Today, I’m going to share what I have read about the book of Hebrews. I have no personal scholarship in these matters. Yet it seems fitting to share some of the who, when and where before we begin.

Author

As to the author, pretty much nobody knows for sure. Most of the New Testament letters start with a ‘from’ verse right at the top, and some, a sign off at the end. Not so with this letter. It jumps right in.

Some translations and editions of the Bible put Paul in the title of the book, (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews) but it’s not so in the original.

I’m cool with ambiguous if you are.

Time

Some say it was written as early as the 60s AD, others as late as the 90s. The argument for the mid 60s makes sense to me since the author doesn’t talk about the destruction of the temple. That would be a significant event in light of the topic at hand.

Audience

Hebrews…Most likely written to people with a Jewish background, who would know the Old Testament. However, as I understand it, most of the Old Testament quotes come from the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures written during the silent years between the writing of the Old and New Testaments.

What does that mean? I don’t know. Maybe it speaks to the authorship, maybe to the identity of the readers. But it does clear one thing up. It explains why some of the quotes from the OT don’t match exactly.

The author heavily quotes the OT. In Ryrie’s introduction to the book, he says there are 29 direct quotes and 53 clear allusions to other passages.

Theme

When you boil it down to pure essence the letter tells us Jesus is the best. Moreover, it makes no bones about the fact that the new covenant completely replaced the old, and stands head and shoulders above it in every way.

This is one of the reasons I want to camp here for a while. The new covenant with its ‘in’ rather than ‘on’ or ‘near,’ is thrilling to my heart. The author brings a case against the old and presents the new in wonderful detail.

(I gleaned most of this information from the introduction to the book of Hebrews in The Ryrie Study Bible, copyright 1976, 1978 – Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.)

Tomorrow we’ll jump into the text in earnest.

Thanks for coming by.

Come back soon.

Ben

If you’ve missed anything – check out the Hebrews page to get caught up.