Ehrmann asks, given the large number of versions of early Christianity, why did the one we know today become dominant?  He suggests three crucial factors -- the three C's.

 

This unified front involved (a) developing a rigor­ous administrative hierarchy that protected and conveyed the truth of the religion (eventuating, for example, in the papacy), (b) insisting that all true Christians profess a set body of doctrines pro­moted by these leaders (the Christian creeds), and (c) appealing to a set of authoritative books of Scripture as bearers of these inspired doctrinal truths (the "New" Testament; see Chapter 1). Or to put the matter in its simplest and most allitera­tive terms, the proto-orthodox won these conflicts by insisting on the validity of the clergy, the creed, and the canon.

 

We had another look at Hebrews 10-13.  Chapter 10 continued the complicated metaphor of Christ as priest, and again ascribed passages in the Old Testament as sayings of Jesus, reinforcing the suspicion that a collection of sayings was being used, rather than scripture itself.  Chapter 11 is known among English evangelicals as the “Westminster Abbey of the Bible”, with its great collection of vignettes of OT characters, rather like the Irish lists of saints.  The reference at the end to saints “sawn in two” is puzzling; there is a statement in the “Ascension of Moses” that Isaiah was so treated, but this apocryphal work is thought to be later than the epistle, if not medieval.

 

The imagery of the final chapters reaches great heights  -- as we have noted before, more like a speech or a sermon than a letter, though there are some personal references at the end.  Did someone send out a transcript of a sermon, and add a few greetings?

We did a review of the Pauline epistles, and produced a chart of one-liner summaries.  This chart is in the "One-Liners" category.

We read chapters 9 and 10 of Hebrews, leaving 11-13 to the following week.

The writer continues his dense comparison of the duties of a high priest in the Temple with the role of Jesus as Redeemer.

The writer describes the contents of the Ark of The Covenant in the Holy of Holies; references in the Old Testament differ as to what these contents were, butit is possible that they changed over time.  The Ark is shown being carried away by Roman soldiers on the celebratory Arch of Titus in Rome; it current whereabouts are unknown, though one church in Ethiopia claimsto hold it.  It has been the subject of much revisionist history, from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" to "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Statements which are ascribed to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit are quotations from the Septuagint.  This supports that the idea that New Testament writers used a "bookof sayings" that did not always give the provenance of the quotations.

Chapters 5 thru 8 of Hebrews do a complicated piece of bible study based on Exodus 28 and Psalm 50. The writer theorises that Jesus followed the pattern of the mysterious figure Melchizedek. Without beginning or end, Jesus takes the place of the high priest who officiated in the Jerusalem Temple in a new temple in the heavens. The theology is complicated and somewhat non-Pauline. Would Paul have talked of Jesus "learning obedience" or entering the Holy of Holies?

Hebrews 1-4. The "Epistle to the Hebrews" prsents a puzzle, because no early manuscript contains the name of the author, or of the adressee. An early Bishop of Rome, Clement, thought that Paul must have written it in Hebrew, and got Luke to translate it into Greek. Tertullian, writing atthe very beginning of the Third Century, thought that it was written by Barnabas. Martin Luther put forward the idea that it was written by Apollos. The English scholar and archeologist, Dr. Ramsey, prosed that it was written by Philip The German theologian Hernack, made the startling suggestion that it was written by Priscilla, which might make it easier to explain why the author's name was removed from early documents. This argument is developed in the Wikipedia reference. Some have suggested, on the basis of its elegant, well-thought out Greek,, that it is not a letter at all, but a transcript of an early sermon, which would make it the only complete sermon to have survived from the early church. The record of Stephen's partial sermon in Acts is rather similar. When was it written The author spends much time arguing that temple ritual had been superseded. However, the destruction of the temple is not mentioned, suggesting that the letter was written before 70 AD. Clement quotes from it in around 90 AD To whom was it written? The only direct hint is the mention of "those who are from Italy" at the end of the letter, perhaps indicating that the letter was written to Rome. The heavy emphasis on arguments that Jesus outranks all other authorities, inlcuding angels, reminds many of the arguments against Gnostics (or proto-Gnostics) in Colossians, suggesting that it was written for a similar purpose. its focus on Jews suggests that it was written to a Jewish community. One suggestion has been that it is addressed to a community of Jewish ex-priests, (mentioned in Acts 6) under pressure to return to the temple. Other suggestions have been Jewish Christians, disappointed by the non-arrival of the Second Coming, tempted to return to orthodox Judaism. Other Jewish Christians may need instruction on the universalist aspect of Christianity, as against the nationalistic Judaism of c. 60 AD.   more »