aa5874

Many in scholarship, many of your own peers, have already rejected your interpretation so trying to give the impression that Ted M's rebuttal is not schorlarship based is of no significance.

As I have pointed out before you have utterly failed to provide any corroborative evidence from antiquity that Hebrews was composed before the Jesus story was known and have utterly failed to present a source of antiquity that support your claim that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was never on earth.

May I remind you that you can no longer put forward the debunked claim that Hebrews was composed before the Gospels because it does NOT contain the earthly life of Jesus.

You very well know that Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1&2 Timothy and Titus are considered Late forgeries and do NOT contain the earthly life of Jesus story found in the Gospels.

As soon as Pauline writings were found to be late forgeries then that finding confirmed without reasonable doubt that writings WITHOUT the earthly life of Jesus can be written long AFTER the Jesus stories were known.

TedM

I first postulated that the 'something to offer' of 8:3 could refer to ongoing offering of salvation/mediation/intercession/prayers as high priest in heaven. That's not unreasonable. It is true that he had that to offer. And, the context the surrounding verses supports the idea that the author was focusing on the present. It still is a possible interpretation, although I no longer support it.

The 'switch' then was done not simply to come up with something else, but because I continue to interpret the entire context as more significant to the meaning of 8:4 than you do. I didn't really 'come up with something else' at all. I just conceded a point, but have kept to my original contention that the context is more supportive of a 'present tense' meaning than a 'past tense'.


I'm copying over to this thread part of my latest response to you on Bernard's thread from last night(slightly modified), which is a reply to your claim that if 8:4 were talking about the present, it would be 'jibberish':

I wrote:


"You see 8:4 as jibberish with respect to a present tense because Jesus has taken his role as high priest in heaven--ie there is no need to talk about being on earth now since the sacrifice had already occurred.

I see it as not jibberish because since there were still priests on earth in the present it would be natural to discuss Jesus as an earthly priest AFTER having made his offering because both the earthly priests AND Jesus as high priest were still actively fulfilling roles as priests. The idea of the new high priest Jesus coming to earth -- perhaps to replace earthly priests -- seems a reasonable possibility, especially since there was interest in Jesus' return to earth at any time (present or future). The author doesn't give a very satisfying reason in 8:4 other than to say 'hey he wouldn't be a priest because there are priest here according to Law--serving COPIES that are shadows of the real deal'. The implication is that Jesus wouldn't be doing that since he is the real deal. He's where he needs to be now.

You accused me of being atomistic, I might suggest you are doing the same here ignoring the overall context and focusing only on the location of earth vs heaven, and not the inferior vs superior aspect. I showed how the surrounding verses support the idea that the OLD was inferior to the already established NEW covenant and was therefore ALREADY becoming obsolete (8:13) so there is no need for Jesus to come down to become part of the OLD covenant priesthood.
8:4 doesn't say all of that, but the verses surrounding it do."

How is saying " he wouldn't be a priest here because earthly priests operate according to the OLD covenant and he is a priest under the NEW covenant" any more jibberish than saying " he wouldn't have been a priest here on earth in the past because there were already priests on earth."? Your interpretation appears to rather conveniently leave out the 'according to the Law' part of the verse which, when included, seems to make the two ideas almost identical.

TedM

Looking just at what 8:4 says, I think the problem is that it doesn't say why Jesus would not be a priest. Instead it only IMPLIES it. By saying 'since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law', the implication is very VERY simple:

Jesus would not be a priest on earth because he did not/does not offer gifts according to the Law.

That's it. That's all we can get out of this. I don't see how 6 pages of analysis can get us any closer to the reason why Jesus wasn't/wouldn't be a priest on earth.

This would have been true if the author was talking about Jesus' coming in the past: His offer of Himself was not 'according to the Law'.

This also would have been true if the author was talking about Jesus coming in the present: He would not be offering gifts according to the Law.


Either interpretation is supported. Verse 3 only serves to say that priests must offer something. Earthly priests must offer something. This High Priest must offer something. That's all. It doesn't imply that the author has shifted his thinking to the past. Nor does it imply that the author is thinking about the present. It's just a statement of duties.

For the life of me I can't figure out why Earl is adamant that a present tense meaning would be jibberish, UNLESS he were reading more into the text than the obvious implication of what is actually there.

I think since the passage begins with the declaration:

it sets the readers mind in the present as the main focal point. It would be rather odd for him to immediately go backward in time to explain why Jesus would not have come to earth as a priest prior to becoming the heavenly high priest. That would cause the reader to lose his focus on the present situation. It seems more reasonable for him to introduce a hypothetical that lies in the present: What if Jesus came to earth NOW? Would he become a priest?

What we are missing for proof of a present tense meaning is one word--still:

It isn't there. But, the tense is clearly in the present:
If the author meant to convey a hypothetical past, why didn't he use the past tense in that section, like this?:

That would have eliminated any ambiguity about priests who were STILL operating in the present.


To be fair, the author does jump to the past in the latter part of verse 5, in order to supply some history of the origination of the tabernacle, but he doesn't connect that to the time of the crucifixion (the past tense time period). Instead he immediately jumps back to the present in the next verse: 'But now..'

To recap:
1. The reason for not being a priest applies equally well to both past and present.
2. The preceding context --the main point-- is in the present.
3. The language used: At face value in 3 places in verse 4 he is talking about the present.
4. The following context: verse 6 again emphasizes the present situation, the better covenant.

Bernard Muller

YES,
8:1 "have a high priest" is present indicative. That would set the following verses in a present context.
For confirmation, in 8:3 "every high priest is ordained" 8:3 is present passive. And "necessity that this man have" is present active.
Then in 8:4b-5a "(there being the priests who are offering according to the law, the gifts, who unto an example and shadow do serve of the heavenly things," "are" and "do serve" are present active.

Congrats, I wish I thought of that before.

Cordially, Bernard

TedM

Thanks, but Earl addressed the tenses in the section before. And I agree with him that there are plenty of cases where an activity that originates in the past but also exists in the present might be expressed only using the present tense. This he ascribes to 8:3, and it's not a bad point. This isn't definitive by any means, and grammar is just one consideration.

But I sure don't see Earl's case a being strong one, and think that overall the language and context seem fairly consistently to be pointing to the author's present.

turning in..

EarlDoherty

Ted, I do not ignore the overall context, I am constantly referring to it. And I fail to see your reasoning that the “inferior vs superior aspect” (which is a context I have not ignored, since part of that superiority is that it needed to be done only once—in the past) has anything to do with the author being able to consider the possibility of a present priesthood for Jesus on earth. “So there is no need for Jesus to come down to become part of the old covenant priesthood,” whether it is passing away or not. What on earth would prompt a thought like that? Why would it need addressing? And the surrounding verses have nothing to do with Jesus operating on earth, even theoretically. The writer is constantly saying that he operates in a heavenly sanctuary, of which the earthly one is only a copy. That is your primary context. That is part of its superiority. So what does your proposed question have to do with anything? It’s a complete non-sequitur.

If 8:4 had said something like, he couldn’t be a priest on earth (whether past or present) because an earthly sacrifice would not have been good enough, or because his role is over, or whatever. But he didn’t. His essential point in this verse is that Jesus did not operate on earth because earth is the scene of the traditional high priests’ activity. It is simply a way of delineating the Platonic separation between their respective activities. I said that such an idea (or at least, the way he put it) was trivial, but in a past understanding it is not gibberish. Nor does 8:4 allow for an understanding that he wouldn’t be a priest on earth because that would make him part of the old covenant. It simply doesn’t say that. The simple meaning is that Jesus’ presence and priesthood on earth would have conflicted with the activities of the ongoing high priestly cult, not because it was superior to them but because each belonged in their own territory, and that separation of territory was required by his Platonic principles.

Not in the context it isn’t. And he is essentially denying that Jesus would be a priest on earth—in any time frame. So how can he be intending a meaning that would apply in reality in the future? And there isn’t a word in the text which implies any future possibility. You are again reaching for anything you can lay your hand on.

Ted, this is not the implication. I will literally translate from the Greek:

”If, therefore, he were / had been on earth, he would not be / have been a priest, there being those who offer gifts according to the law.”

To put it in clearer English: “…he would not be / have been a priest, because there are / were already priests here offering their sacrifices according to the law.”

The phrase “according to the law” can hardly be thought to render the meaning some oblique and obscure way of saying “he would not be a priest because Jesus’ sacrifices were not according to the Law as were the sacrifices offered on earth.” The phrase “according to the law” is simply adding a descriptive to those sacrifices. It does not in any way imply that this is the crux of the matter. You say: “That's it. That's all we can get out of this. I don't see how 6 pages of analysis can get us any closer to the reason why Jesus wasn't/wouldn't be a priest on earth.” But your effort to “all we can get out of this” is far more complex and contorted against the simple reading of the text than mine would be.

No it is not. The whole context (as you yourself wish to claim) has to do with superiority. Why stick in a banal thought like Jesus the High Priest had to be given something to do, just as the earthly high priests are kept busy? Even the thought of enumerating respective sacrifices (not “duties”) must relate to the past, since Jesus’ sacrifice took place in the past and cannot be repeated. (“Sacrifices” and “offering” does not, on Jesus’ side, include the duty of intercession.) The contrast has to be in regard to what their actual sacrifices constituted, in what location the superior one had to be performed in order to be superior (another motif in the surrounding context of these chapters), and most important that Jesus’ sacrifice was once-for-all whereas the earthly high priests have to repeat theirs. And in the context of that declaration, a present application would have no meaning, no relevance and would indeed be gibberish. It can only make sense in the context of the past, when Jesus’ sacrifice did take place.

I don’t know how to make it any clearer to you, and I don’t know how much longer I am going to respond to all these unworkable suggestions.

Earl Doherty

andrewcriddle

Hi Earl

rather than reply to the whole complex post I've isolated a part of it. I hope this doesn't cause too much confusion.

My problem is that you seem to start off with a very plausible interpretation of Hebrews, i.e. that the sacrificial offering is not the death of Christ itself but the offering in the heavenly sanctuary of the blood/life/death of Christ. This sacrificial offering must occur in a sanctuary and cannot occur in the earthly sanctuary therefore must occur in the heavenly sanctuary. You then claim that this establishes that the death of Christ itself, (which did not occur in a sanctuary of any sort ), cannot have happened on earth.

I just don't see how this follows, once you hold that the death of Christ is not in itself a priestly act I don't see how Hebrews 8:4 gives any information as to where the death occurred.

Andrew Criddle

EarlDoherty

I agree that per se the fact that the "sacrifice," the offering of the blood, takes place in heaven does not establish by itself that the death did not take place on earth, and hopefully I never implied that. Such a conclusion is established by other considerations, or at least made likely. To mention just two, I have made the point that if the death did occur on earth, it would have virtually forced the writer to make it a part of the sacrifice, since such a vivid historical event could hardly have been ignored. Thus Jesus would have to have been seen as a priest on earth. But if everything comes from scripture, and if the writer wishes to focus on the actual "sacrifice" in parallel with the sacrifices of the earthly high priests, then he can ignore the crucifixion itself without much chance of protest, either in his own mind or those of the readers.

The second reason is that the contrafactual implies that Jesus is/was not on earth, for a given reason. And if that given reason taken in a present sense is contradicted by the supposed opposite of that reason existing in the past, this would render the statement of a present sense contradictory and pointless.

And as I tried to convey by offering ludicrous questions (how was it carried to heaven? how was it converted to spiritual blood?), it gives rise to a number of problems. Any activity on earth by Jesus, and especially something as crucial as the actual shedding of earthly blood on an earthly cross, would have gone against his whole Platonic outlook of blood needing to be spiritual, of superior sacrifices needing to be performed in heaven as opposed to earth, and so on. In the context of an historical Jesus and historical crucifixion, the utter absence of any reference to such a venue and earthly activity would be incomprehensible. I don't think this is imposing something on the mind of the writer. It is simply common sense.

As I say in JNGNM (p.238):

EArl Doherty

thief of fire

But isn't this just an argument from incredulity?

Bernard Muller

to Doherty,
This spiritual blood is an invention of yours, drawn from a wrong NEB translation of Heb 9:14 which read as such:
YLT "how much more shall the blood of the Christ (who through the age-during Spirit did offer himself unblemished to God) purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"
No spiritual blood here. See my earlier posting: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....18#post7379218

In Hebrews, the sacrifice is a bodily one:
"but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Heb 9:26b
In the twelve occurrences of "sacrifice(s)" in 'Hebrews', the word "sacrifice(s)" is never associated with blood offering. More, "sacrifice(s)" is distinct of offerings in Heb 10:5 & 10:8.

And for offerings, not only Jesus' blood is offered but also his body:
"By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once [for all]." Heb 10:10

Could blood offering be considered the Sacrifice? Then why bother with killing animals or being crucified. Just extract a bit of blood from a small cut, present that to your god, et voila, you performed a sacrifice!

Cordially, Bernard