aa5874

So, essentially, what we have discovered is that the 'smoking gun' is really the result of a 'suicide'. Hebrews 8.4 did 'explode' in Doherty's own face.

It is still in his hand and 'smoking' as he 'lay' there fatally wounded.

Bernard Muller

The so-called ambiguity of Heb 8:4 dissipates quickly when we consider, from the same book, 7:14, 2:14-17 and 5:7.
Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller

The so-called ambiguity in 8:4 is not because of the author, but rather because of the Koine Greek. For a present contrafactual, the imperfect tense is used on both sides. And that's what we have in 8:4. The problem is, for a past contrafactual, the same tense can be used on both sides, instead of the aorist. I wish I knew more about when the imperfect would be required (or allowed) for a past contrafactual.
Cordially, Bernard

Roo Bookaroo

Bernard:

You're probably correct when it comes to the puny line of 10 words.

What Ellingworth and Detering are referring to is the totality of the 7,300-word Hebrews text, developing a comprehensive interpretation of the author's vision, which of course encompasses your translation of the first 10 words of Hebrews 8:4.
It's only Doherty who attributes this overpowering quality to one selected verse over all the others and stakes all his chips on that verse.

This challenge has distorted our perspective, focusing only on one tense of a verb as if it was the key to the whole book.
Ellingworth and Detering say that we should not lose sight of the forest for this puny little twig.

Ellingworth clearly explains the powerful attraction of Hebrews to commentators.
He compares it to a Wagner opera, or a detective novel:
Anybody who would have the time and access to a top Un. library (Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, New York public library) could, as an exercise, go through the 73 versions of existing Hebrews commentaries and collect the 73 intepretations of 8:4.
Not to get a "consensus" à la Maryhelena, but an objective reading of what's what.

My subjective guess is that the great majority would agree with your translation in the present tense, and only a few exceptions, if any, might follow the past tense.

This is purely a mental test. Nobody is going to go through that trouble, but in itself it would be an amusing exercise.
Good for a professor to give as an assignment to one of his graduate students. Bart Ehrman could do it. Carrier could not (no graduate students to help him).

I still find it staggering that publishers are still accepting to publish another 19 commentaries of Hebrews when 73 are already on the market.
It shows it is a hot potato, a kind of best-seller in its specific active market, and every Bible studies publisher wants to have "his" Hebrews on his list.

aa5874

1500 years ago Chrysostom wrote Homilies on Hebrews and did not encounter any ambiguity with Hebrews.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2402.htm

It is not expected that Hebrews was composed for ONLY those with a PhD.

If the majority of people in antiquity were illiterate then Hebrews must be rather easy to understand.

Hebrews can be found in the NT Canon where Jesus the Son of God was born of a Virgin and a Ghost, baptized by John, crucified under Pilate in Jerusalem after a trial with the Sanhedrin and buried by Joseph of Aritmathea.

People of antiquity must have understood that Hebrews did support the Gospels without any ambiguity.

Bernard Muller

Well put
I think we should ask ourself what would be the natural & instant understanding of any passage of epistles when read to an uneducated audience in antiquity.
I also think the author of Hebrews detailed his line of thought much better than Paul. Actually, in Hebrews, many Christian concepts are explained from scratch (but through quotes out of context!) when, in the Pauline epistles, the same appear with no explanation.
Cordially, Bernard

Roo Bookaroo

Bernard and AA:

Absolutely on target.

Better than that, Hebrews was NEVER written for Ph.D.s

That is why, earlier, I suggested the need to review how the verse was translated in the past, BEFORE THE PH.D.s came on the scene, before Paul Ellingworth became necessary to decipher the text.
I went back to Jerome and showed how direct and straightforward his translation was.

Illiterate people in Antiquity never "read" Hebrews , but they may have heard passages real in church. And Bernard is right, only "natural and instant understanding" must have been the rule.

But that worked only when the readings were in the original Greek.
The problems started with translating, and the skills of the translator. The more skilled, the more problems and ambiguity he may have perceived.

It's only with the multiplication of teaching jobs that all professors have to show off their erudition and seize on Hebrews as a favorite showpiece of their scholarly skills. Now it's practically only Ph.D.s who read and comment on Hebrews.
100 commentaries. Mindboggling.

The idea that it was necessary to produce a complex and verbose dissertation of 9 pages with 5,800 words to translate 10 words which read very easily and fluently is a modern distortion.

Again, a lot depends on our mental structuring. It is our modern minds, loaded with a mountain of external considerations and connotations that make us see the ambiguity and opacity. And the more educated the Ph.D. the more ambiguity and opacity he's going to discover.
After all, Ellingworth's book on Hebrews is 800-page long!

So he's right to say that the problem is in the gap between our modern mind and that of the original author. The two cannot meet without a huge quantity of explanation and interpretation.


Clerical people and professional scholars were able to access the scrolls and codices to see the text. And, if not "illiterate", they probably were pretty simple-minded. The highly educated readers, like Chrysostom or Jerome must have been extremely rare.

Roo Bookaroo

Bernard:

You could easily send an email to Ellingworth, and I'm sure he would answer you.

Roo Bookaroo

This is an important point.
Paul Ellingworth supports this by examining the kind of audience the letter was addressed to. His answer: the letter was meant to be preached to its target audience. The primary addressees then were hearers, not readers.
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pd...llingworth.pdf
Also they were not complete illiterate, but had some exposure to the OT, which is quoted all through the letter.
What the author is proposing is the perplexing piece of a fused idea of Christ as "High priest" and "self-sacrifice".

Bernard, I strongly suggest that you do read the whole of "Reading through Hebrews 1-7 Listening especially for the theme of Jesus as high priest", by Paul Ellingworth.

It is short, 9 pages of the Epworth Review (Jan. 85), and very instructive.
In any event, I am quoting here the relevant passage, especially for your sake, since you seem to be a close reader of the Hebrews text.

[p.82]
In one sense, we simply do not know who the original addressees were, any more than we know the name of the author. There is, I think, much to be said for the idea that this so-called epistle was first written to be preached, and then sent off to another congregation with a covering note, so that the very first addressees were hearers, not readers. But I do not find any of the more specific theories convincing; for example, that the addressees were converted Qumran priests.(4)
What we can tell, from Hebrews itself, is what kind of people they were. They were certainly steeped in the Old Testament: no doubt less

[p.83]
deeply than the author, but still well versed in scripture, unless the author was so uncharacteristically foolish as to speak completely over their heads.

They were Christians, and had been for some years, yet in course of time something was happening to weaken the liveliness of their faith; perhaps to relativize the place of Jesus within it. There had been some pressure on them from outside. The author’s great fear is that when the big test came, they would not have the resources to withstand it, and would apostatize, like so many members of God’s people in Old Testament times. There can be no standing still: unless they move forward with Christ, they will fall back, not as is sometimes said into Judaism, or Old Testament faith, but into a loss of that entire, integral faith which finds its completion in Christ.

This, I think, is the reason why, as well as reminding his hearers of what they already know and believe, the author feels he must move forward into this doubly difficult teaching about Jesus as high priest (a new title in superficial contradiction with history), and as being also himself (by a typical piece of fusion thinking) his own sacrifice.

And the main area or dimension in which the author and his hearers must move forward together is neither that of moral exhortation (though there is some of that), nor even that of reasoned proof (though reasoned proof is a tool he uses skilfully), but that of a worship of which Christ, their high priest, is the centre and focus.

Towards the end, Paul Ellingworth adds

[p.86]
"‘Now this Melchizedek.’ Chapter 7 is not the climax of Hebrews. Structurally, the centre of its concentric circles comes in 9:11 with the word ‘Christ’,(8) in a text which speaks simultaneously of his priesthood and his sacrifice.

Rhetorically, the climax of the book comes in the final great nodal passage 12:18-24, into which flow Old Testament quotation and allusion, old and new covenants, and a vision of worship in which, as a result of what Christ did, the boundaries between heaven and earth are by anticipation lifted; not only for the first hearers and readers, but whenever this word is heard and understood in the community of faith: ‘You have not come to something which can be touched... but you have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God... and the new covenant of which the mediator is Jesus, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks something better than Abel’s sacrifice.’

Bernard Muller

Hello ROO,
Interesting but we are getting off the topic on that thread.
But I want to say I do not agree with Ellingworth on one point.

Well, Paul inserted quite a few OT quotes & stories in his epistles to the mostly Gentile Corinthians. Later the author of 1Clement put a huge number of OT quotes and paraphrasing in his epistle to the same church.
Furthermore Hebrews explains with a lot of details, even repetitions, anything relative to the OT. And in Ch. 11, the author did not expect his audience to know about the stories of, among others, Samson, David & Samuel.
That tells me some Gentile audiences were receptive to OT scriptures, even if they were new for them. It seems these authors used them as authority to make their points.
So maybe you guessed by now to whom I think the letter was addressed.
More details here

Most of everything in the letter looks to have been new for his audience. His latest teaching during a visit to the same people (recorded by Paul in 1Corinthians: guess who I think is the author) did not incorporate any advanced Christology:
6:1-2 "Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, with instruction about ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment"

The rest is OK by me, without going into nuances.

Cordially, Bernard