Katie Langston (00:04)
and welcome to another episode of the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (00:15)
And I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker and today we have a returning guest that we're very happy to have with us. Craig Koester is the professor emeritus of New Testament here at Luther Seminary and we're actually in the same room which is wonderful. ⁓ I'm jealous.
Katie Langston (00:30)
I'm jealous. I'm
the country in Utah.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (00:33)
And ⁓ pertinent to our topic for today, ⁓ Craig is the author of the commentary on the book of Hebrews for the Anchor Bible Commentary Series. if ⁓ after this episode you want to know more about the book of Hebrews, ⁓ that's where you should go, the Anchor Bible Commentary on the book of Hebrews. So thank you so much for being with us,
Craig Koester (00:54)
Happy to be here. Glad for the invitation.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (00:57)
Good,
good. All right, so the question for this episode comes from a reader, not a reader, a listener or a viewer from the enterthebible.org website. And the question is this, is it possible to read Hebrews without displacing the Jews? The book of Hebrews, obviously, one of the New Testament books, Craig, as we already said, the book on Hebrews, not exactly, but one of the books on Hebrews.
And so we wanted to invite you to at least begin to answer this question. Is it possible to read the book of Hebrews without displacing the Jews?
Craig Koester (01:35)
Yeah, ⁓ it's an important question and ⁓ one that comes up often. And I think a lot of it comes in because you get ⁓ the sense of the New Covenant, the Old Covenant is passing away, Jesus gets all of these accolades, and there's this motif of being greater than some of the institutions that are described in the Old Testament. So it's not an unusual
kind of a question, and it's an important one and important to, I think, ⁓ keep in mind as we're working with New Testament scriptures, public witness, and how do we do that responsibly ⁓ in a context where issues of anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism are very real. Maybe a little bit of background on just why the question becomes so sharp with Hebrews. It actually goes back to the fourth century.
Sometimes interpretive traditions have a very long tail on them. Fourth century. Probably the most influential commentary on Hebrews ever written was done by John Chrysostom in the fourth century. And his whole argument was that Hebrews demonstrated the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Now Chrysostom was writing in the city of Antioch and
Kathryn Schifferdecker (02:53)
Hmm. Well.
Craig Koester (02:59)
The problem he was facing, at least from his perspective, is that Christians and Jews were getting along too well.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (03:04)
⁓ no. ⁓ dear. Can't have that.
Craig Koester (03:07)
We can't have that. It's like, wait a minute. mean, people in my, you know, he was Bishop and people in my congregations, they're just hanging out with these Jewish folks. mean, we've got to make sure you know that we've really got the truth here. And so he wrote this in a way in which he would pick up everything to kind of demonstrate it. He had a very clear vested interest. I want to make sure you know, you stay with this flock and you don't go wandering off.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (03:33)
⁓ He was afraid that the Jews might attract these new Christians.
Craig Koester (03:37)
Yeah, well actually they weren't new Christians. This is fourth century, they've been Christianity at Antioch for generations. And it's not that he was afraid that they would, they were. People were going up, they're celebrating Jewish festivals, hey, the neighbors are gonna, come on in, we're gonna celebrate Passover together or whatever. It's like, wait a second, no, you shouldn't be doing this.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (03:48)
Nope.
If only we had that problem today.
Katie Langston (04:04)
know that. ⁓
Careful what you wish for, John Chrysostom
Craig Koester (04:08)
I know, I know. But Chrysostom set a trajectory in which the medieval interpreters picked up on that, people during the Reformation picked up on it. ⁓ In the 20th century, you would still find people kind of recycling that same basic perspective on Hebrew. So it's had a very long tail and it's kind of shaped a way in which people have perceived the book. So just thinking about it, what do I think about it? I don't...
Chrysostom is one of those people that I have to push back against and say, wait a minute, can we take another run at this? I think as we're reading the book, one key question is who is it written for? And it's written for a handful of Christian folks sometime in the later part of the first century. Some of them, many of them may have been of Jewish background. We don't, we honestly don't know if they were Jewish or non-Jewish background, despite the fact that it's called Epistle to the Hebrews.
And at that point, most Jewish people in the world were not Christian. They weren't followers of Jesus. In fact, there really wasn't a clear separation. I mean, you've got Jesus following Jews and you've got non-Jesus following Jews and you've got Jews who have never heard of Jesus. So this is a small little community. And what the author is doing is trying to demonstrate that you folks,
who are a beleaguered community. I mean, they're feeling beleaguered. That seems pretty clear through most of the book. They're feeling beleaguered, ⁓ promises that the kingdom of God was supposed to be arriving and you look around and it sure doesn't look like it. It's like, haven't we arrived yet? And that's the author's point is no, you haven't arrived yet. It's really an exhortation to these folks to keep the faith you share in Israel's tradition.
You share in the hopes of Israel through Jesus. And when you ask, what does the author say about Jews who haven't embraced faith in Jesus? Pretty clear answer. He doesn't say a thing. It's all talking about how ⁓ members of his faith community, his Jesus-following folks, are included in the heritage of Israel, how they share in the heritage of Israel, and how God is bringing them forward.
to keep the promises God made to Israel that these readers share fully in those. And the author doesn't say, and look at all those Jewish folks out there who don't believe in Jesus, they're in trouble. He never goes there.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (06:40)
So I'm curious, I guess, not just because of the, you know, the title Hebrews, but just because of the content. I've just assumed that it is primarily aimed at ethnic Jewish people who have become Christians because it seems to assume a really pretty extensive knowledge of some, you know, some Old Testament passages and practices, particularly from Leviticus that are kind of esoteric. So how would you respond to that?
Craig Koester (07:07)
Yeah,
yeah, and that many people have assumed that I think one point of comparison is if you look at say the middle part of Paul's letters of the Galatians, we know the Galatians they were all former pagans. They weren't any Jews in the bunch. And Paul makes some dazzling biblical exegetical fancy footwork in the middle part of Galatians. And if it's kind like, if you don't have your mind, you're doing computer searches with your Bible software.
⁓ It's hard to keep track of where he's going. He's just pinging around. And so they're kind of a textbook case. It's also, it seems apparent, most Christian communities, or most Jesus-following communities, if we can talk about that, by the middle to late first century were mixed as far as we know. That there weren't any that just were Jewish, people of Jewish background only. Hebrews makes use of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, doesn't make any use of Hebrew. ⁓
that the author, when he's talking about kind of their social situation, he talks about them suffering some harassment and so forth, never indicates that they're in any trouble with the Jewish authorities or anything like that. ⁓ Rather, it just seems to be trying to use biblical texts in a way that fosters their faith. So they may well have been included, whether they were exclusively Jewish or mixed. I'm inclined to say it was probably porous at that point.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (08:33)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Craig Koester (08:34)
So if we're looking at it, then what does that mean if you're reading ⁓ Hebrews, not from the point of wanting to make sure that these other Jewish contemporaries of ours are excluded because they don't believe in Jesus the same way we do, but rather to look at it as a word of encouragement for the folks within this community, trying to show how is Israel's tradition forward moving, expansive.
something that still hasn't reached its ⁓ telos, its point of completion. One of my favorite things in reading Hebrews is to read it through the lens of journeys. Because you get this picture of ⁓ early on in the book of comparing the readers, you're like the wilderness generation. mean, you've come out, you're on the way to the promised land. Have you arrived? No, you haven't. So the goal is to keep the faith.
you talks about priesthood and sacrifice in the middle. And the whole goal of that is to help move people forward, that they're not topics in their own right, but rather to say that Christ, like a high priest, has opened the way into the sanctuary, making a place for you, inviting you in. It becomes a way of including the readers and ensuring that they feel included in this redemptive act of God that they know in Jesus.
Chapters 11, 12, you get the whole story of faith, going all the way back to creation. then you get Abraham, Sarah, Moses and company, again, people making a journey and to ensure that you folks, my readers, this beleaguered community, you are part of that journey. And we're all headed towards this, they call it the Panagiricus, a festival.
at the end, this grand festival at the end. And the author wants to make sure that you know that God's purpose is that all of us get included in this great journey that we're sharing with Abraham, Sarah and company. So for me, it's that dynamic sense of what does it mean to read Hebrews as this dynamic forward moving book in which the followers of Jesus are now included in this
far-reaching story that really has cosmic dimensions from the writer's perspective, kind of bringing everybody into this kind of hope for a final place in God's city.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (11:07)
So I'm looking at the first verse of Hebrews. Long ago, God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by a son whom he appointed heir of all things through whom he also created the world's... So there's this word, supersessionism, which many of our listeners will know, the idea that the church supersedes or replaces Israel as the chosen people, which I think...
is where our listener is coming from in this question. Is it possible to read Hebrews without displacing the Jews? So throughout the book, seems, right, here's what used to be, right, which is kind of a prefigurement of what is now, right? Used to be we heard God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets, but now by God's son. How does that not?
say that was then and this is now and now is better.
Craig Koester (12:08)
Yeah. I don't think in the opening, the author's juxtaposing it and saying, know, we had all that stuff before, but now we've got the real stuff. Because it's really clear for the writer, this writer doesn't know who Jesus is without knowing what scripture is saying. That scripture and Jesus interpret each other. That the writer sees it in a dynamic relationship.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (12:25)
Yeah, yeah.
Craig Koester (12:35)
that the writer is seeing what transpires in Christ foreshadowed in Scripture, which doesn't negate its value, but it brings Scripture into dialogue with who Jesus is. So throughout the book, the writer will be talking about the people sharing kind of that same reality as Israel of old. ⁓ And not talking about,
we're the church and they're the synagogue and they're the twain shall meet, but rather they share this common identity that we're part of this people of God. And you think you've got some sort of special privilege position, know, Israel didn't do so well when they were wandering in the wilderness. You think you as followers of Jesus are immune from getting into trouble with God too? I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way. So I think.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (13:27)
Yeah.
Craig Koester (13:30)
that whole notion of sort of now we're in a privileged position. No, it's more that we do have a definitive word. The same God who spoke through scripture, through the law, through the prophets is the same God who speaks through Jesus in this embodied word. But it's not a Jesus who displaces the old. It's Jesus whom we understand in light of the older scriptures and whom we read the older scriptures in light of Jesus. So that brings
the writer into kind of a critical dialogue with what is Scripture saying, what is Scripture doing. Now one of the places probably where the idea of replacing the old, superseding the old, would be in the notions of priesthood and sacrifice. know, Jesus is the high priest after the order of Melchizedek, you know.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (14:19)
Yeah, this obscure figure from Genesis. This obscure figure from Genesis. Nobody really knows. met Abraham. Who's that dude?
Craig Koester (14:22)
Thank you.
I know. But the author starts first of all by comparing Jesus to Aaron, that they're alike in that a high priest is supposed to have compassion, that a high priest is supposed to be able to sympathize and deal gently and deal sympathetically with those who sin. So there's a deep commonality at first. Then the writer goes on and will describe things never referring to the temple, interestingly. ⁓
The writer never refers to the temple, and so people have wondered, was Hebrews written before after the temple was destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans? We don't know. Because the author only talks about the sanctuary, the tabernacle, the tent of meeting of old, and talks about Jesus acting as a high priest who goes into the heavenly holy of holies, not just an earthly one, and talks about the superiority of Christ's definitive sacrifice, that that becomes a definitive sacrifice.
What's interesting historically is you ask what was going on in Jewish communities in the later first century. And certainly after the temple was destroyed, they were having to figure out what does sacrifice mean for us. Without physical structure. The structure is gone. The whole sacrificial system is gone. And so as the rabbis are talking,
Katie Langston (15:41)
.
Craig Koester (15:50)
they're having to reconfigure what does Judaism look like without a temple. And so you get instead of the temple and the Torah kind of being the two poles around which Judaism of the period moved, they lost the monarchy before. temple, monarchy and the Torah. Now we're down to temple and Torah. Now we're down to just the Torah. And so it becomes God's word in the Torah that we can't do the sacrifices like we used to. We can study about them.
we can work with the biblical texts surrounding sacrifice. And What Hebrews does is to intersect with this unfolding conversation. Yeah, what role does sacrifice play now? Even before the year 70, Philo of Alexandria was grappling with that too, where Philo would say, make your pilgrimages, go to Jerusalem, ⁓ offer your sacrifices. But Philo was really pressing for what is the deeper significance of sacrifice.
What does sacrifice mean in terms of personal belief, personal ethics? What does that mean in terms of a life of faith? And so he was already on that trajectory. And Hebrews has a lot in common with Philo. People have often noted this. There's languages like that of Philo. His thinking is like that of Philo. But bringing Jesus into the picture.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (17:12)
Can you say in a couple of sentences who Philo is?
Craig Koester (17:16)
Philo is a Jewish writer, lived in the first half of the first century, so he's a contemporary of Jesus. Lived in Alexandria, the big cosmopolitan city in northern Egypt. And Philo was deeply ⁓ schooled in philosophy. He loved Platonic, Stoic philosophy and was trying to figure out how do we bring philosophy and scripture together as we're talking about our understanding of what is true. And Hebrews shares a lot in common with that and brings, weaves Jesus into that.
unfolding dialogue that's already occurring about what's the deeper meaning of it. So for The writer of Hebrews, what you see makes a move that goes beyond anything Philo or other ⁓ Greek writing Jewish people were saying, where Jesus' own self-sacrifice becomes a kind of a key dimension. That his understanding of Jesus laying down his life willingly, that that self-sacrifice adds a new dimension to what
we understand sacrifice to be. So the point is not, how do we offer more goats and bulls and so on. And Philo was not so interested in that either. He was interested in the deeper meaning. And what Hebrews does is to bring in, here's where you get a lens into what sacrifice is really for. It's not an end in itself.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (18:36)
think We should probably say, going back to our listeners question, is it possible to read Hebrews without displacing the Jews, that situation that you described that Chrysostom, John Chrysostom was addressing, we were kind of joking that we wish we had that problem today. It is just simply the case that the church has been horrible to the Jews. I mean, just historically speaking, ⁓ from
Well, once Christianity became the imperial religion, not so much before that, but fourth, fifth century on. And certainly, through the Middle Ages, you can talk about ⁓ the Crusades and various pogroms against the Jews. And even, obviously, up to the 20th century, some of the Third Reich's ⁓ complaints about the Jews were based in.
For instance, Martin Luther's writings. Luther wrote some terrible things about the Jews. So this is a really important question that it's really only been I don't know in the last Less than a hundred years probably where the church has has come to this realization and and apologized in some official ways including the Lutheran World Federation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has apologized formally to the Jews for Martin Luther's
anti-Semitic writings, but it obviously continues to be a problem today, not just from the church. It just seems like anti-Semitism never completely goes away. it just is important to talk about how the church has persecuted Jewish people and how we need to be careful in our teaching and our preaching and in our Bible study not to replicate that. So this is why it's just really helpful.
and we really appreciate it, Craig, that you've ⁓ given us a key to read Hebrews and noted, think, to go back to what you were saying at the beginning, that Hebrews is encouraging its audience, probably a mixed group of Gentiles and Jews, without saying those Jews who don't believe in Jesus, right? Without saying anything about them. So it's not condemning, it's reaching back to Israel's history to say,
to say something about God, actually.
Craig Koester (21:00)
It is,
yeah. Yeah, the faithfulness of God is huge. Yeah. The faithfulness of God is huge. And maybe to bring in one of the other potentially problematic passages in Hebrews would be the New Covenant passage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it talks about, ⁓ you know, the New Covenant and then the old one fading away. That would be a problematic passage. And that, you know, and that's easy to just, yeah, New Covenant, we've got that, Old Covenant, you know, yeah, that's it. That's basically history now.
But I would say that that's running roughshod over so much of what Hebrews is doing. I think ⁓ one of the key things with this new covenant passage is that ⁓ Hebrews, that the new covenant is, will put my law within them, righted upon their hearts. And they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them. From Jeremiah 31. And Hebrews uses that as a kind of a lens in which he's talking about
Kathryn Schifferdecker (21:49)
from Germany.
Craig Koester (21:56)
Covenant being the central operative category. It's not that I had a covenant relationship before, you know, that whole model I'm getting rid of, but rather it's taking it and deepening it, giving it a new reality. It's extending it. Yeah.
Katie Langston (22:10)
Well, in extending it, right? It's
not we do away with it, because if God undoes, right, as Paul says, if God undoes his promises to the Jews, then what do if he changes his mind about that? Like, what are we trusting in? Right. So God is faithful to the promise. God is faithful to the covenant to Israel. And then in and through Christ extends that invitation to to Gentiles. And that's.
Craig Koester (22:38)
Yes, that there's an expansion, that there's a sense of inclusion with it. And Katie, think, and I like your point too, It's not, you know, if God is faithful, well, Who was the covenant, the new covenant promise made to? To Jewish folks, I mean, the people of Israel of Jeremiah's time. And so it's not like, well, we've got the new covenant and you don't. It's, no, wait a second. No, this is a collective act of God, that what God is doing,
is in order to maintain the relationship. I mean, the distinctive thing about the New Covenant is God's unwavering commitment to ensuring a future to the relationship. You know, ensuring that it's a heartfelt relationship, that it's something that you embody, that you live, and that's placed within this broader sequence of journeys that Hebrews portrays, because Hebrews kept saying, and you know what? Yes, the New Covenant is underway. The New Covenant is, you know,
is something God's about the business of doing. And have we arrived so that you don't need, nobody needs to be told anything about God. We've all got such deep, heartfelt, intuitive knowledge of God, you don't need to learn a thing. And he's telling ⁓ his readers, I think you need to go back and learn your ABCs all over again. Sometimes the author is just sputtering at his Jesus following readers. It's like, have you forgotten everything? I think you still have a lot to learn. So it's clearly you haven't.
But that sense of this shared journey in which it's the God of Israel who is being faithful, not just saying, I'm going to bring you folks into this new reality and you folks, I'm sorry you're out. ⁓ But rather it's talking about the scope of God's action, the future of God's action, to which the followers of Jesus are. They share in that much broader heritage. ⁓ And that's the author's point, is to ensure that they can see themselves in that story.
Kathryn Schifferdecker (24:34)
in that story.
Yeah.
Katie Langston (24:36)
Well, thank you so much. That ⁓ is rich and wonderful. Really appreciate your insights and for being with us here, Craig.
And thank you to our listeners and viewers who have joined us on this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. A reminder that you can get more wonderful conversations and ⁓ lots of stuff written by ⁓ Craig on the site, so you don't want to miss that. ⁓ Enterthebible.org. ⁓
And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd invite you to like and subscribe or rate and review this podcast on YouTube or in your favorite podcast feed. And of course, the highest compliment you can pay us is to share the podcast with a friend. Until next time.