The Second Chance for God’s People
Messages from Hebrews
Timothy W. Seid
THE SECOND CHANCE FOR GOD’S PEOPLE
Messages from Hebrews
Copyright © 2008 Timothy W. Seid. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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ISBN 13: 978-1-55635-826-5
EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7507-1
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Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations in this publication are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Bob Hartman, “It’s All About Who You Know,” Lyrics. Jekyll & Hyde, Inpop Records, 2003. Used with permission.
Elizabeth Mahr, “The Start is the Finish,” Marathon Guide.com, Accessed March 26, 2008. Online: http://www.marathonguide.com/features/FMStories/ElizabethMahr .cfm. Excerpts used with permission.
For my parents,Rev. William E. & Mary Jane Seid,on the occasion of their 60th wedding anniversary
Acknowledgments
I owe a debt of gratitude to the members of Salem Friends Meeting, Liberty, Indiana, for supporting me and working with me through the book of Hebrews. In addition, Earlham School of Religion provided me with the means to put this book together, including the helpful editing suggestions of ESR student Carrie Drees. The reader will find throughout this book references and stories about my wife, Suann, and our five daughters, Abby, Heidi, Emily, Lauren, and Tabitha. It’s been my privilege to be a part of their lives and to have them share a part of themselves through my work.
Introduction
I grew up as a preacher’s kid. Both of my parents are graduates of Moody Bible Institute. My earliest memories are about attending church and hearing my father preach sermons. One of those memories is of a time when I was allowed to sit with a friend. I must have been about six or seven years old. I don’t remember what I was doing, but I’m sure I was being noisy and disruptive. Dad stopped his sermon and told me to go sit with my mother. She was completely embarrassed and a bit angry. I think that was the time she tried to pinch my leg and couldn’t get a good grip. She may not have been able to get my attention then, but I did come to her one day around that age and ask her what it meant to be a Christian. My recollection is that she led me down the “Romans Road” and had me pray a prayer of salvation. It must have worked, because most of my life has been lived in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Their faithfulness to God has made a lasting impact on me and countless of others who have been privileged to have had them minister to them in their churches.
It was during my junior year of high school in Michigan when I began to feel the call to serve God in the ministry. I decided to attend the Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music. My eighth-grade sweetheart, Suann, joined me there and after graduation we were married. After that came several more schools. Our life was filled with books and babies.
Somewhere during those years I was aware that my father was preaching through Hebrews. It was the last sermon series of his that I was aware of. I became interested in Hebrews after graduating from Wheaton College Graduate School. We were house-sitting for some people during the summer prior to our moving to Providence, Rhode Island, where I had been accepted into the doctoral program in Early Christianity at Brown University. I knew that an eminent scholar of early Judaism taught in the program. I decided I was going to concentrate my studies on areas that would contribute directly to doing a dissertation on Hebrews. I planned to study Alexandrian Judaism in the works of Philo and Alexandrian Christianity through Clement and Origen. Before I arrived at Brown, however, Horst Moehring became ill and some months later passed away. Throughout the next five years of course work with Stanley Stowers and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, among others, I never thought about the book of Hebrews. It wasn’t until the time I needed to submit a dissertation proposal that I discovered clues that suggested Hebrews made use of an ancient Greek form of rhetoric called comparison (synkrisis).
I spent the next two years researching and writing my dissertation. My five daughters only remember that I was the one getting them ready for school in the morning, since Suann was unselfishly working full-time to support us. Before tackling the Greek of Plutarch, Hermogenes, and Aphthonius, I was expertly tying hair into ponytails and desperately trying to find one more sock.
I don’t know if I had experienced prophetic insight back when I thought about studying Hebrews. In any case, my life has become entwined with the text of a book that has eluded many and continues to be a book of great mystery. I’ve come back to Hebrews in an attempt to get at the primary message of the document for Christians today. God has led me on a journey that has made its way among the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). After graduating from Brown University in 1996, I began to serve part-time at a Quaker church in So. Dartmouth, MA called Smith Neck Friends Meeting. After several years we became “convinced Friends.” It was because of that opportunity I was led to my current position at Earlham School of Religion in 2001. I discovered a wonderful group of people at Salem Friends Meeting in Liberty, IN, who called me to be their pastor. They patiently listened to me as I began forming my thoughts about the meaning of Hebrews.
Language and Literary Setting
Hebrews is one of the most enigmatic books of the New Testament. We’ve never known for sure who wrote it, because the document lacks any information about the author. Many in the early Church held that Paul wrote Hebrews. The earliest manuscripts of the Bible, for instance, place Hebrews with the letters of Paul. There have been many conjectures about the authorship, but one of the most enduring comments about the authorship of Hebrews is the statement attributed to Origen, “God knows.”
Not only do we not know who wrote Hebrews, we also don’t know what kind of a document it is. The end of Hebrews is like a letter, but it doesn’t begin like one. Other indications suggest that we are to read Hebrews as if it were a speech delivered to an audience. Hebrews even calls itself a “word of exhortation” (13:22), a phrase that could be translated as an “exhortation speech.” The author refers to his action as speaking: “And what more should I say?” (11:32). By all accounts, Hebrews reads like a speech. The last chapter of Hebrews, however, looks like a typical ending of a letter. In fact, the same verse that seems to name Hebrews as a speech goes on to say, “for I have written (a verb meaning “to write a letter”) to you briefly” (13:22). Scholars will disagree about how to interpret this verse, but all would agree that Hebrews certainly is not “brief.”
Even the title is confusing. The book is clearly about Jewish history and the Old Testament, so it makes sense that it is “To the Hebrews.” But the language of Hebrews is highly stylized Greek with evidence of Hellenistic rhetoric and philosophy. Also, the text of the Old Testament quoted in Hebrews seems to be from the tradition of the Greek translation (Septuagint or LXX) of the Old Testament.
The most important feature for interpreting the book of Hebrews is its rhetorical structure. As early as John Chrysostom in the fourth century, Hebrews has been described as containing comparison. In my doctoral dissertation, I pointed out the location of these comparisons and demonstrated how they function in Hebrews. Ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical handbooks and elementary exercises (progymnasmata) demonstrate how to write a comparison. Speeches from antiquity contain examples of