What’s the Point? An Introduction to Hebrews

Presented to Swift Current Corps, 05 September 2009

By Captain Michael Ramsay

Today’s sermon is a bit of an experiment for me. I was involved in the field of education for quite a while and have taught many different classes, seminars and the like. In my experience the most effective ways of communicating to a class are somewhat different than what appears to be the most effective ways to proclaim the Gospel to a congregation (through a homily). Today I will attempt to combine the two styles somewhat but the first part of this morning’s encounter will be much more of a ‘teach’ than a ‘preach’ – so let me know what you think. If this is effective, we will probably introduce the other books of the Bible in a similar fashion.
Before we even start with any of that, I want to encourage us all to read our Bibles. We will be looking at the book of Hebrews for the next six weeks. Hebrews should take you no more than an hour to read as whole and I really encourage you to do this at least once every week, if you can. We will also be looking at Hebrews in the advanced adult Bible study class on Thursdays at 7PM at the church beginning September 15th. I invite you all to join us for that. If you can’t join us and find it a challenge to set aside time to read all of Hebrews in the week if you could remember to pre-read what we are going to discuss each Sunday that would be wonderful. The following is our preaching schedule for the next month.

Schedule:
Sept 6 – Introduction to Hebrews
Sept 13 – Hebrews 1 and 2
Sept 20 – Hebrews 3 and 4
Sept 27 – Hebrews 5, 6, 7, and 8
October 4 – Hebrews 9, 10, and 11
October 11 – Hebrews 12 and 13

Title of the Book

Traditionally in the Authorized Version, the King James Version of the Bible, this book is called “St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews”. In contemporary English, of course, ‘epistle’ means ‘letter’. Interestingly enough, though this book actually is probably NOT a letter and it is almost certainly NOT written by the Apostle Paul.

Who wrote the book of Hebrews?

So then, who wrote Hebrews? Scholars and historians have put forth many different possible names for the authorship of the book of Hebrews: Luke (who wrote both Luke and Acts), Clement of Rome, Priscilla (we know Priscilla and Aquilla from a number of places in the Biblical record: Acts 18, Romans 16:3, 1 Corinthians 16:19, 2 Timothy 4:19), and there’s also Paul’s companion Silvanus[1] (2 Corinthians 1:19, 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 2 Thessalonians 1:1, 1 Peter 5:12). Famous church fathers such as Tertullian have argued in favour of Barnabas (Acts 9- 15, 1 Corinthians 9:6 , Galatians 2, Colossians 4:10) as being the author[2] and Martin Luther preferred to believe that Apollos wrote Hebrews (Acts 18:24-19:1; 1 Corinthians 1:12, 3, 4:6, 16:12; Titus 3:13). The best answer to the question, ‘who wrote the book of Hebrews?’ I think was offered by Origen in the 3rd Century, when he was asked “But who wrote the epistle, in truth God alone knows.”[3] We really don’t know who wrote it but we can be pretty sure who didn’t write it and that is Paul: contemporary scholarship is in near 100% agreement on that issue.

When was the book written?

When was the book written? The range of possible dates for the writing of this book is from 60 AD[4] to 100 AD. Some scholars will shrink the range from 60 – 70 AD because in 70 AD, in response to a violent revolt by the Hebrews, Rome destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.[5] But, really, we don’t know when Hebrews was written other than it was written sometime after 60 AD and probably before 95 or even 90 AD.[6]

To recap, what have we learned so far?

Who wrote the book of Hebrews? (We don’t know – but it probably wasn’t Paul.)
When was the book written (We don’t know – but it probably was written between 60-95 AD)

To whom was the book of Hebrews written?

That brings us to our next question: to whom was Hebrews written? "To the Hebrews" is acknowledged as the title of this book by both Pantaenus in the East (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 6.14.4) and by Tertullian in the West (De Pudicitia 20), among others. It is in the oldest MSS that we have of the New Testament.[7] Therefore we can probably safely assume that this book was actually written to a group of people called Hebrews.

But who were these Hebrews? Who are Hebrews? Originally the term ‘Hebrews’ referred to descendents of Abraham. The Hebrew word for ‘Hebrews’ first appears in the Bible in Genesis 14:13 and the term probably means something along the lines of ‘from across the Euphrates’[8] – This word was used to distinguish Abraham and his family from the people who were already living in Canaan (Palestine) when he arrived and later it was used to distinguish his children from his family who still lived back home. (It would be like referring to the Ramsays of Saskatchewan or the Ramsays of Victoria, BC. Abraham was not from Canaan, of course. He was from across the river. He comes from the area of the world that we now refer to as Iraq (show map).

The word ‘Hebrews’ then refers to descendents of Abraham who migrated westward from what is present day Iraq. (Interestingly enough, later on when some of Abrahams’ descendants -those descended from Israel- started to call themselves ‘Israelites’, people from other lands still referred to them as ‘Hebrews’.)[9] The word ‘Hebrews’ also refers to the language in which much of the Bible is written and the language that the ancient Hebrew people spoke.[10] Much the way today English people speak English; French people, French and Germans, German; Hebrews spoke Hebrew. This book (Hebrews) then is most likely addressed to Christians who were people of the Hebrew (Jewish) culture.[11] And in all likelihood these Hebrew Christians lived in the capital city of the Roman Empire: Rome.[12] Though of course like everything else this is somewhat debated too.

To recap what we’ve covered so far:

* Who wrote Hebrews? (We don’t know – but it probably wasn’t Paul.)
* To whom was it written? (We don’t know – but most likely it written to Christians who were culturally and ethnically Hebrews.)
* To where was it written? (We don’t know – but most contemporary scholars favour Rome.)
* When was Hebrews written? (We don’t know – but it was sometime between 60 and 100 AD. Most probably between 60-70 AD).[13]

The Reverend Tom Long sums up some of this introductory information about ‘Hebrews’ this way: “So we peer into the depths of the text unsure as to who wrote it, to whom, from where, or when. Imagine being handed a book today with the comment, ‘Here, you may enjoy this. It was written in America or Russia or France, I’m not sure, by a Jew – or was it a Gentile? – anyway, it was written sometime between 1920 and 1970. Enjoy.”[14] It’s not a lot to go on. But it is all we’ve got.

Where the book is placed in the Bible and why?

That brings us to another question and this one is neat and this one does have an answer. Does anyone know how it was decided in which order to place the books of the New Testament?

*The First four books: what are they? They are the Gospels, (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John / the life and times of Jesus).
*We then have Acts, which is a history of sorts.
*Then we have a series of letters and they are organized in a neat way. Does anyone know what that is? First we have all the letters that the early church leaders believe the Apostle Paul wrote and these are organized in descending order from the longest letter we have that he wrote, Romans, through to the shortest, Philemon.
*Then we have Hebrews and all the other non-Pauline letters and, of course, we finish off with the Apocalypse, John’s Revelation, which we looked at briefly last week.

The New Testament books are all organized in a neat and orderly fashion. This is good.

Hebrews as Sermon

We’ve gone through a number of introductory questions so far and we are just now coming up on some of the more important ones but first I should explain something that I said earlier. I had mentioned that traditionally in the King James Bible this book is titled ‘the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews’ and we have already mentioned that this book was not written by Paul and we have already mentioned that the word ‘epistle’ means ‘letter’ and that this book is probably not a letter. Now I am not going to bore you today too much with how we know this is not a letter except to say that just like today there are various conventions we follow when we write a letter – how we address it and sign it for example – there were also letter-writing conventions in Paul’s day and even though he does follow those conventions quite nicely in his letters, the originator of Hebrews doesn’t follow them at all so we can be very sure that it was not a letter at all. Many people actually think that Hebrews is in reality a sermon.[15]

As you sit down and read Hebrews through in one sitting (you can do it in less than an hour) you will notice that it does read nicely as a sermon. The author follows certain themes and comes back to them in ways one can easily do while speaking but that a grammatician would not be very pleased with at all if she saw it in a written work. Hebrews is very likely one of the earliest complete Christian sermons that we have. That makes this document very interesting and very important for us to study to see what exactly the early Christian Church thought and preached about God, Jesus, and their faith.

Why was Hebrews written?

Why then was this sermon spoken and/or this book written? These first hearers obviously knew the originator of these words (Hebrews 13:17-23) and they were very likely members of a small group or house church no larger than our assembly here today.[16] In this small group, they had a number of problems that they were facing that should be very familiar to Canadian Christians[17]:

* They had some people leaving their group and even turning their backs on their faith (Hebrews 10:25);

* They had other people who were still coming out regularly but who had grown apathetic about their faith. They didn’t act like they even cared about their salvation (Hebrews 2:1-14);[18]
And worse than not getting together regularly like this and worse than stopping to come out altogether to meetings and worse than growing apathetic about their whole faith, some of them stopped listening to God.[19]

* Some who used to come out regularly and meet as part of this congregation of the Hebrews Christian Church, some of this small group have even slid into apostasy (Hebrews 3:12).

These are very real problems not only for the Hebrew Christian Church in Rome but also I think for the Canadian Christian churches all across this country today.

Like with the Hebrew Christian Church, in Canada Christians are apparently taking their faith less seriously and even ceasing to meet together. The percentage of the Canadians attending religious services on a regular basis has declined significantly over the past 20 years alone. According to Statistics Canada only 21% of Canadians older than 15 reported they attended regular religious services in 2005.

At the same time, the number of Canadians that never attend religious services of any religion (not just Christianity!) has the increased in the past couple of decades to around 33%.[20] About 1/5 of Canadians attend church less than regularly and 1/3 of Canadians have never gone to church at all. Just like with the Hebrew Christian Church, the Canadian Christian Church is apparently growing apathetic about its faith and people are leaving. We are no longer listening to God and we are even slipping into apostasy, into atheism.

Prior to 1971, less than 1% of the Canadian population reported having no religion or atheism. In 2001,that percentage increased to 16% of the population, or just under 4.8 million people and that number is growing. About 37% of people in the Yukon by 2001 reported they had no religion, 35% in British Columbia and 23% in Alberta.[21] Even in Saskatchewan, where we Protestants have traditionally made up the largest part of the population, we are now a minority.[22]

Many people used to go to church until very recently across this country. We don’t anymore and that is starting to be reflected in our society. It is no coincidence that pornography use, violence and crime are more prevalent in this country than before. Like some people in the Hebrew Christian Church, members of the Canadian Christian Church are stopping to meet together regularly, we are growing apathetic about our faith, and we are already stopping to listen to God, and people in Canada are quickly becoming apostate.

Supreme Court Justice Charles Gonthier remarked not too long ago that: “…nothing in the Charter, political or democratic theory, or a proper understanding of pluralism demands that atheistically based moral positions trump religiously based moral positions on matters of public policy. I note that the preamble to the Charter itself establishes that ‘… Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.’”

However, things change and are changing quickly, just last month we saw the Supreme Court strip some of the more conservative Hutterites of their religious freedom. When I taught in the public schools (a long time ago now) and when I ran the tutoring programme in the schools for at risk kids in BC, I was told in no uncertain terms not to mention Christ in the classroom.[23] Secularists and Atheists have been tracking down civic politicians in Ontario and charging them with a crime if they dare to pray in their town hall meetings.

This is not different from the problems that are addressed in the book of Hebrews and in our society these problems are gaining momentum very quickly. A few years ago, even at the repatriation of our constitution, a generation of Canadians deferred to God. Now, because of that generation’s apathy towards educating our children, the next generation has been reared in the apostasy that we see across spreading across this country. Saskatchewan is still very much a Christian province but so was BC and so was Ontario.[24] It will continue to get worse if we in the Canadian Christian Church just continue making those same mistakes that prompted someone to write Hebrews so long ago. Hebrews is a very important sermon for us to read and re-read in this country. We have to avoid corporate spiritual apathy that is growing here. We must raise our children and grandchildren up right so that they know how to pray, read their Bibles and listen to God. Our children represent the future of our society (Cf. Mark 9:42; Luke 18:15-17; Matt 19:13-14; 10:13-16; Mark 9:42-50; John 8:31; Dt. 4:9-10; Dt. 11; Ps 34:11; 78:5; Eph 6:4; Tit 1:6; 2 John 1:4, 3 John 1:4).

The central theme of Hebrews, according to William L. Lane is “the importance of listening to the voice of God in Scripture and in the act of Christian preaching.”[25] This is true and if we are faithful in this, if we learn from the mistakes of the Hebrews, if we listen to the voice of God then perhaps we in Canada can still return to God, and perhaps we in Canada, even now, perhaps we in Canada – even now – we can still all be saved.

Let us pray.

www.sheepspeak.com

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[1] Silvanus is referred to as Silas in some translations.
[2] Fred B. Craddock, The Letter to the Hebrews (NIB 12: Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1998), 6. Also there is a good discussion of this by Lenski in RCH Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle of James (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1966), 10-14.
[3] RCH Lenski, p. 6. Thomas G. Long, Hebrews (Interpretation: a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1997), 1.
[4] I prefer the traditional-historical method of dating (BC/AD) to the contemporary trend (BCE/CE). Certainly in a homily, in particular, the audience is more familiar with the traditional-historical terms of BC and AD.
[5] Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Everyman’s Bible Commentary: Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1962), 8.
[6] Fred B. Craddock, p. 8.
[7] Leon Morris, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Hebrews/Introduction to Hebrews/Destination of Hebrews, Book Version: 4.0.2
[8] James Strong, “Eber – Ibriy (OT: 5677-5680),” in The New Strong’s Complete Dictionary of Bible Words. (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1966), p. 467.
[9] William Smith, ‘Hebrew’ in Smith’s Bible Dictionary. (Flemming H. Revel Company, Tappan, New Jersey, 1982), 228.
[10] James Strong, “Eber – Hebraisti” (NT: 1443-1447),” in The New Strong’s Complete Dictionary of Bible Words. (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1966), p. 607.
[11]Leon Morris, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Hebrews/Introduction to Hebrews/Destination of Hebrews, Book Version: 4.0.2. See also RCH Lenski, p. 14 and Fred B. Craddock, 8.
[12] William L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8 (WBC 47A: Word Books: Dallas Texas, 1991), lviii. Cf RCH, Lenski, p. 15 and Charles F.Pfeiffer, p. 8.
[13] WBC lxi, lxxii and Pfeiffer 7,8.
[14] Thomas G. Long, p. 2.
[15] William L. Lane, p. liii. Cf. Thomas G. Long, p. 3 and Fred B. Craddock, p. 5.
[16] William L. Lane, p. liii.
[17] Cf. William L. Lane, p. lxi.
[18] Cf. Charles F. Pfeiffer, p. 9.
[19] Cf. Fred B. Craddock, p. 9.
[20] Colin Lindsay, “Canadians attend weekly religious services less than 20 years ago,” Prepared for Statistics Canada: June 2008. Cited 13 08 2009. Online: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-630-x/2008001/article/10650-eng.pdf pages 1,2.
[21]Statistics Canada, “2001 Census: analysis series: Religions in Canada”: May 2003. Cited 13 08 2009 Online: http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/english/census01/products/analytic/companion/rel/pdf/96F0030XIE2001015.pdf , p. 9.
[22]Statistics Canada, “2001 Census: analysis series: Religions in Canada,” p. 14-12.
[23]Cfwww.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1040356828066_95///?hub=TopStories cf. also Christianity Today: Parents Flee Public Schools: "Christians in British Columbia, Canada, are worried that courts are undermining their religious rights in the classroom.” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/march/12.23.html Cf. also the Atheist website, nodeity.com: http://nodeity.com/chamberlain_v_SD36.html re 'One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dads, Blue Dads' - You can read the Supreme Court Decision re. Questionable books: http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/index.html - The following phrase is interesting - 'The School Act's insistence on secularism;' this begs the question why must our be subjected to the secularist Worldview; neither BC not Canada were settled or founded upon that mythology. There were other problems with the books as well. CBC.ca: "This story has problems with punctuation and grammar throughout. The spelling of 'favourite' is inconsistent, switching from the Canadian to the American," said board chair Mary Polak about Asha's Mums. The board also criticized the book's depiction of men.(http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2003/06/13/samesex_books030613.html).It is serious that even though the book is unsatisfactory for education young people, that it was deemed necessary for our children to be exposed to it. The courts it appears are more interested in promoting a secular-atheist worldview than they are about providing a quality education for our children. The federal government has the jurisdiction to make laws to protect its citizens. The Supreme Court is only allowed to interpret the laws in theory. Cf. The National Post: ‘Gay couple gets input into school curriculum’, http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=80dd8007-ef56-40a7-809d-37936b9d4179&k=51593&p=1. Cf. also ‘Secular-Atheist's religion secures making the promotion of Homosexuality mandatory in the BC school system.’ Lifesite.net: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06060101.html cf. also 'Documents Reveal Government Signed Over Control of Education to Homosexual Activists': http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06061907.htmlcf. also: Peter Corren (né Cook) and Murray Corren (né Warren) — 'Corren is a combination of their former names — are LGBT-rights activists from Vancouver, British Columbia whose complaint before the BC Human Rights Tribunal led to an agreement by which the provincial Ministry of Education will consult them on how gays are presented in the school curriculum': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Murray_Corren. Cf. http://www.secularontario.ca/peterbexam06dec13.html, CBC.ca: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/01/26/prayer.html , CanadianChristianity.com: http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/070201prayer
[24] No religion / Atheism is now the largest religion / World View in BC: StatsCan: http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/Products/Analytic/companion/rel/bc.cfm
[25] William L. Lane, p. cxvii.