Commenter David Reed e-mailed me a copy of his Rhetorical Outline of the Epistolary Sermon to the Hebrews. I’m embedding it here, trying out a new plugin. Besides your thoughts on the outline itself, I’d like your thoughts on how well embedding works.
In the next couple of days I will comment on this outline just a bit, but I’ll let everyone see it without my comments first.
Rhetorical Outline of the Letter to the Hebrews (David Reed)
It makes a good reminder!
… at Crossroads.
With the reference to Melchizedek (chapter 7), the author of Hebrews ties Jesus as King to his argument, though he doesn’t dwell on that. There is a key thought here that I would like to look at briefly. Often we find people disagreeing over just what type of person Jesus is. Is he the gentle,…
I recently worked my way through Luke Timothy Johnson’s Hebrews: A Commentary (New Testament Library) along with the Greek text, and I’m going to write a few notes on the book, which may, or may not, constitute a real review. Time will tell! The problem with many blogger book reviews is that they often amount…
… at And She Went Out …
… Byu inculcating worship patterns that emphasize mind over body, word over deed, and rational thought over “merely” reflexive sacramental systems, all legacies of the Protestant Reformation, religious communities learn to be at home in the cognitive, typically abstract world of theological ideas. Ritual invites something different: the active participation in “embodied” theological reflection. Both…
Hebrews is not a linear argument. Rather than a traditional Greco-Roman letter (often found in the NT), each section builds on each other in almost a spiral fashion which allows certain themes, images and topics to be touched on again and again with greater precision, cumulative intensity and rhetorical effect. For instance, I try to illustrate how the author parallels his teaching about Jesus’ superiority over Moses (3:1-6) with Jesus’ superiority over angels (1:5-14). Similarly, the two exhortations in 5:11-6:12 and 10:19-39 also are parallel (in that both contain a call to faith, added first with patience and then love respectively, adding to the crescendo of rhetorical intensity).
Two prominent features of my outline derive from other scholars. First, the specific teachings and exhortations are coupled with the OT texts that lay behind them, either implicitly or explicitly. It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of these texts to Hebrews’ argument. Second, the five “warning” passages are identified, which I believe are key to the rationale behind the document’s original intent in terms of spiritual formation. As some readers will immediately notice, these two features indicate that my outline relies heavily on two of the best NT scholars writing on Hebrews of the last few decades – Luke Timothy Johnson and the late William Lane.
I have tried to present an outline that provides both general structure and detail, which I think not only helps identify specific or finely detailed arguments in the text, but also keeps one from losing the forest for the trees. If the sermon/letter is going to have the impact the author intends, it is important to keep the entire argument in mind when dealing with its specifics.
Grace & peace,
– David