bound in the first century CE

In my essay, "Reading and Hearing in Ancient Contexts" (JSNT 32/2 [2009]: 151–78), I criticize one NT scholar for portraying the author of Hebrews as a writer who exists outside the constraints of his time and culture and who labors to present his point in such a way that his audience—who are so constrained—can understand what he's trying to teach them.

Davis portrays the author of Hebrews as a cultural monstrosity who wishes to communicate complex (literate?) ideas but finds himself constrained by the inability of his audience to follow ‘analytic’, ‘objectively distanced’ or ‘abstract’ discourse. Davis’s author, among other things, seems to grasp the truth he conveys in ways unconstrained by cultural or historical forces, and the task before him as he writes is to express that truth in terms that are accessible within the cultural limitations affecting his hapless readers. Though Davis rightly insists that processes of composing as well as receiving written traditions are at least somewhat culturally specific, his analysis never acknowledges that both the author and auditors of Hebrews were constrained by similar such patterns of information perception, organization, and presentation. Some authors and some oral performers were undoubtedly more effective at navigating cultural scripts when presenting written or oral information than were others, but to varying degrees they all navigated those scripts as insiders, hardly aware, if at all, that they or their audiences were constrained by any supposed ‘oral mindset’. (153–4)

Davis, of course, is just one manifestation of a common problem among NT scholars rather than a particularly inept expression of NT scholarship. As another example, notice Robert Stein's description of Jesus. Whereas my criticism of Davis concerns his conception of "orality" (as opposed to "literate" patterns of information processing and presentation), here I question Stein's implicit conception of Jesus' relation to Judaism. In Mark 1.40–45 Jesus cleanses a leper and tells him to present himself to the priest and offer the sacrifices prescribed by Moses.

Within the present story this command provides the proof of the leper's healing, even as "serving" demonstrated the healing of Simon's mother-in-law in 1:31. In the original setting of the incident and in light of 2:15–17, 18–22, 23–28; 3:1–6; 7:1–23, Jesus appears to be less concerned with demonstrating that he keeps the law than in helping the healed leper reenter society. (Stein 2008: 107–8)

Notice that "demonstrating that [Jesus] keeps the law" is an issue in our own cultural context and not necessarily an issue in Jesus'. Rather, the problem in first-century Galilee concerned how one should keep Torah, not whether one should do so. All the passages Stein cites (Mark 2.15–3.6; 7.1–23) don't present Jesus as non-Torah observant; in these passages Jesus engages in debates about the proper observation of the Mosaic covenant rather than the value of observing Torah. Notice, however, that these ways of talking about the text (Davis's and Stein's) both assume that "the good guy" (whether the author of Hebrews or Jesus himself) is more like us (literate, or unburdened by petty legalism, respectively) but forced to deal with people who aren't like us (oral, or obsessed with the Law, respectively). If only Jesus and the NT authors had had the foresight to wait until the twenty-first century to do their thing, they wouldn't have had to deal with those sad, backward people who couldn't read or were scrupulous about the Law's commands. Pity.

[Clarification: I don't think Mark is trying say that Jesus was a Torah-observant Jew; neither do I think Mark is trying to avoid the implication that Jesus kept the Mosaic Law. Rather, the Torah was the most conspicuous feature of the cultural world Jesus inhabited, and the issues he engaged concerned how to live in light of Torah rather than whether or not to do so. Jesus never had to "demonstrat[e] that he keeps the law," and so Stein has missed the point of the text.]

zeroing in on the nail's head

Since late 2005 I've been trying to put my finger on a problem within New Testament research that, I think, skews a great number of facets of that research. Yesterday, as I continued reading Barry Joslin's book, Hebrews, Christ, and the Law (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), I think I made some progress in trying to formulate the problem I hope to address in future research.

Joslin provides an exegetical discussion of Heb 8.1–13 in chapter five. Hebrews 8, of course, has the lengthy reference to Jer 31.31–34 [LXX = 38.31–34] in which YHWH promises a "new covenant" with the houses of Judah and Israel. Throughout Joslin's book this "new covenant" self-evidently implies the passing of the old, Mosaic covenant. The reference to Israel and Judah, then, become somewhat of a problem. Joslin writes,

Though Jeremiah specifically addresses Israel and Judah, it becomes clear that Hebrews sees the prophecy's fulfillment in the eschatological days of the present time, and that it is applicable to more than simply the Jewish nation, though clearly they are not excluded. (186; my emphasis)

The problem I have, I think, begins with the two clauses that Joslin introduces with the concessive conjunction "though." First, Joslin has to find a way to diminish the Jeremianic reference to Israel and Judah. I don't necessarily fault Joslin here; he's writing about Hebrews, not Jeremiah. If Hebrews diminishes the explicitly Israelite/Judahite focus of Jer 31.31–34, Joslin would need to do so as well. I'm not convinced that Hebrews does this, however, but that's another (though related) subject. In fact, now that I look back at Joslin's quote, this seems to be precisely his point: Jeremiah focuses on Israel and Judah; Hebrews, not so much.

But, and second, the second though-phrase has to back-pedal and reserve a place for Israel and Judah within the Jeremianic new covenant. At this point, then, either the author of Hebrews has misread Jeremiah, or Joslin has misread Hebrews. And it isn't simply deference for Hebrews's privileged place within the canon that makes me prefer the latter option. Hebrews invokes a world determined and defined by Hebrew biblical tradition, by the story of Israel's God and his relationship with his covenant people. Indeed, Hebrews takes up and manipulates those traditions and that story in order to achieve certain ends in its own present.

But one thing Hebrews—and the rest of the New Testament, it seems to me—does not do is "reserve" a place for Israel. The texts comprising the New Testament do not regard Israel (and the Jews enveloped within that label) as ancillary to God. Those texts, in different ways but all together, begin with a notion of God's election of Israel and proceed (again, in different ways but all together) to extend that notion to the nations beyond Israel. Any argument that has to include a caveat such as, "though clearly they are not excluded," is already moving in the wrong direction.

Whence comes this analytical anomaly? The self-evident split between Christianity and Judaism in our own world, I think, has distorted our analyses of the NT texts, of Christian origins, and of late Second Temple Judaism in general. Given that the NT texts are Christian texts, and given that Christianity ≠ Judaism, critical analyses have to explain the role Jews play in the symbolic universe(s) built and inhabited by Jesus' followers. As a result, scholarly discourse on Christian origins resembles a horse being led around by its cart, and exegetical work (such as Joslin's) guided by such a wayward horse is equally lost.

To be clear, eventually Christianity would become something other than Judaism, a fact that present religio-political realities make obvious. And even in antiquity, theologians and bishops comfortable wearing the label Christian but who refused the label Jew would have to wrestle with their strange patterns of identification. But the texts of the NT—and the authors thereof—don't seem to have made this distinction. The point in Heb 8.1–13 is clearly not that the Jews were clearly not excluded from the new covenant. This was never in doubt!

Is this a logical problem?

I'm still reviewing Barry C. Joslin's Hebrews, Christ, and the Law, and I'm struggling a bit to understand its logic. I earnestly welcome clarification from anyone who thinks they understand the logic behind this statement:

Drawing from the only other mention of Melchizedek besides Psalm 110:4, he describes his meeting with Abraham when Abraham was returning from the slaughter of the kings in Genesis 14. Hebrews is only concerned with Melchizedek insofar as much as [sic] he relates to Christ, and receives attention simply because his priestly office and this meeting with Abraham supply evidence for the writer's main thesis, viz., that there is a new priesthood that is superior to the old. (135–136; my emphasis)

Forget the grammatical problem in the middle of the quote; any work of this length and sophistication will suffer a few problems like this. Forget even the non sequitur at this quote's beginning, in which Joslin refers to Genesis 14 as "the only other mention of Melchizedek besides Psalm 110:4." Nothing about Genesis 14 is "the only other mention"; Genesis 14 provides the account of Melchizedek and Abraham, and Psa 110.4 is "the only other mention" of Melchizedek. But Joslin misses this because he isn't concerned with Melchizedek; he's only concerned about priesthood, and Melchizedek is a label that simply means "not-Levitical" (see 135, n. 7). The text might as well have said Christ is a priest forever according to the order of Gidget, and only the consonants מלכי־צדך [mlky-ṣdk] in Psa 110.4 prevented him from doing so.

But I'm struggling with the point that Joslin reads into Hebrews 7. Given the text's logic—that Levi was still in Abraham's loins when Abraham offered his tithe to Melchizedek and so Levi offered tithes to Melchizedek—I don't see how the writer's point could possibly be that Christ belongs to a new priesthood, and that this new priesthood is superior to the old one. If anything, it seems to me that Hebrews places the Levitical priesthood in the category new; Christ's priesthood, then, being according to the order of Melchizedek, is both older and, therefore, superior.

Am I missing something here?!

help with my hermeneutic

I've started reading Barry C. Joslin's book, Hebrews, Christ, and the Law: The Theology of the Mosaic Law in Hebrews 7:1–10:18 (Paternoster Biblical Monographs; Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008). I have to admit that I'm struggling with this one, in part because of the frequent use of passive verbs and awkward circumlocutions in order to avoid the first-person. But once I got past the first chapter (or rather, once the first chapter was gotten past by the present reader and reviewer), I've started to enjoy this book a bit more.

Even so, as I read Joslin's book I've noticed a number of phrases that make me scratch my head, and I would like to avail myself of your assistance, if you're able to make sense of these passages. I'll only provide two, but these are representative of Joslin's writing style:

[W]hen taken as a whole, what the writer of Hebrews envisions for the law in the [New Covenant] is its transformation. It is now viewed through the lens of Christ, and as such there is transformation that involves fulfillment and internalization. There are continuous and discontinuous aspects of the law, and this continuity and discontinuity turns on the hinge of Christ. (2)

This quote comes from the first chapter and as such introduces Joslin's thesis. I'm not convinced that the sentences I've quoted actually say anything. How is the law transformed? What does "viewed through the lens of Christ" mean vis-à-vis the law? In what sense is the law "fulfilled" and "internalized," and why are these things "transformation"? But since there remains the entire rest of the book, I'm willing to put these questions on hold. I can't figure out, however, how the subject of Joslin's last phrase ("this continuity and discontinuity") performs the action of the verb ("turns"), and how the door metaphor ("on the hinge of Christ") explains either the verb or the relationship of the double subject. Any help?

On a different note, Joslin provides a lengthy survey of Jews' view of the law/Law/Torah in the Second Temple period; such a survey is no easy task. Toward the beginning of his discussion of 2 Maccabees (34–37), Joslin writes,

After giving them the law Jeremiah is said to exhort his readers "not to let the νόμος depart from their hearts" in 2:3. What seems to be clear is that the specific referent for νόμος is the written commandment of the law of Moses. (34)

Again, I'm thirty-some pages into a lengthy monograph (330+ pages), so a lot of Joslin's argument is still to come. But already Joslin has mentioned a half-dozen times or so that he sees νόμος [nomos; "law"] and διαθήκη [diathēkē; "covenant"] as related terms but absolutely rejects that they are [near?] synonyms. So his comment on 2 Macc 2.3—that "the specific referent for νόμος is the written commandment of the law of Moses"—strikes me as a bit self-serving. Why is Jeremiah's exhortation limited to the written text he gives to the departing deportees? Or, at least, why does this limitation "seem to be clear"? The same text "seems clear" to me to refer to the written text as a cultural/material artifact that metonymically referenced any number of things simultaneously: the written text, the specific commandments inscribed therein, the covenant mediated via those commandments and communicated in that text, the interpretive traditions mediating the text's meaning and significance (and so the proper means of observation), the appropriate stance vis-à-vis the gentiles among whom the exiles would live, etc.

Given the important role this point will play in Joslin's argument, I'm baffled that he seems content to assert this interpretation without any argumentation whatsoever. With a flick of the wrist and a "seems to be clear," the point is made. Or perhaps, once again, my hermeneutic is failing me. Any suggestions?

Hebrews: It is finished

I have finished reading Gabriella Gelardini's book, Hebrews: Contemporary Methods—New Insights. For the most part, this was a fascinating book that brought together in a single volume a number of interesting perspectives and insights. As with many edited volumes, there were moments when a bit of interaction between the essays would have been helpful. There were myriad references to Harold Attridge's Hermeneia commentary on Hebrews, as well as Craig Koester's Anchor Bible commentary. Likewise, there were numerous references (mostly positive) to David deSilva's Despising Shame: Honor Discourse and Community Maintenance in the Epistle to the Hebrews. But it would have been helpful if Ellen Bradshaw Aitken and Gelardini had acknowledged each other's essays, given that both were proposing a generative context for this enigmatic text (as I've noted elsewhere). Likewise, when Pamela Eisenbaum (see below) denies flatly that Hebrews "was a speech or sermon intended for a specific occasion or occasioned by a single event" (222), it would have been appropriate to at least acknowledge Gelardini's very careful argument that it was!

Even so, I've enjoyed this volume (and most of its essays) very much, and I look forward to exploring both Hebrews and scholarship on Hebrews more fully in the future. Here are some specific moments from the book that I found especially thought-provoking (even if my thoughts are sometimes disagreeable):

• Pamela Eisenbaum's essay, "Locating Hebrews within the Literary Landscape of Christian Origins" (213–37) pursues the very program I'm interested in. That is, she sets out to recontextualize Hebrews within recent scholarship "that reframe[s] not only how we think about Christian origins and post-biblical Judaism, but how we think about Jewish-Christian relations and the construction of Jewish and/or Christian identity in the frist four centuries within the wider context of the Greco-Roman world" (214). Unfortunately, she then engages in a series of assertions without providing the argumentation that might have brought me along with her. For instance, she attributes the widespread dating of Hebrews to the first century to Hebrews's location within the NT canon: "the very presence of Hebrews in the canon unconsciously biases scholars toward a first-century date, in spite of the fact that scholars are well aware that Hebrews' canonical authority was questioned up to the fifth century" (216). Of course, the traditional terminus ad quem for Hebrews is its influence on 1 Clement, which is traditionally dated to 96 CE. Eisenbaum mentions in a footnote (215, n. 4) that she prefers to date 1 Clement in the second century ("as late as 140, though the current tendency is to date it within the first quarter of the second century"), but she doesn't provide any discussion in support of that argument. Given the limited scope of this essay (only 25 pages), that's understandable. But scholars have certainly relied upon more than their bias in favor of texts included in the Christian canon to date Hebrews before the end of the first century, her dismissive comments notwithstanding.
  
  Similarly, when proposing a rather late date for Hebrews, Eisenbaum says,
  

  Just as "the message declared through angels became valid (βέβαιος)," which is the author's way of saying that the word of God formerly spoken by the prophets—or the "old covenant," as he now thinks of it—was officially instituted, presumably in the form of Torah, so now what was spoken by the Lord has been "confirmed"; it has become a newly effectuated covenant. Such a view seems more plausibly located later, rather than earlier, in the first century. (228; my emphasis)
  

  
  But why should this view be indicative of a "later, rather than earlier" date? It may very well be, but Eisenbaum doesn't explain why. I'm especially curious, since Paul seems to have rather developed ideas of "new covenant" (2 Cor 3.6, 14; Gal 4.24; see also Galatians 3!), some of which he inherited (1 Cor 11.25). More than an assertion seems to be necessary here (and throughout this essay).



• James C. Miller's essay, "Paul and Hebrews: A Comparison of Narrative Worlds" (245–64) was a very stimulating essay comparing the narrative worlds assumed by Hebrews and Paul. Miller is heavily influenced by N. T. Wright's discussion of story and worldview, which opens up the texts to some interesting insights. Wright's emphatically theological approach to worldview is also, I would suggest, a limitation that overlooks other interesting insights. Here the sociology of knowledge (invoked primarily in Knut Backhaus's essay on ethics in Hebrews) would have helped flesh out Wright's model. But this seems to me precisely the way to address Hebrews's relation to Paul's letters. That is, the question is less one of influence or (even less likely) of authorship, but rather of how their reflection and projection of reality compare and contrast.

If you're looking for an introduction to the scholarly discussion of Hebrews, Gelardini's book is as good a place as any to get started, I would imagine. It's an advanced text, but it's well worth the effort it takes to read the book.

more on Hebrews

I have continued reading Gabriella Gelardini's edited volume, Hebrews: Contemporary Methods—New Insights, and I've been surprised how much I'm enjoying it. Here I only have time to name a couple of interesting observations, whether about Gelardini's book, about Hebrews itself, or about other New Testament scholarship.

• First, a structuralist observation. Gelardini's essay, "Hebrews, an Ancient Synagogue Homily for Tisha be-Av: Its Function, its Basis, its Theological Interpretation" (107–127), is the final essay of Part One (Cultic Language, Concepts, and Practice in Hebrews) and reads the text in thoroughly Judaic terms. Her discussion of ancient synagogue homilies and the Palestinian Triennial Cycle was fascinating (at least to me; I have absolutely no experience in this field), and her mapping of Hebrews onto this cycle was compelling. But it was especially interesting, I thought, that the next essay, Ellen Bradshaw Aitken's "Portraying the Temple in Stone and Text: The Arch of Titus and the Epistle to the Hebrews" (131–148), takes a radically different turn and reads Hebrews in a thoroughly Roman context.
  
  The disjunction between Gelardini's and Bradshaw Aitken's essays is not mitigated by the beginning of Part Two (Sociology, Ethics, and Rhetoric in Hebrews); they read the same text in completely different universes of discourse. For Gelardini, Hebrews means by way of its relation to tisha be-Av and its gravitational effects on the liturgical reading of Torah and the Prophets. For Bradshaw Aitken, Hebrews means primarily by way of its relation to Roman political discourse, "but doing so indirectly by means of typological reflection on the Yom Kippur rituals and inadequacy of the high priests in the earthly sanctuary" (142–143). The phrase "indirectly by means of" caught my attention. Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but it appears to me she's suggesting that Hebrews only appears to be concerned with Judaic universes of meaning; it's real semantic field is Roman (viz., Flavian) imperial rhetoric.


• Knut Backhaus's essay, "How to Entertain Angels: Ethics in the Epistle to the Hebrews" (149–175) was a very interesting exploration of Hebrews' paraenetic significance. In view of our text's theological, philosophical, and exegetical gravity—anyone who's ever read Hebrews knows immediately that the text is a "heavy" text!—its ethical dimension is surprisingly anemic.
  
  

  Nevertheless, readers today are far from being impressed by the specific instructions eventually offered in the last major section, especially in Heb 13: Let us do good works (Heb 10:24)! Attend Sunday service (Heb 10:25)! Let the marital bed be undefiled (Heb 13:4)! Respect the church authorities (Heb 13:7, 17)! Keep to orthodox doctrine (Heb 13:9)! (150)
  

  
  Backhaus's conclusion deserves mention: "To arrive at exhortations of this kind, it may seem, the intellectual level of the Epistle of Jude would suffice" (150), to which I add my own exclamation point: ! But Backhaus provides a helpful re-examination of the ethical significance of Hebrews, a re-examination that is evident when pairing his essay's first words with its last:
  
  

  The theological mountain is in labor—but what is born is a moral mouse! It is this impression one may get reading the Epistle to the Hebrews in order to piece together its instructions into an ethical whole. . . . On the contrary, each human gesture in the everyday dramas of life, however meaningless it may seem, becomes infinitely meaningful and gains an immeasurable ethical relevance. In the midst of human affairs we “entertain angels,” keepers of transcendence in a disenchanted world. The theological mountain is in labor—and what is born is an ethical universe. (149, 175)
  

  
  
• Then I read Benjamin Dunning's essay, "The Intersection of Alien Status and Cultic Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews" (177–198). Dunning's essay was interesting (despite an uncertain beginning; the first sentence asked, "What made Mormons different?", which made me ask, "Who switched my book?!"), but my interest was piqued obliquely by a reference to F. F. Bruce. Regarding Hebrews's reference to ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς [exō tēs parembolēs; "outside the camp"] in 13.11, 13, Dunning says,
  
  

  The other major alternative is to interpret the appeal to join Jesus ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς as a call to leave Judaism. According to this argument, as F. F. Bruce maintains, "the 'camp' stands for the established fellowship and ordinances of Judaism. To abandon them, with all their sacred associations inherited from remote antiquity, was a hard thing, but it was a necessary thing." (192–193)
  

  
  I could scarcely believe that F. F. Bruce would so blatantly pitch Hebrews against a Jewish background (rather than reading it within a Judaic symbolic universe), so I had to chase down the reference. Sure enough, Dunning was right. I cannot myself understand how we could read a text like Hebrews (!!), which is so thoroughly steeped in a world perceived and evaluated in terms of Hebrew biblical traditions, as being anything other than a Jewish text. How Hebrews advocates a move outside "Judaism" is utterly incomprehensible . . . or at least, it should be. The fact that it isn't ought to suggest to us that the habits we marshal when we turn to read the New Testament—the quintessentially Christian (= not-Jewish) canon of texts—have failed us even from step one.

According to the table of contents, I have five more essays in Gelardini's book. As a neophyte within Hebrews scholarship, I recommend this book with some enthusiasm. Those of you with more experience in Hebrews scholarship, please feel free to sound a warning if, in fact, these essays represent marginal rather than compelling arguments about perhaps the most enigmatic NT document.

διαθήκη [diathēkē] in Heb 9.16–17

I'm currently reading Scott Hahn's essay, "Covenant, Cult, and the Curse-of-Death: Διαθήκη in Heb 9:15–22" (Hebrews: Contemporary Methods—New Insights [Gabriella Gelardini, ed.; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005], 65–88). Hahn provides cogent reasons for rejecting the traditional interpretation of διαθήκη ["covenant, will, testament"] in Heb 9.16–17 as "testament," in particular that διαθήκη so obviously means covenant in 9.15 and 9.18. He then considers other arguments that have retained a cultic/liturgical understanding of διαθήκη [= "covenant"] across Heb 9.15–18 before moving on to suggest his own interpretation.

Hahn finds two primary "Difficulties in the Case for Διαθήκη as Covenant" (80–81): (i) that "covenants were not always ratified by the ritual slaughter of animals" (my emphasis), and (ii) "it does not seem plausible that the two phrases θάνατον ἀνάγκη φέρεσθαι τοῦ διαθεμένου, 'it is necessary for the death of the covenant-maker to be borne,' and ὅτε ζῇ ὁ διαθέμενος, 'while the covenant-maker is alive,' are intended in a figurative sense." I have the same objection as no. (ii), but I'm not sure no. (i) has any force. It seems to me that the literal ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals in the making ("cutting") of a covenant/oath isn't necessary, especially since the image of slaughter had come to be associated with the language of oath-making. Swearing an oath, in other words, was deadly business even without the sacrifice.

Hahn's proposal, however, attempts to deal with objection no. (ii) head-on. He reads διαθήκη in 9.16–17 not as a reference to "covenant" in general (so ὅπου γὰρ διαθήκη = "where there is a covenant/will") but to the Mosaic covenant given at Sinai and broken by Israel. Hence the reference to "transgressions" [παραβάσεων] in 9.15: Since [ὅπου] there is a covenant (v 16), and since there were transgressions (v 15), death has become necessary [ἀνάγκη; v 16 again] (see Hahn 2005: 81–82).

I've never read Scott Hahn before, but I've enjoyed this essay and find it compelling. More than that, he makes some comments (e.g., pp. 70–1, esp. n. 15) that frame the Hebrews text in explicitly, persistently, and emphatically Jewish terms. This, I think, is the proper way to read the New Testament.

sacrifice: What's all the fuss?

As I pursue my interest in the analytical difference made in our exegetical and historical reconstructions by the so-called "Parting of the Ways," both the book of Hebrews (I can't bring myself to write "epistle to") and the presence of cultic images/metaphors/references in the NT have caught my attention. So I've been reading Christian Eberhart's essay, "Characteristics of Sacrificial Metaphors in Hebrews" (Hebrews: Contemporary Methods—New Insights [Gabriella Gelardini, ed.; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005], 37–64) and, quite frankly, learning a lot. Eberhart begins by arguing that burning, rather than slaughter, is the central idea of θυσία [thusia] and זבח [zevaḥ], especially since what is burned in the burning rite rises up to God.

So both the Hebrew term זבח and the Greek term θυσία need to be understood in a broader sense. Another general Hebrew term for sacrifices, קרבן, literally means "what is brought near" and will be translated as "offering," just like its Greek rendering προσφορά. Once more, neither the Hebrew nor the Greek term stresses or alludes to animal slaughter. Instead, both express the inherent dynamics of a sacrificial ritual which, throughout its performance, "moves" toward the most holy altar, thus "approaching" God who resides in the sanctuary. Therefore a first conclusion of this survey of the sacrificial cult in the HB/OT is that the slaughter of animals is rather insignificant. (44; my emphasis)

I was a bit surprised to see the word "insignificant" used to describe the "slaughter" of sacrificial animals; I would have thought that if death weren't an important part of the idea then some animals would have been offered alive (and kept that way). But at the same time I find myself somewhat persuaded that the emphasis of this language is on "giving (up) to God" rather than "killing (for God)."

This has some rather important consequences for a number of well-known (and well-worn) passages from the NT, including 1 John 1.7 and Rom 12.1–2, which Eberhart touches on (50–55). And while sometimes he seems to be making distinctions without meaningful differences (e.g., 52, n. 32), I do find his reading compelling.

My question is, Do any of you—who probably know more about the sacrificial cult in the Hebrew Bible, in second-Temple Judaism, or as refracted in the NT—find Eberhart's argument as compelling as I do? Is there something to be said in defense of the traditional emphasis of sacrifice on "death" rather than—or simply more than—on "offering"?

reading Hebrews

This morning I finished reading through the Greek text of Hebrews (whew!), and I resumed reading Hebrews: Contemporary Methods—New Insights (Gabriella Gelardini, ed.; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005). I say "resumed," but the truth is I had only read Gelardini's introduction and the Foreword (by Harold Attridge).

So this morning I read Ekkehard and Wolfgang Stegemann's essay, "Does the Cultic Language in Hebrews Represent Sacrificial Metaphors? Reflections on Some Basic Problems" (13–23). The Stegemanns begin with the postmodern critique of Western epistemology (or rather of invisibility of that epistemology [17]); they then pursue the motivations for and significance of describing Hebrews's cultic presentation of Jesus' death as "metaphor." We apply the label metaphor because "the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem, which is taken as the historical referent outside the relevant passages in Hebrews, neither shows any feature of the performance of a cultic sacrifice nor regards Jesus as a substitute for an animal victim" and functions rather "as a means toward a theological understanding of the death of Christ" (15).

The Stegemanns, then, demonstrate the culturally contextualized nature of this way of thinking about history and about the text. I found their conclusion particularly stimulating, and I hope to follow up their argument in the future:

The decision between a metaphorical and non-metaphorical interpretation of the death of Jesus depends on our assessment of the historical referent to which a textual passage is related. Therefore it depends on the respective model of reality that, as far as our model is concerned, we take as universally valid. We easily admit that the metaphorical use of sacrificial language is very helpful and deepens our interpretation of the crucifixion—but just as interpretation of the crucifixion, not its representation. On the contrary, the discourses of the social and legal aspects of the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem are in our view not interpretations of the historical events but their representation. (18; original emphases)

If I've read the Stegemanns rightly, they suggest reading the cultic language of Jesus' death in Hebrews as representation rather than interpretation (18). Their reading provides interesting material to ponder, but I think scholarship in general has reacted to postmodern critiques in a different direction. Rather than reading Hebrews's sacrificial language as representation, I think we would tend to highlight the interpretive functions of other, presumably non-metaphorical representations of history. I am not sure, however, whether these are actually two different reactions.