Speaking from Eternity: Scriptural Interpretation in the Epistle to the Hebrews
Open Access
- Author:
- Slusser, Taylor
- Area of Honors:
- Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Daniel Keith Falk, Thesis Supervisor
Erin Mc Kenna Hanses, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Hebrews
New Testament
Religion
Dead Sea Scrolls
Figural Reading
Intertextuality
Theology
Biblical Studies
Early Christianity
Hermeneutics - Abstract:
- The New Testament’s Epistle to the Hebrews, an example of extended early Christian reading of the Old Testament, exhibits interpretive methods that few scholars find appealing or reproduceable. However, the theological assumptions underlying the author’s hermeneutics have not received the attention they deserve. In particular, how does he conceive of the character of Old Testament Scripture and its relationship to the realities he says it refers to? Based on exegeses of the discussion on “rest” of 4:1–11, the exposition of Melchizedek in 7:2–3, a description of the word of God in 4:12–13, and the Scriptural speech of Jesus in 10:5–10, I argue that our author holds assumptions common to the interpretive phenomenon known as “figural reading” in contemporary and later Jewish and Christian texts. In particular, I hold that the author views his Old Testament Scriptures as first-and-foremost divine in origin and providentially ordered in time so that they can illumine present realities facing the believing community, despite having been written by human authors well before the events they are construed to describe. Moreover, I argue that original human authorial intentions and conceptions of the historical events behind the texts (as opposed to the narrative artifacts themselves) do not govern how the author interprets Scripture. Instead, this role is reserved for the literary and canonical context of the Scriptures as given by one divine speaker, which our author seems to believe is congruent with the retrospectively perceived yet pre-existent reality of the resurrected Christ.