TedM

It is clearly implied: Obviously Jesus had 'something to offer' as just stated in verse 8:3, but it wasn't 'according to the Law'.

The existing priests on earth were operating under the old, inferior LAW, which didn't do the job of washing away sins once and for all. This difference is clearly highlighted:

Jesus, the new High Priest, was sitting next to God, mediating a new and better covenant.

The earthly priests were still operating under the old, inferior, Law-based covenant.

THAT'S why it made no sense to have the new covenant High Priest come to earth to fulfill ongoing priestly duties alongside the priests who were under the LAW. This is true whether he was referring to a past or current hypothetical visit to earth.


You object that a present tense meaning in 8:4 would be 'jibberish' in the sense that it would be obvious that Jesus wouldn't be a priest on earth now since he had already made his sacrifice once and for all. Why, you ask, would the writer even think of making such an unnecessary statement?

Because Jesus was the High Priest sitting next to God (as just stated), and yet high priests still existed on earth! He may simply have been answering the question: Why isn't Jesus a high priest on earth now?


Re the 'present' interpretation, you wrote:

He wasn't a priest according to the Law. No contradiction.






Other than 13:7, I am not seeing an identification as to where the crucifixion occurred. It appears to me that the sacrifice of Himself through death, wherever it occurred, enabled him to enter God's tabernacle, which was in heaven. Since the tabernacle is the LOCATION of the heavenly sacrifice/offer to God, it is clear that the actual sacrifice -- the place of his crucifixion -- took place SOMEWHERE ELSE PRIOR TO his entry into heaven:




?? What scriptural comparison? The killing of the animals took place in the court of the temple. Inside the city. Therefore the 'suffering' under the Law took place inside the city, inside the gate. Why couldn't the author have made a better parallel, and had Jesus suffering and crucified inside the city in the lower heavens? I see no reasonable connection to the place of burning AFTER the animals were sacrificed, and the place of Jesus' suffering BEFORE he sacrificed himself. It seems more reasonable to me to explain the 'unworkable parallel' not by the writer 'simply trying to find parallels with the scriptural comparison (for what are they?)', but by the likelihood that the writer knew the actual location on earth where Jesus was said to have been crucified. IF it was all made up and the author just couldn't find good parallels, he could have just not addressed the location of the crucifixion at all!

I see no basis for the idea of higher and lower heavens in Hebrews. In fact, the tabernacle appears to have been in heaven itself:

9:24-25
I know you get tired of hearing it, but while Hebrews quotes the OT many times to support the idea of Jesus as high priest and savior, it seems conspicuously silent with regard to OT sources for several things regarding Jesus:

1. His name
2. Who the sinners were that were hostile toward him
3. The claim that it was 'evident' that he was of the tribe of Judah
4. The location of his suffering outside the city gate
5. Crucifixion as the method of his death

Have I overlooked the OT sources in Hebrews for these? It seems to me that only #3 has a strong OT basis.

Ted

andrewcriddle

Hi Stephan

Thanks for this.

IIUC Chrysostom is interpreting the passage to mean that Christ only became a priest after ceasing to be on earth. I.E. he was on earth but was not at that time a priest now he is a priest but is no longer on earth.

Andrew Criddle

jakejonesiv

I have a grammar only question for all. The grammar per se is ambiguous. Given the existing sentence structure:

• If the writer of Hebrews 8:4 had wanted to say that Jesus had never been on earth in the most unambiguous manner, what would he have written?
• If the writer had wanted to say,in the most unambiguous manner, that Jesus was not on earth now, but had been so in the past, what would he have written?
• How do the above compare with the text?

stephan huller

Andrew

I don't agree with the assertion that Jesus never came to earth. Nevertheless Chrysostom can be read to come very close to agreeing with parts of Doherty's interpretation of the material don't you think?

Bernard Muller

Greek is not my forte, but my understanding is:
The form used in Heb 8:4 with its two imperfect clauses is a text book example for present contrafactual case. I also noted, for the author, the present is pushed back in order to include the Sacrifice. For him, this is the NOW time.
But that does not say Jesus was or was not on earth in the past. That was not part of the point the author was making.
Correctly translated: "if he were on earth, he would not be a priest".
For unambiguous statement about Jesus not being on earth in the past, the past contrafactual would incorporate aorist tense in the two clauses, and would be translated as such:
"If he had been on earth, he would not have been a priest"

Cordially, Bernard

EarlDoherty

You never give up, do you, Bernard? Textbook example? Yes, our textbook example. Modern grammarians have to reduce an ancient language to recognizable usages to impose some order on it and make it easier for us to learn and study. Sometimes it's a matter of majority usage, minority usage. Or, to use a favorite term, an "exception" to a regularity. But the writer of Hebrews itself seems not to have always followed our textbook example. I have pointed out, as did you yourself, two examples right in Hebrews of a deviation from that textbook example. Why are you still coming back with the same old objection and appeal to grammatical rigidity which does not exist?

Wha??? Where did you do this? And what does this mean? The sacrifice of Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary is always styled as belonging to the past. It was performed once-for-all. It is over and done with. How can it be regarded as taking place in the present? You are cooking the books here, Bernard. What belongs in the present is the discovery of that past sacrifice, its revelation in scripture, which has taken place in "the time of reformation", the writer's own present.

It says exactly that. And if there is grammatical ambiguity, which Ellingworth and other grammarians point out and which you yourself have acknowledged, then grammatically it can mean "if he had been on earth, he would not have been a priest." What determines the correct translation is an analysis of the passage, which you have not subjected it to, let alone rebutted my own analysis demonstrating that it cannot apply to the present but must apply to the past. You say that was not part of the point the author was making, but you have to demonstrate that, Bernard, not just declare it. Others have tried and failed.

Bernard, your repeated parrotting of this line is getting tedious. If you have nothing further to say of a fresh nature than what you have been reciting like a broken record, particularly addressing my analysis of the passage to demonstrate that the present sense makes no sense and the past sense is the only one that does, I am going to ignore you. You've beaten the grammatical question to death. Move on.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Jake, you are getting as tiresome as Bernard. Our 'judgments' of ambiguity are based on modern codification of grammatical usage. We cannot say that for the writer of Hebrews, his usage of the imperfect in certain situations was less clear than using the aorist, and I've continually appealed to two other examples in Hebrews of the use of the imperfect in a clearly past application. I ask the same question I ask Bernard. Why do you keep coming back with the same objection when it has been answered multiple times?

Earl Doherty

aa5874

Once you argue that Hebrews 8.4 is ambiguous then it should have occurred to you years ago that you really do NOT have a 'smoking gun' or that the 'smoking gun' was the result of your 'suicidal' argument.

Ambiguity resolves nothing.

It is completely unacceptable that a self-admitted ambiguous statement in an anonymous text with unknown date of authorship and without attestation be relied on.

EarlDoherty

Yes, and Chrysostom, like all subsequent Christian scholars, was forced to come up with some interpretation which would reconcile this passage with the Gospel story. (It was done all the time, and continues to be done, with Paul and other early epistles.) It does not mean that Chrysostom's interpretation is thereby correct. In fact, it does not fit the text and commits the same kind of non-sequitur that other attempted explanations do, including those so far offered here. If the writer has defined Christ's priesthood as only that duty which he performed in heaven, namely the offering of his blood in the heavenly sanctuary (and if you want to bring in intercession as a priestly duty, that too has been defined as beginning only after the heavenly sanctuary duty was completed), then being a priest is defined as a role that takes place exclusively in heaven. This raises two problems no one has answered:

1) Making any statement that Jesus could not be a priest on earth in the present--for any reason--would be a complete non-sequitur. A totally unnecessary statement. Gibberish. The very definition, which Chrysostom is alleged to have in mind, would simply rule any such idea out. Moreover, it would have nothing to do with whether there were priests active on earth already or not.

2) How could a crucifixion on earth in recent history NOT have been made a part of the sacrifice, rendering him in fact a "priest on earth." Who would leave it out in creating this scenario of a high priest sacrificial Christ? And if given the memory of Calvary he would surely have been seen as a priest on earth in the past, why would he deny that he could be a priest on earth in the present when the stated reason was also active in the past?

Until questions like these can be satisfactorily answered (which they cannot), all the bleating and braying over grammatical rules is completely pointless. All that has to be established on the grammatical side is the equally legitimate application of the imperfect to past contrafactual situations, and thanks to Ellingworth and some grammarians, that has been done.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

One of these days I am going to manage to get a simple idea across to aa and others here. Let me repeat: It is not the ambiguity of the construction which resolves the question. Let me repeat in a language that aa understands: IT IS NOT THE AMBIGUITY OF THE CONSTRUCTION WHICH RESOLVES THE QUESTION.

The ambiguity makes possible a consideration of other factors regarding the sense of the passage in order to come down on the side of the only option in that ambiguity which makes sense and must be adopted.

Logic is logic. As far as I know, the rules of logic have not changed between ancient and modern times. Nor is the internal logic of a document or passage affected one way or the other by knowing or not knowing the date, the author or possessing a specific attestion to it.

Earl Doherty