I was struck by Dave Black’s note on Hebrews 4:14-16 from Wednesday on his blog. I extracted it to jesusparadigm.com, as Dave’s blog is a journal that doesn’t offer links to individual posts. (I have his permission.) I highly recommend his post. It struck me because Hebrews is such a central part of my reading…
In my experience, Hebrews has provided a wealth of texts for sermons that call for works and human effort. Pride of place, perhaps, should be held by the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection, for which one of the central texts is Hebrews 6:1. No matter how many times Wesley affirmed Christian perfection as a gift…
When I talked about structure, I mentioned that I’d write a follow-up after my Wednesday night class. Here’s the rundown, though I plan to keep it brief. I’m indebted to David Alan Black for the basic note about the participles in this passage, and in a scholarly article I would need to cite a number…
A weakness of a great deal of Bible study is in the failure to truly see the details. In our normal conversations we have multiple contextual clues including shared history and knowledge. When reading scripture, we have to be more careful, because it is not addressed directly to us, and we often don’t share those…
Michael J. Kok summarizes the internal evidence on the authorship of Hebrews (HT: Dave Black Online). As Dave Black notes, his argument is really not one of internal but of external evidence. Dr. Kok cites Dave’s book The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul, which I publish. I do note the 2017 publication date,…
One of the problems with understanding biblical talk about salvation is that we do not live with a sacrificial system. For many Christians, the whole idea of sacrifices is that someone sinned and a bloody sacrifice was required for atonement. Christians believe that because of one bloody sacrifice, that of Jesus on the cross, no…
Perfectionism is an interesting trait, and can be quite destructive. United Methodist pastors are still asked whether they are going on toward perfection, though I have found few who expressed great comfort with the required “yes” answer, and not a few who had their fingers crossed. The line comes from Hebrews 6:1, and the more…
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…
For it was appropriate for him, for whom everything exists and through whom everything exists, in bringing many children to glory, the pioneer of their salvation to perfect through suffering (Hebrews 2:10, very literal) I wouldn’t suggest that any Greek students translate the way I just did, or your Greek teacher may suggest you learn…
Dave Black just posted a note on the authorship of Hebrews which brings up an important point: Fact checking. This comes up all over the place these days. It’s so easy to just quote something you’ve heard or to reference a secondary source when a primary source is available. As an editor I’m reminded of…
