Hebrews Highlights - April 2023

Madison Pierce and Max Botner discuss Why We Love Hebrews on the podcast, On the Way. Pocast is available on Spotify.

Theology of the High Priest Jesus Christ

I want to draw your attention to a little known monograph. It is written in Spanish and is published with a lesser known publisher:

 

Randy de Jesús Soto. Teología del Pontífice Jesucristo: Análisis retórico y semántico de Hebreos 4,15; 7:26 y 9,14. Estudios de Filología Neotestamentaria 8. Córdoba: Ediciones el Almendro, 2006.

Translation of the blurb:
"The Letter to the Hebrews is the only writing in the New Testament that attributes to Christ the title of Pontiff or High Priest. However, by calling him that way, he does not do so in the sense in which the pontificate of the Old Testament priesthood was understood, since the author knows perfectly well that, in order to be a priest according to the Mosaic Law, it was necessary to belong to the tribe of Levi. The novelty of this attribution lies in the fact that the priesthood of Jesus has qualities that make it eminently superior to the priesthood of the Old Testament."

 

The author recently passed away in December, 2022. An obituary can be found here.

A Note on the Structure of Hebrews 10:11–13

New article, which is available for download:

Akagi, Kai. “A Note on the Structure of Hebrews 10:11–13.” Novum Testamentum 65 (2023):227–39.

"Lexical, syntactical, and semantic correspondence demonstrates that Heb 10:11–13 consists of a concentric structure not discussed in the commentary literature. Observation of this structure clarifies the number of contrasts that appear in the sentence spanning these verses and provides additional data informing the debated question of whether the phrase εἰς τὸ διηνεκές in Heb 10:12 modifies the preceding participle προσενέγκας or the following verb ἐκάθισεν. This structure furthermore serves as one more example of the emphasis on the singularity of Jesus’s sacrifice in Hebrews."