… or any scripture, for that matter. In graduate school I became progressively less interested in listening to sermons or in reading devotional items. While I was very interested in reading poetry, fiction and other non-technical materials, I applied a largely technical approach to scripture and theology. I say this to make clear that I…
I’m continuing to read Guthrie’s commentary on Hebrews (George H. Guthrie, Hebrews, The NIV Application Commentary, Kindle edition) and I am enjoying his approach. That doesn’t mean agreeing with everything, but I find that his approach is likely to be particularly helpful to preachers and teachers as he attempts to bridge the cultural differences. In the…
I took note of this quote from George Guthrie’s discussion of authorship: As with other matters of background we are almost entirely dependent on evidence internal to the book. So, what does the work reveal of its maker? George H. Guthrie, Hebrews, The NIV Application Commentary, Kindle edition In a way, this is the key…
Hebrews 11:1-3 begins thus: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (KJV). Most of the words here are at least a bit controversial. It may be easier to understand the passage if we accept that the writer is not trying to define “faith” or the Greek word “pistis,”…
Evangelical Textual Criticism has a post with the following graphic: While I imagine there might be minor variations in a survey of American scholars, I think the results would be similar. It’s always fun to see the numbers on Hebrews, since I would describe myself as uncertain (with the nine and not the 100), but…
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,…