Father Stephen: And so, now, part two of this – it’s St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, so this is the next big element here, the genre question. Why is that a question? This has always been called St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. Eventually someday, maybe not next week, when we start the actual text of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, we’ll notice—and you can glance down and look right now, you’ll see—it does not begin the way St. Paul’s epistles begin. We’ve seen over and over again now, it’s been a few years now we’ve been working through St. Paul’s epistles, he starts his epistles pretty much the same way every time. He identifies himself—Paul, an Apostle—he says, “greetings in the name of the Lord,” he has the whole intro.

Interlocutor 1: That’s more or less the way everybody started letters.

Father Stephen: Yeah, it was a normal, formal letter introduction, and we talked about how St. Paul would use that, he’d seed the themes of the letter into that and then develop them over the course of the letter. There is no introduction on the front of this. It just goes straight into it. Just starts with, “God, who at various times and in various ways…” So, we don’t have any kind of epistle introduction. We do, at the end, have something that looks like one of his closings. It even mentions St. Timothy. We do have a closing at the end. So, that draws into question then – we have to ask, did we lose the intro? Was there some kind of introduction to this letter that was lost, with the addressees and everything?

Or is this something else? Because you can send a text to someone other than a letter. We saw, for example, going back to St. Luke again, St. Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles had, at the beginning and end, an addressee; there was a sponsor, St. Theophilus, who had sponsored the work, to whom the work is dedicated. The book of Revelation that we’re going to get to here eventually, probably sometime next year, at the beginning, has seven different letters attached to the beginning – whole letters, but the whole book is being sent to these churches. So, it is possible, then, that the reason we don’t have that at the beginning is that what we have here is some other kind of text that was sent somewhere, delivered somewhere, to someone. And that’s why we have at the end the comments to the addressees, but we don’t have a formal letter introduction because it’s not really a letter. So, I could write something, I could write an account of events, or I could write—to use a very pointed example—I could write down one of my Sunday homilies. Let’s say Arthur wasn’t going to be here one Sunday, and I thought it was one he’d especially like to hear. I could write it all out, and then at the end of it I could write a little not to Arthur, saying, “Here’s this homily I preached when you weren’t there; I thought you might like it, say hi to your wife. Signed, Father Stephen.” I could put all that at the end; I could even fold that up in an envelope and send it to your house, and when you opened it, you wouldn’t be like, “Oh, this is a letter.” You would say, “No, this is something else, but it was sent to me.”

So, if that’s a possibility, in terms of why we don’t have the intro, then we have to look at St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews and say, “If it’s possible that this isn’t an epistle, what genre would it be?” What does it look like? What type of text is it? We already said it’s not historical narrative. Obviously. And what we find when we analyze the Greek and look at how it’s structured and put together is that there’s a melding of two different things. One is rhetorical style. When you compare this to when St. Luke records Christ’s sermons and St. Paul’s sermons, their preaching, in St. Luke’s Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, he does that with a certain Greek rhetorical style. We talked about how he even says he wasn’t there, writing them down verbatim, but that these are sort of summaries. That was normal in the ancient world. You’d say, “What did he say?” and you’d have the ideas, but then when you wrote it down in that kind of account, you wouldn’t just write down bullet points. You would turn it back into rhetoric. So, it follows – it’s very similar to the way St. Luke, in particular, writes those things.

So, we have this rhetorical style, and we also have – we’re going to see as we go that basically the entirety of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews follows the form of what was used in the first century B.C. and first century A.D., commentary on Psalm 110 (in the Hebrew numbering; 109 in the Greek numbering). There’s a pesher style, there’s a couple other – I don’t want to get too granular here, because I’m talking not just to nerds but to normal folks. But there was a way that running commentary was done on a passage. You would have a passage that you would take—you would take a psalm, or you would take a piece of one of the prophets, or something—and you would summarize it, what it says, and then you would give an interpretation of it. And in interpreting it, you might quote other passages, other related scriptures that are connected to what you’re doing in interpretation. And then you would cite those, and then interpret those, and connect them back to what you’re talking about. So, when I say that this is kind-of commenting on Psalm 110/109, I mean that the overarching structure is working its way through that psalm, and then you’re going to have other texts get quoted and brought in to help interpret it, and to show connections and references, and draw out the meaning.

So, if you put those things together—scriptural interpretation and rhetoric—you get a sermon. You get a homily. You get a homily. And so, there is—I would not say a consensus—there are probably, I think I could safely, a simple majority of scholars, Biblical scholars today, who would say that Hebrews is homiletic material. And so, that is also where I go with it; I think we’ll see that, like I just said, and I talked about the psalm that it’s preaching on.

Interlocutor 1: That would be 109 in our Orthodox Study Bible?

Fr. Stephen: 109 in the Orthodox Study Bible. 109 in the Greek numbering; 110 otherwise. Which is also the most-quoted text in the New Testament. The most-quoted Old Testament text in the New Testament. And St. Paul quotes it a lot. That’s another connection to St. Paul. That’s the one that starts, “The Lord said to my Lord–” in the Hebrew, “Yahweh said to my Lord, sit at my right hand ‘til I make your enemies your footstool.” And then goes on to talk about the priesthood of Melchizedek, just like Hebrews does, et cetera.



So, that is the position I’m taking in terms of going forward, as we go through Hebrews, as to what it is, that this is a homily of St. Paul on that text, directed toward a Jewish Christian audience – a primarily Jewish Christian audience; not exclusively, but primarily Jewish Christian audience. And that this homily was set down by St. Luke; that’s why you have the particular linguistic forms you have, and we know St. Paul didn’t write this stuff longhand. That accounts for the similarities we see with St. Luke’s style; that accounts for the Pauline ideas, why it looks different than St. Paul’s other epistles; that’s why I take this approach. Because I think it covers all the bases in terms of what’s going on, and there are Church Fathers who took that position, so I feel safe. Yes, I’m disagreeing with some Church Fathers, but I’m also agreeing with some. This isn’t just a wild idea I came up with.

And so, that’s what we have here, and that then, after it was written, then it was sent to a community, and now this brings us to Intro, Part 3, which is, “to the Hebrews.” St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. And, as I mentioned earlier, there’s this general – this is really a consensus, not just a majority, that this text went to the Jewish community—the Jewish Christian community, in particular—in Rome. And the primary reason for this is going to be some details we see in the text as we go, because this is clearly being preached to a community, and it’s being sent somewhere, but it’s directed toward a community, not toward a person. Yes?

Interlocutor 1: But it’s not known in the West, and it’s known in the East, so…

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Interlocutor 1:That would – you would think if it was sent to Rome, it would be almost the other way around.

Fr. Stephen: Yes. But the Book of Revelation was written in Ephesus, and was accepted in the West before it was in the East. [laughter] So things happen.

Interlocutor 1: So, somethin’ happened.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, things happen, yeah. And there are other theories. When I say there’s a consensus, I’m saying there’s a consensus now, today, among scholars, that it was directed toward Rome.  You will also find plenty of people in Church history who think it was directed to the church in Jerusalem. In fact – oh, who was it? …One of the Church Fathers—I’m going to remember as soon as we’re not recording—said that the reason that there was no introduction is that St. Paul was writing it to Jerusalem, and he was the Apostle to the gentiles. I know, I’m not saying that’s correct, I’m just saying there are other theories as to who it went to, in Church History and even minority opinions today, that it was going somewhere else. Sometimes you just find, it was in general directed toward Jewish Christians, and it was just circular, for everybody. First copy had to go somewhere, but that it circulated widely.

But there’s another reason why it may have disappeared from Rome. This is related to one of the reasons why they think it may have disappeared from Rome. In terms of when it was written, there are – there’s sort of a terminus ad quo and a terminus ad quem that you can say just as a bare matter of fact. We know it was written after A.D. 50 because there’s stuff referred to in it that happened in A.D. 50. And we know it’s before A.D. 95 because there’s some stuff that happened in A.D. 95. But we can do better than that. Especially if it’s related to St. Paul, that sort of sets up an ending. But, more importantly, in Hebrews, when they talk about the sacrifices—as I said, it’s going to talk about the Day of Atonement; it’s going to talk about the sacrificial system in detail—there are a couple of places where it says that the sacrifices in the Temple “would have ceased if x, y, z.” Well, “would have ceased,” implies they haven’t, and the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70. And so, those sacrifices are never referred to in the past tense, as this thing the Jews used to do. “We’re going to compare Christ’s sacrifice to these things the Jews used to do–” no, it’s comparing it to something that is portrayed as still going on. And if it’s related to St. Paul, St. Paul is martyred in the 60’s, so before 70, in the 60’s, we’re in the ballpark for this to be Pauline. Now, in terms of Rome, there are mentions to the community that’s being spoken to that they’ve suffered persecution and been imprisoned but have not yet started being put to death. We don’t know of a lot of direct persecution of Christians by Romans this early. And the ones we know about – first-century history, even Roman history, is rough—a lot of what we have is mythologization of Augustus and stuff, which… —is rough in general, but what we know about took place in Rome. So, Tacitus makes this reference that everybody is pretty sure is the earliest Roman thing we have about persecution of Christians, where he says there were some riots in Rome, and some people were imprisoned and some people were executed, “over a certain Chrestus.” [laughter] Which he spells, effectively, C-H-R-E-S-T-U-S. So, most scholars and historians agree that this is talking about some early trouble with the Christian community in Rome. Rome had been persecuting the Jewish communities sporadically – we talked about the expulsion just a few minutes ago, under Claudius. That was already going on, so the fact that they moved on to the Christians, who were a fringe group of the Jewish community at first, makes perfect sense. So, we already know this was going on in the time period we’re talking about, in the 50’s and early 60’s, leading up to Nero’s persecutions in the 60’s. So, they way in which the community is being talked to here—“you’ve already suffered this persecution, you’ve suffered imprisonment,” not yet being killed, which is going to happen under Nero—this is why that consensus developed. The place – as far as we know, as scholars now [know], the place that best fits during that window when this could’ve been written, sometime after 50 and before, say, St. Paul’s death, so before 64, so we’re talking late 50’s, early 60’s – that doesn’t really fit Jerusalem at that time, for example. There wasn’t persecution like that going on in Jerusalem of Christians at that time. The place that best fits is Rome.

Although it very clearly has a Jewish audience, because it’s going to refer to particulars of the Day of Atonement sacrificial ritual in the Temple that – we talked about how most of St. Paul’s early gentile, pagan converts – or, gentile converts are not actually pagan converts; they’re sort of semi-pagan converts, they came from the “God-fearers”; there was this sort of Roman fascination with Judaism, and so there were these Greeks and Romans who were at the periphery of the synagogue communities; they’d donate to the synagogues; they’d have a copy of the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures; they were interested dabblers. They weren’t going to go get circumcised; they weren’t going to stop eating pork; they weren’t going to stop sacrificing to their gods; they weren’t going to do all that stuff, but they were interested, and so, being around the fringes, those were the first gentiles who St. Paul brings in because it’s easier than a die-hard pagan who has no familiarity with what we call the Old Testament at all. That’s a bigger gap to cross. And we see that in Acts, in terms of how St. Paul does when he’s going to places with established Jewish communities where he can start at the synagogue, versus, like, when he goes to Athens and goes into the Areopagus and is talking to straight-out pagan philosophers. There’s a bigger gap that he has to cross. So, those details, because those gentiles, even if they did decide to take a trip to Jerusalem, weren’t allowed into the Temple and weren’t allowed to participate in those things. So, the level of detail that’s gone into here implies a primarily Jewish Christian audience. And we know that that existed in Rome, so that all fits. Yessir?

Interlocutor 1: The phrase, “not yet being put to death,” implies that some people were being put to death or that St. Paul is certain that this is going to happen.

Fr. Stephen: Right, that this is impending. This is an impending reality. And you’ve got St. Stephen, St. James – I mean, there have been Christians who have been put to death.

Interlocutor 1: Oh, right, so there have been.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, but not in their community. But this is an impending reality – if he says, “but not yet unto death,” then yes, he’s implying that this appears to be on the horizon wherever they are.

Interlocutor 1: Yes.

Fr. Stephen: So, based on that, that is, I think—if we’re going to pick a place—that’s the place that seems to fit best once we know. Can’t be 100%. But in terms of, as we’re going to go through and read and interpret, we have to proceed from certain presuppositions, so you just try to ground those as best you can in what the Church Fathers tell us, what history tells us, and what we know.

So, to summarize, this is St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. This is one of St. Paul’s homilies on Psalm 110 (or 109 – Hebrew and Greek numbering) which has been recorded by St. Luke, which has been sent along with a note at the end to a Jewish Christian community, most likely that at Rome, who is in the midst of ramping up persecution. And he’s going to talk about that, but the most important theme, and the central theme, and the reason why, I think, he’s using Psalm 110 (or 109), as we’ll see as we go through the text, is that the entire focus of that psalm is on the person of Christ—the person of the Messiah, from the perspective of when the psalm was written—is on Christ, and in the face of that oncoming persecution and suffering, what St. Paul wants to do is point them to Christ. He’s not giving them platitudes; he’s not making promises to them; he’s like, “this is who Christ is. This is what Christ did.” And so, he’s going to talk about Christ’s sacrifice, his suffering, his death, atonement for sin; he’s going to talk about all those things because that’s what they need to hear as they face, potentially, their deaths for his sake.

So, that said, we usually go on a little longer than this but not much, and I don’t want to try to get in, so – yeah, more questions.

Interlocutor 1: If this was given originally as a homily, it kind of assumes that Paul is talking to—giving this homily to—a largely Jewish audience.

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Interlocutor 1: Does that give us any idea when and where he was when he gave this homily? Or are we completely at a loss?

Fr. Stephen: Not really. We’re kinda clueless. There are possibilities. We know he was imprisoned in Rome twice; both times he was shipped there in chains. So, when I say, “homily,” that doesn’t necessarily mean he was standing in a Sunday liturgy or a Saturday synagogue service; he could’ve been preaching it to twelve people gathered around him in a cell. Or the people with him on a boat.

Interlocutor 1: It’d have to be Jewish people.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, they’d have to be people with enough background to understand, yeah. But we’ve seen, as we’ve gone through his epistles, that just because he’s in prison, he’s not in solitary. He’ll talk about his chains and that he’s in prison, but he’ll talk about, “Oh, this person has been here with me helping me; that person has been here with me; I’m sending this person to you; send this person back to me,” right, so he has people coming and going. He’s sort of under what we might call today, loosely, “house arrest.” It’s not quite the same; he doesn’t have an ankle bracelet, right, so it’s not as nice as all that, but he’s able to receive visitors; he’s able to communicate; he’s able to send these letters out.

Interlocutor 1: That’s the way a prison generally was until fairly modern times.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. There was no concept of, like, “We need to isolate him,” or whatever. And so, he could very well have had a small group of people come to see him periodically and he would teach them and preach to them while imprisoned.

Interlocutor 1: Okay.

Fr. Stephen: Do you have any other questions? Comments?

Interlocutor 3: What year did you say St. Paul was martyred?

Fr. Stephen: Well, it’s debated, but probably 64.

Interlocutor 3: Okay. I was just – the [Orthodox] Study Bible dates the book of Hebrews to 70 A.D. so I was just

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, I… yeah.

Interlocutor 3: Okay.

Fr. Stephen: [laughter] One of the ongoing themes in this Bible study has been that I sometimes disagree with the Orthodox Study Bible.

Interlocutor 3: Well, it says, “near 70,” so [inaudible].

Interlocutor 1: “Near” is a very flexible word.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, so, I don’t know… [long pause as Fr. Stephen scans the Orthodox Study Bible for an explanation of their dating]

Interlocutor 1:They’re pretty vague about their reasons.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, there’s that – “Most Biblical scholars today agree authorship of the letter is uncertain.” Yeah, “The witness of the early Church argues for some time near A.D. 70.” Well, the witness of the early Church says St. Paul wrote it, which means it’d have to be earlier than that. Ss. Peter and Paul were martyred in 63 and 64, right around there, so… Especially those intro pages, I tend to disagree. In fact, I think with [the introductions to] First and Second Timothy I totally disagreed. And Ephesians, and a couple other ones. Anyway, those aren’t the inspired parts of the Orthodox Study Bible. But let me be clear – I hope, as I did that introduction, that I was fair enough and clear enough that I can’t prove the approach I’m taking is correct. But I have to take an approach. [laughter]

So, I gave you my arguments. I was giving my argument, the reasons why I take the approach I do. But if somebody comes and says, “Well, I think St. Barnabas wrote it; I think he wrote it shortly after St. Paul’s death.” Y’know, you could take a whole other approach and, “I think it is an epistle but it’s an abnormally structured epistle”; you could make all those arguments. And some of them – I can’t prove St. Barnabas didn’t write it. So, I mean, there are other fair opinions to have. I’m just trying to present – this is my approach; this is why I take it; could be wrong on several of those points. New evidence could come out, we could discover something that would turn that all on its head. The reason Adolf von Harnak could build all these air-castles and come up with all these theories about the historical Jesus and all this stuff is that they didn’t know much. There wasn’t that much evidence out there to build off of, or to contradict him, so he could do that. Since then, a lot more information has come out and a lot of it’s fallen apart. So, that could happen to me. Hundred years from now, if this is even preserved somewhere, this recording, somebody could listen to it and be like, “Wow, they didn’t know anything! They didn’t know about this; they didn’t know about that.”

Interlocutor 1: They may find a papyrus someplace that says, “I, Barnabas, wrote this–” [inaudible].

Fr. Stephen: Exactly, yes. Yeah, we could find a copy of it by itself in the Egyptian desert from 95 A.D. that says, “Having witnessed the martyrdom of Paul, I, Barnabas, now write this epistle to the Hebrew community–”

Interlocutor 1: To the church in Jerusalem.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, “to the church in Jerusalem.” And then I’d be like, “Oops, I was wrong.” So, let me clear about that. And I would not die for any of that stuff. I like to think that if a gun was held to my head and I was told to deny Christ that I wouldn’t, but if somebody held a gun to my head and said, “Say St. Barnabas wrote Hebrews!” I would say St. Barnabas wrote Hebrews. I assure you. Immediately, without hesitation.

Okay, well, unless there are any other questions, we’ll stop just a little early, but I think it’s suitably introduced. And next week we’ll pick up with St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 1.