Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David A. deSilva (Ph.D., Emory, 1995) is Trustees' Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio. His publications include Seeing Things John's Way: The Rhetoric of the Book of Revelation (Westminster John Knox, 2009), 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text (Brill, 2006), An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry Formation (InterVarsity, 2004), Introducing the Apocrypha (Baker Academic, 2002), Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle "to the Hebrews" (Eerdmans, 2000), and Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (InterVarsity, 2000). He is an ordained elder in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.

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Perseverance in Gratitude

A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle "to the Hebrews"By David A. deSilva

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2000 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-4188-9

Contents

Preface............................................................................................xiAcknowledgments....................................................................................xvAbbreviations......................................................................................xviiIntroduction.......................................................................................11. Responding to God's Word and Work in the Son: Hebrews 1:1–2:18............................832. The Inexpediency of Distrust: Hebrews 3:1–4:13............................................1313. Jesus, Our Guarantor of God's Favor: Hebrews 4:14–5:10....................................1794. Honoring God Necessitates Perseverance: Hebrews 5:11–6:20.................................2095. Jesus, the Better-Qualified Mediator of God's Favor: Hebrews 7:1–8:13.....................2616. The Decisive Removal of Sin's Defilement: Hebrews 9:1–10:18...............................2917. Draw Near to God and to Each Other: Hebrews 10:19–39......................................3338. Faith's Orientation in the World: Hebrews 11:1–12:3.......................................3779. In Training for the Kingdom: Hebrews 12:4–29..............................................44510. Living in Gratitude to God: Hebrews 13:1–25..............................................483Bibliography.......................................................................................529Index of Modern Authors............................................................................543Index of Texts Cited...............................................................................547

Introduction

When we consider the situation to which the Letter "to the Hebrews" responds, we are without much of the supplemental data available for understanding, say, the Corinthian letters or Revelation. For those texts, extensive investigations of the city of Corinth or Ephesus (and the other six cities addressed in Revelation) provide a rich picture of the setting of the addressees and, in many cases, illuminate specific references in the text. With Hebrews, however, the identity of the author remains, after two millennia of speculation, unknown, and the locations of author and addressees remain unspecified. Many scholars advance arguments for a specific location, from Rome to the Lycus Valley to Jerusalem itself, in an attempt to avoid "exegetical generality." While some hypotheses certainly appear stronger than others, they remain precisely that — hypotheses. Even if we cannot, however, determine such particulars as the name of the author, the location of the addressees, and the like, we can elicit from the text a clear sense of the author's rhetorical agenda as well as a wealth of information concerning the audience, their history as a Christian community, and their current situation. "Exegetical generality" can thus still be avoided.

The Recipients of the Letter "To the Hebrews"

Ethnic Background

One central question concerning the addressees is their ethnic composition. The majority of extant manuscripts bear the superscription [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and ever since Tertullian (De pudic. 20) referred to the text by this title, the assumption of a Jewish Christian audience has been predominant. With this assumption in place, numerous aspects of the letter can then be used to "prove" the conjecture. Prominent among these proofs is the suggestion that the author's wideranging use of the OT, and the weight he places on arguments from the OT, would have been meaningful chiefly to an audience of Jewish origin. Moreover, the author's use of exegetical methods, which came to characterize rabbinic Judaism, suggests a Jewish environment for both author and recipients. The author's interest in the Jewish cult "would probably have left gentile readers cold." Proving the obsolescence of the Old Covenant is thought to be a matter of importance for Jewish, not Gentile, Christians. The result of this assumption is almost inevitably the suggestion that the problem addressed by Hebrews is a potential reversion to Judaism on the part of Jewish Christians who seek to avoid ongoing tension with their non-Christian Jewish families and neighbors.

There is, however, nothing compelling us to view the Christian addressees as exclusively, or predominantly, Jewish in origin. Unlike the author of the Pauline letters (as well as books like 1 Peter and Revelation), the author of Hebrews identifies neither himself nor his readers. The title "To the Hebrews" represents an early conjecture concerning the addressees based on an estimation of the contents. This ascription could well be ideologically motivated. As the movement developed and the gap between synagogue and church widened into an irreparable chasm, having a canonical "response" to the parent religion — a sort of indirect manifesto of supersessionism — would have been valuable as a witness to the legitimacy of the sect's existence and ideology. The literature of the early Church attests to the importance of the sect's self-definition over against Judaism, and this letter, with its prominent use of the rhetorical device of synkrisis (comparison, here between Jesus and the mediators of the "old covenant"), could reinforce that task admirably. Not much weight, therefore, should be placed on "external attestation" on this point.

Arguments based on what would be appropriate or relevant to Christians of one race over another are even more specious. The Gentile entering the Christian community became an "heir of the promise," a "child of Abraham," the "Israel of God," the "circumcision," and the "royal priesthood, God's holy nation." That is to say, the Gentile Christian was socialized to view himself or herself as the heir to the titles and promises that belonged to God's chosen people (historically, the Jewish people). The Gentile Christian was also enculturated to regard the Jewish Scriptures as the "oracles of God" (cf. Heb. 5:12, where these serve as the primary textbook of the Christian converts), and was taught to read those oracles, moreover, as the divine revelation that legitimated the Christian hope and shaped the Christian ethos. Christian worship and proclamation involved the reading of these oracles and their exposition in the distinctive Christian manner. The canonical texts provide only a few windows into the lives of the early Christian communities. What happened in Christian communities in the "everyday" rhythm of assembling for worship and teaching was likely to be oriented toward instruction from the OT as well as from the teachings of Jesus (which were, themselves, largely concerned with deriving an ethic from the Jewish Scriptures). We must not allow the plight of so many modern Gentile Christians, with their relative lack of knowledge of the OT, to color our understanding of the first-century convert, for whom the OT was the revelation of God's will, the source (together with the experience of the Spirit) for the legitimation of the sect and the hope to which those converts clung.

Both Galatians and 1 Peter address audiences that are in some major part Gentile. The argument of Galatians (the exhortation against receiving circumcision, which...