the Canon after Paul's letters.
 
Notice how Hebrews is a long
document and we've noticed that
the order of canonicity in
Paul's letters in the New
Testament is by length of book.
 
They didn't follow a
chronological order;
they put Romans first because
it's the longest and then the
letters of Paul come in the
Canon, more or less with some
exceptions, by length.
 
You get to Philemon as the last
of the thirteen letters of Paul,
and it's of course very short,
one little page.
Then you have Hebrews,
which is a big book,
so what's clearly going on is
that it sort of got connected up
to the letters of Paul in
antiquity even though it doesn't
claim to be by Paul,
and some people in antiquity
thought it was Paul.
 
In fact some people believed
that's how it got into the Canon
because it was kind of a
controversial letter in the
ancient world so some people
didn't want it in the Canon.
Some people think it got into
the Canon precisely because some
people claimed,
oh well it's really by Paul
after all.
 
Who is--who wrote it though if
Paul didn't?
There have been guesses all
over the place.
Some people say Luke wrote it
because it looks like a very--it
looks very good Greek.
 
For example,
there's some books in the New
Testament that are really lousy
Greek.
The book of Revelation is lousy
Greek.
Yes sir.
 
Student:  Do you mean
the author of the
>?
 
Prof: Well,
sometimes people say it was
Luke, the physician,
who also was the author of Luke
and Acts,
and then also of Hebrews.
Some people say it was whoever
wrote Luke, although we don't
know who that was,
so the people have proposed
different theories.
 
Since the Epistle to the
Hebrews does look like it has
some influence from Pauline type
theology,
which has led some people to
say, since Luke was a traveling
companion of Paul,
even if the Gospel of Luke was
not by Luke maybe Luke who was
more educated,
he's called a physician in
Acts, maybe he was the one who
wrote it.
 
So there have been lots of
theories.
Some people have said Apollos,
because remember Apollos is
called in Acts someone who
really has a good gift of
speech.
 
He's a great rhetorician.
 
Apollos is depicted in Acts as
a great rhetorician.
Well this is good rhetoric,
so somebody could say maybe
this is by Apollos and just
doesn't have his name.
Some people said maybe it's by
Barnabas.
Remember it says it calls
itself a speech of
encouragement,
and we're told in Acts that
Barnabas' name was given to him
because it means a "son of
encouragement,"
so some people say maybe
Barnabas wrote this.
 
And then some people,
it was asked last week whether
a woman may have written the
Acts of Paul and Thecla
and I said,
probably not since there is a
second century author who says
he knows who wrote it.
That's disputed.
 
Some people have said Prisca
may be the author of this
letter,
so maybe a woman was actually
written--
maybe a woman has actually
written one piece of our New
Testament after all.
The problem with all these
suggestions is that they're
absolute guesses.
 
We have no evidence at all
neither from the letter itself,
nor from the ancient world.
 
In fact, the smartest exegete
in the ancient world was a
church father named Origen and
he gave some different guesses
about who may have written it
and then at the end he said,
God knows, God knows who the
author of Hebrews is,
and God's the only one
apparently who knows who wrote
Hebrews.
 
It is a word of encouragement
though,
it's a sermon,
it uses Hellenistic Jewish
style--
speech styles and rhetoric and
Hellenistic Jewish exegetical
techniques.
In fact, it's an example of a
certain kind of Jewish Platonism
or popular Platonism because it
contrasts the real and the
apparent,
the eternal versus the
temporal, the spiritual is
superior for example to the
physical and the shadow,
so you've got the spiritual is
contrasted with the shadow of
things.
All these are dualisms that
come up in sort of popular
Platonizing rhetoric of the
time.
Now so it's clearly--that
doesn't mean it's written by a
Jew.
 
It could have been written by a
Gentile who just happens to be
very well educated in Jewish
scripture and has picked up also
this Jewish exegetical kind of
technique,
which is what he uses.
 
I should also say this
exegetical technique I'm talking
about was not special to the
Jews.
Greeks could read texts like
this also.
So there were all kinds of
attempts to read Homer,
for example,
the Iliad or the Odyssey as
allegories for physical science.
 
The different gods represented
air, or fire,
or other elements of the
universe.
By the first century,
when this speech was composed,
this way of interpreting texts
was already well known to
educated people more broadly,
not just Jews.
But Jews used it also in
reading scripture.
In fact, the most famous was
Philo of Alexandria,
who lived a bit before the time
of Paul.
Well, he was around the same
time but he probably died before
Paul died.
 
Philo has--we have lots and
lots of text in which he
interprets the Jewish scripture
through these allegorical kinds
of methods among other methods.
 
I've given you an outline to
the letter of Hebrews.
So look at that.
 
And I want to walk you through
it real quick because one of the
things you can tell immediately
about this text is that it's
very carefully constructed.
 
If you're just reading through
in one sitting you might not
catch all this,
so I've made the outline and
I'll talk you through it.
 
First, there's the introduction
and the thesis,
the first two verses,
let me get there first.
I wish I knew a New Testament
song so I would know exactly
where to find Hebrews.
 
"Long ago God spoke to our
ancestors in many and various
ways by the prophets."
 
We know this is going to be
about the message of God given
through the Jewish prophets.
 
"But in these last days he
has spoken to us by a Son whom
he appointed heir of all things
through whom he also created the
world."
 
He's going to contrast what was
said long ago through the
prophets with what we followers
of Jesus have learned through
him.
 
Already this contrast of things
is--the thesis of the whole
speech is the old and the new,
and the superiority of the new
over the old.
 
The next section,
section two on your handout,
the introduction to the
superiority of Jesus.
The first part is 1:3 through
2:18;
he shows that Jesus is superior
to the angels.
"To what angel did God
ever say you are my son?"
He takes quotations from the
Psalms that God is addressing to
the Davidic King in the Psalms,
he takes those as being
references to Jesus and then he
shows God never made these kinds
of promises to angels,
therefore Jesus is superior to
angels.
 
B, from 3:1 to 4:13,
Jesus is superior to Moses,
so he shows,
through quoting scripture
again,
Jewish scripture,
that God says things to Jesus
that he doesn't say to Moses and
to Joshua.
 
Of course Joshua is just the
one who inherited Moses'
position so he's including it in
this superiority of Jesus to
both Moses and Joshua.
 
And C, from 4:15 to 5:10,
Jesus is superior to the old
high priesthood,
the Israelite high priesthood.
Then you've got,
I put them in bold,
a digression,
a kind of excursus in the main
outline,
and these are very important
because these are very skillful
digressions that will foreshadow
something that's going to come
up later in the same sermon.
This one he talks a bit about
Melchizedek.
And so this little section,
after 5:10, is foreshadowing
what we'll see in V down further
in your handout;
so the foreshadowing of
Melchizedek.
Then you have III which a
digression of--
that goes from 5:11 to 6:12,
and there you get a longer
digression,
which is an invitation to
higher doctrine.
 
He says you need to stop being
babies, you've been drinking
milk, I'm going to give you some
meat, so we're going to go onto
higher things;
so that's a digression which is
an invitation.
 
Then there's another
foreshadowing,
the mention of examples of
faith at 6:12 foreshadows what
will be in section VII below
when he gives a long list of
examples of faith in the Jewish
scripture.
Then IV, the introduction to
the second half of the sermon,
which is our assurances,
"We can be assured as
followers of Jesus that we
have…"
So 6:13 to 6:20 is the
introduction to the second half
of the sermon.
 
Then in section V,
Jesus is compared to
Melchizedek, I'll talk about
that in a little bit more detail
in a minute.
 
First, (a) Melchizedek is
superior to Abraham and the
Levitical priesthood in 7:1-14,
then in (b) Jesus is himself
the new Melchizedek,
7:15-28.
VI, the reality compared to the
shadow.
Now this is where you get this
thing of the reality is always
superior to the shadow and he
makes Jesus and the liturgy,
the service,
the worship that Jesus
introduces superior to the
shadow that is the previous
Jewish high priesthood and
tabernacle liturgy.
You have a comparison here
between earthly and heavenly
liturgies.
 
Then section VII,
this is called is
paranesis,
the Greek word just means
"ethical instruction."
 
I've introduced this word
before when I was talking about
James,
so this is the paranetical
section of the sermon,
"Therefore,"
he says in chapter 10:19,
"you should do this."
You have (a) an introduction to
these things,
(b) do this in spite of
sufferings, (c) several examples
of faith in chapter 11.
 
Chapter 11 is basically a list
of examples of faith in the
Jewish scripture;
(d) encouragement chapter,
chapter 12, then practical
detailed paranesis in
chapter 13.
 
Then finally a call to leave
the camp, chapter 13:8-16,
which I'll come back to in a
minute, and then in closing
admonition and benediction.
 
Now notice what you've got.
 
This is a very well structured,
well outlined speech,
and it even has hints of what's
going to come later,
so you have foreshadows of
things and you have reminders of
things that are have come about.
 
The basic point of the letter
then is this superiority of
Jesus' leitourgia,
this is from the Greek
word--this is where we get the
English word
"liturgy."
 
In modern English it refers to
worship services,
so the liturgy of a worship
service is what you do.
Do you cross yourself?
 
Do you bow?
 
Do you kneel?
 
What prayers do you say?
 
What does your prayer book say
and that sort of thing?
Those are all liturgy in
English, but it comes from the
Greek work which had a much
broader reference.
It meant any kind of service.
 
For example,
when a rich man gave a bunch of
money to a town and they had a
big sacrifice,
and a parade,
and a festival,
that was called a liturgy,
a leitourgia.
It was a service to the gods,
but it was also a service to
the town.
 
So this comes to mean a broader
sense of service and worship and
all that sort of thing,
and that's the Greek word
that's here translated as
service.
In fact, the word
leitourgos,
the same word but with o-s on
the end of it,
means "a servant"
and that's what he calls angels
in Hebrews 1:7 and 1:14.
 
So angels are called servants;
they're using the same word.
In most of Hebrews,
therefore, I said,
is a comparison between two
liturgies, two
leitourgiai.
 
One is between that of Moses
and the Tabernacle,
as we see in the Hebrew Bible
and the other is that of Jesus
introduced by his priesthood.
 
In fact what we have--we have
another Greek word.
So you get all this good Greek
you can use at cocktail parties
and impress your friends and get
new jobs.
You know that the Wall Street
banks will be really impressed
that you know some Greek words,
right?
The Greek word for comparison
is synkrisis--do we have
an English word?
 
We don't have an English word
that comes from that,
do we?
 
Synchretic is not--is different
then synkrisis.
So it comes from the Greek
word for "judgment,"
krisis,
and we get "crisis"
from it,
which means a
"judgment"
or some critical thing
happening,
and the Greek word for
"with."
 
When you judge something with
something else that's a
comparison,
so synkrisis is a
rhetorical term used by ancient
education to describe precisely
this kind of speech:
a comparison of one thing to
another.
 
If you were a high school boy,
you would have learned
rhetorical styles,
you would have practiced at how
to give a synkrisis
speech,
a speech of comparison.
 
Sort of like in high school you
were taught to do a compare and
contrast essay,
right?
You're taught a form,
that's what Hebrews is,
is a speech in the
synkrisis form and these
two things.
 
Now notice though what the
means of demonstration is.
Look at Hebrews 8:7,
he's going to prove to you,
the hearers--of course you're
not going to need a whole lot of
proof because you're already in
this Christian community.
You wouldn't be listening to
this sermon if you weren't
already a believer.
 
He's trying to convince you,
though,
that what you've got in Jesus
is superior to anything that the
Jews could give you when it
comes to this liturgy,
leitourgia.
 
Hebrews 8:7,
he says, how do you know it's
superior?
 
"For if that first
covenant had been flawless there
would have been no need to look
for a second one."
That's very interesting.
 
Basically he's saying,
because Christianity exists,
that proves it's superior to
Judaism, because otherwise,
God wouldn't have brought it
about.
So the very existence of the
second liturgy,
he says, the second service,
that is the service--
the priesthood initiated by
Christ,
the very existence is used to
prove,
for this writer,
that it's superior to what it
supplanted.
 
The main way he proves this
point is proofs from scripture,
and so we're going to look at a
few more of that.
All the way through here he's
quoting texts that are from the
Hebrew Bible.
 
He's actually is quoting them
from the Greek Bible,
he probably doesn't read
Hebrew;
he's quoting them from Greek
translations of Hebrew
scripture.
 
Most of them don't talk about
the Temple.
You might be reading like when
he talks about the high
priesthood and the way these
structures were--he even talks
about the building.
 
He's not talking about the
Temple in Jerusalem.
He's talking about the
tabernacle, the big tent that is
described in Exodus,
because that's what the people
of Israel are using when they're
going through the desert before
they enter the promised land.
 
They've constructed it
according to Mosaic
instructions,
given to Moses by God,
exactly how this big tent will
look,
what materials it will have,
what decorations it will have,
its structure in different
compartments.
And that's where they believed
God, Yahweh, was living in the
camp with them as they wandered
through the desert.
This writer reads the
descriptions of the tabernacle
given in Exodus,
and he reads the descriptions
of the priesthood,
what they're supposed to wear,
what they're supposed to do;
sacrifices.
He says, the real meaning of
all that stuff is not at all the
ancient Israelites wandering
around in the desert;
it's talking about us as the
new house of God,
as the new tabernacle of God.
 
It's talking about Christ's
priesthood as the new
priesthood.
 
So everything in Exodus he just
reads through the lens of Christ
himself.
 
Christ becomes this lens that
all of ancient scripture then
can be read through.
 
What God says to somebody--now
notice the author of scripture
is not, in Hebrews,
Moses necessarily,
although he would believe Moses
did write it.
He takes the main author of
scripture to be God or the Holy
Spirit.
 
Well it can even refer to
Christ in 11:26,
Christ can be the speaker in
scripture.
God, or the Holy Spirit,
or Christ, are the actual
authors of this text,
even though it had human
authors.
 
This is one way where he's
already showing a very different
world from our modern world.
 
He's not too concerned about
what the human author thought or
what the human author intended.
 
He believes that God is the
author of this text,
and so you can figure out God's
mind from reading the text
itself.
 
God is the author of the text,
the centrality of Christ as key
for scriptural interpretation.
 
And it's from the very
beginning.
He said it in the
beginning--remember in the
thesis, we've learned this now
through the Son,
not through the prophets--not
just through the prophets.
Let's look at one particular
passage,
and we'll talk about this
briefly and then I'm going to
stop,
and if I need to come back to
this at the beginning of next
lecture I will because there's a
few other things I want to
cover.
Look at chapter seven;
this is where he talks about
this Melchizedek figure.
 
This King Melchizedek of Salem,
priest of the Most High God,
met Abraham as he was returning
from defeating the kings and
blessed him.
 
And to him Abraham apportioned
one-tenth of everything.
The basic story is referring
back to a Genesis account.
Abraham has gone off to
liberate some of his kinsmen who
have been kidnapped for ransom.
 
Abraham raises a little army of
his own.
He goes off,
he defeats these united kings,
and he gets his kinsmen,
he gets his slaves,
he liberates everybody,
gets the booty,
the plunder of the war,
and he's traveling back home.
And he comes to this placed
called Salem,
which just happens to be
Jerusalem.
Of course Salem means
"peace,"
shalom,
but this writer is taking it
that Melchizedek is the King of
Salem and connecting it to
Jerusalem.
 
The story is,
Abraham then gives a tithe,
a tenth of the spoils of war to
Melchizedek as an offering.
In other words,
Abraham is recognizing
Melchizedek as being a priest of
Yahweh.
And so he gives a tithe for the
war.
To him Abraham apportioned
one-tenth of everything.
His name, in the first place,
means "king of
righteousness."
 
Melech means King in
Hebrew, zedek means
righteousness.
 
Now as I said he's using Greek
but he must have some kind of
word key.
 
He knows enough Hebrew that he
knows how to interpret this
Hebrew word
"Melchizedek"
to mean "king of
righteousness."
He's taking the name as having
a hidden meaning.
Next he's called the King of
Salem.
Well shalom means peace,
so that means he's also the
king of peace.
 
He takes this,
again, "without father,
without mother,
without geneaology,
having neither beginning of
days nor end of life,"
why does he say that?
 
Well Melchizedek comes up in
the text of Genesis without us
knowing anything else about him.
 
You know how in Genesis and the
other parts of the Hebrew Bible
it'll say,
so and so begat so and so begat
so and so,
it tells you everybody's
lineage.
 
It tells you who is everybody's
father, even their names,
son of so and so is a reference
their father and their
ancestors.
 
He noticed Melchizedek just
comes out of the text out of
nowhere, and so he takes that as
a sign that Melchizedek actually
had no father or mother.
 
He sprang out autochthonous,
just all on his own.
He has no descendants because
they're mentioned in the text.
Well who else is the king of
righteousness,
who else is the king of peace,
who else does not have a human
father and a human father in any
normal way?
Who else has no genealogy?
 
Who else has no end of days or
end of life?
Well Jesus!
 
So Melchizedek is simply a
foreshadowing,
he's a sign of Jesus.
 
See how great he is!
 
Even Abraham the patriarch gave
him a tenth of the spoils.
And those descendants of Levi
who received the priestly office
had a commandment in the law to
collect tithes from the people,
that is from their kindred,
though these descended from
Abraham.
 
But this man who does not
belong to their ancestry
[Melchizedek wasn't a Jew,
he's saying;
he was not part of that lineage
of Abraham obviously]
collected tithes from Abraham
and blessed him who had received
the promise.
 
It is beyond dispute that the
inferior is blessed by the
superior.
 
In the one case tithes are
received by those who are
mortal, in the other,
by one of whom it is testified
that he lives.
 
One might even say that Levi
himself [that is the father of
the Jewish priests who received
tithes]
paid tithes through Abraham for
he was still in the loins of his
ancestor when Melchizedek met
him.
Now let me explain what's going
on here.
This one ties in a little bit
of ancient genetic theory,
a little biology.
 
According to ancient ideas,
inside the body of every man
are not just little sperm
swimming around,
but each of those little things
is a homunculus,
a little person,
a little, teeny,
tiny person.
 
In the body of Abraham were
millions of little,
teeny, tiny people.
 
The ancient gynecological
theory was, inside of every man,
at least, was actually every
one of his descendants that he
would ever have.
 
His sons, his daughters,
his grandchildren,
his great grandchildren,
any of their descendants,
they all exist inside the body.
 
Abraham carried,
within his own body,
all these tiny,
tiny, tiny, tiny little Jews,
they would all come out
eventually.
Now Levi, who's the head high
priest,
who then--the first priest all
Levi's descendants out of Levi's
body,
they were in Levi's body even
when Levi's body was inside
Abraham's body,
so even the Levite priests of
the Jews were all sacrificing to
Melchizedek when Abraham was
sacrificing to Melchizedek,
because they're all in
Abraham's body when Abraham
sacrifices to Melchizedek,
or gives his tithes to
Melchizedek.
 
Notice what this is,
the entire Jewish people,
all the Israelites,
whoever existed then and
whoever exists were all inside
Abraham's body so they all
tithed to Melchizedek.
 
Melchizedek wasn't a Jew.
 
This proves--then he says
notice how--Melchizedek also
blesses Abraham.
 
Well if you're blessed by one,
you're not blessed by someone
who is inferior to you;
you're blessed by the bishop.
What proves the bishop's
superiority is his blessing you
in the first place,
so that proves that Melchizedek
was superior to Abraham.
 
Then when Abraham gave tithes
to Melchizedek,
and Levi in Abraham's body was
therefore tithing to
Melchizedek,
this proves that the Jewish
priesthood itself recognizes the
superiority of Melchizedek's
priesthood;
wonderful little proof from
scripture.
 
Next time I'll start my lecture
by finishing up how the letter
of Hebrews ends,
and then we'll set that aside
as an example of ancient
scriptural exegesis by
Christians.
 
And then I want you to read the
chapter online because that will
talk about then later Christian
exegesis scripture up until the
Medieval period.
 
