ha: The fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet; transliterated in this Encyclopedia as "h." It came also to be used for the number 5. For name, etc., See ALPHABET .
hed (ro'-sh, Aramaic re'sh, and in special sense gulgoleth, literally, "skull," "cut-off head" (1 Ch 10:10), whence Golgotha (Mt 27:33; Mk 15:22; Jn 19:17); mera'ashah, literally, "head-rest," "pillow," "bolster" (1 Ki 19:6); qodhqodh, literally, crown of the head (Dt 28:35; 33:16,20; 2 Sam 14:25; Isa 3:17; Jer 48:45); barzel, "the head of an axe" (Dt 19:5, the Revised Version margin "iron"; 2 Ki 6:5); lehabhah, lahebheth, "the head of a spear" (1 Sam 17:7); kephale): The first-mentioned Hebrew word and its Aramaic form are found frequently in their literal as well as metaphorical sense. We may distinguish the following meanings:
By a slight extension of meaning, "head" occasionally stands for the person itself. This is the case in all passages where evil is said to return or to be requited upon the head of a person (see below).
The word is also used in connection with the serpent's head (Gen 3:15), the head of the sacrificial ram, bullock and goat (Ex 29:10,15,19; Lev 4:4,24), the head of leviathan (Job 41:7 (Hebrew 40:31)).
It is used also as representing the top or summit of a thing, as the capital of column or pillar (Ex 36:38; 38:28; 2 Ch 3:15); of mountains (Ex 19:20; Nu 21:20; Jdg 9:7; Am 1:2; 9:3); of a scepter (Est 5:2); of a ladder (Gen 28:12); of a tower (Gen 11:4).
As a fourth meaning the word occurs (Prov 8:23; Eccl 3:11; Isa 41:4) in the sense of beginning of months (Ex 12:2), of rivers (Gen 2:10), of streets or roads (Isa 51:20; Ezek 16:25; 21:21).
As a leader, prince, chief, chieftain, captain (or as an adjective, with the meaning of foremost, uppermost), originally: "he that stands at the head"; compare "God is with us at our head" (2 Ch 13:12); "Knowest thou that Yahweh will take away thy master from thy head?" (2 Ki 2:3); "head-stone" the Revised Version (British and American) "top stone," i.e. the upper-most stone (Zec 4:7).
Israel is called the head of nations (Dt 28:13); "The head (capital) of Syria is Damascus, and the head (prince) of Damascus is Rezin" (Isa 7:8); "heads of their fathers' houses," i.e. elders of the clans (Ex 6:14); compare "heads of tribes" (Dt 1:15), also "captain," literally, head (Nu 14:4; Dt 1:15; 1 Ch 11:42; Neh 9:17). The phrase "head and tail" (Isa 9:14; 19:15) is explained by the rabbis as meaning the nobles and the commons among the people; compare "palm-branch and rush" (Isa 9:14), "hair of the feet .... and beard" (Isa 7:20), but compare also Isa 9:15. In the New Testament we find the remarkable statement of Christ being "the head of the church" (Eph 1:22; 5:23), "head of every man" (1 Cor 11:3), "head of all principality and power" (Col 2:10), "head of the body, the church" (Col 1:18; compare Eph 4:15). The context of 1 Cor 11:3 is very instructive to a true understanding of this expression: "I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God" (compare Eph 5:23). Here, clearly, reference is had to the lordship of Christ over His church, not to the oneness of Christ and His church, while in Eph 4:16 the dependence of the church upon Christ is spoken of. These passages should not therefore be pressed to include the idea of Christ being the intellectual center, the brain of His people, from whence the members are passively governed, for to the Jewish mind the heart was the seat of the intellect, not the head.
See HEART .
As the head is the most essential part of physical man, calamity and blessing are said to come upon the head of a person (Gen 49:26; Dt 33:16; Jdg 9:57; 1 Sam 25:39; 2 Ch 6:23; Ezek 9:10; 11:21; 16:43; 22:31). For this reason hands are placed upon the head of a person on which blessings are being invoked (Gen 48:14,17,18; Mt 19:15) and upon the sacrificial animal upon which sins are laid (Ex 29:15; Lev 1:4; 4:29,33). Responsibility for a deed is also said to rest on the head of the doer (2 Sam 1:16; 3:29; 1 Ki 8:32; Ps 7:16; Acts 18:6). The Bible teaches us to return good for evil (Mt 5:44), or in the very idiomatic Hebrew style, to "heap coals of fire upon (the) head" of the adversary (Prov 25:22; Rom 12:20). This phrase is dark as to its origin, but quite clear as to its meaning and application (compare Rom 12:17,19,21). The Jew was inclined to swear by his head (Mt 5:36), as the modern Oriental swears by his beard. The head is said to be under a vow (Nu 6:18,19; Acts 18:18; 21:23), because the Nazirite vow could readily be recognized by the head.
There are numerous idiomatic expressions connected with the head, of which we enumerate the following: "the hoary head" designates old age (See HAIR ); "to round the corners of the head," etc. (Lev 19:27; compare also Dt 14:1; Am 8:10), probably refers to the shaving of the side locks or the whole scalp among heathen nations, which was often done in idolatrous shrines or in token of initiation into the service of an idol. It was therefore forbidden to Israel, and its rigid observance gave rise to the peculiar Jewish custom of wearing long side locks (See HAIR ). "Anointing the head" (Ps 23:5; 92:10; Heb 1:9) was a sign of joy and hospitality, while the "covering of the head" (2 Sam 15:30; Est 6:12; Jer 14:3), "putting the hand upon the head" (2 Sam 13:19) and putting earth, dust or ashes upon it (Josh 7:6; 1 Sam 4:12; 2 Sam 12; 13:19; Lam 2:10; compare Am 2:7) were expressive of sadness, grief, deep shame and mourning. In Est 7:8 Haman's face is covered as a condemned criminal, or as one who has been utterly put to shame, and who has nothing more to say for his life.
In this connection the Pauline injunction as to the veiling of women in the public gatherings of the Christians (1 Cor 11:5), while men were instructed to appear bareheaded, must be mentioned. This is diametrically opposed to the Jewish custom, according to which men wore the head covered by the Tallith or prayer shawl, while women were considered sufficiently covered by their long hair (1 Cor 11:15). The apostle here simply commends a Greek custom for the congregation residing among Greek populations; in other words, he recommends obedience to local standards of decency and good order.
"To bruise the head" (Gen 3:15) means to injure gravely; "to smite through the head" (Ps 68:21) is synonymous with complete destruction. "To shake or wag the head" (Ps 22:7; 44:14; 64:8; Jer 18:16; 48:27; Lam 2:15; Mt 27:39; Mk 15:29) conveys the meaning of open derision and contempt. "To bow down the head" (Isa 58:5) indicates humility, sadness and mourning, but it may also be a mere pretense for piety. (Sirach 19:26).
H. L. E. Luering
hed'-band.
See DRESS .
hed'dres.
See DRESS .
hed'-ston.
See CORNER-STONE .
hed'-strong.
See HEADY .
hed'-tir.
hed'i: The translation in the King James Version of propetes, "falling forward," trop. "prone," "ready to do anything," "precipitate," "headlong" (2 Tim 3:4, "heady, high-minded," etc., the Revised Version (British and American) "headstrong"; in Acts 19:36, the only other place in the New Testament where propetes occurs, the King James Version has "rashly," the Revised Version (British and American) "rash"). "Headstrong signifies strong in the head or the mind, and heady, full of one's own head" (Crabb, English Synonyms). "Heady confidence promises victory without contest" (Johnson).
hel (rapha'; therapeuo, iaomai, diasozo): The English word is connected with the Anglo-Saxon hoelan, and is used in several senses: (1) Lit., in its meaning of making whole or well, as in Eccl 3:3. In this way it occurs in prayers for restoration to health (Nu 12:13; Ps 6:2; Jer 17:14); and also in declarations as to God's power to restore to health (Dt 32:39; 2 Ki 20:5-8). (2) Metaphorically it is applied to the restoration of the soul to spiritual health and to the repair of the injuries caused by sin (Ps 41:4; Jer 30:17). (3) The restoration and deliverance of the afflicted land is expressed by it in 2 Ch 7:14; Isa 19:22. (4) It is applied to the forgiveness of sin (Jer 3:22).
In the New Testament, therapeuo is used 10 times in describing our Lord's miracles, and is translated "heal." Iaomai is used to express spiritual healing (Mt 13:15; Lk 5:17; Jn 12:40), and also of curing bodily disease (Jn 4:47). Diasozo, meaning "to heal thoroughly," is used in Lk 7:3 the King James Version where the Revised Version (British and American) renders it "save." The act of healing is called iasis twice, in Acts 4:22,30; sozo, to save or deliver, is translated "made whole" by the Revised Version (British and American) in Mk 5:23; Lk 8:36; Acts 14:9, but is "healed" in the King James Version. Conversely "made whole" the King James Version in Mt 15:28 is replaced by "healed" in the Revised Version (British and American).
Healed is used 33 times in the Old Testament as the rendering of the same Hebrew word, and in the same variety of senses. It is also used of purification for an offense or breach of the ceremonial law (2 Ch 30:20); and to express the purification of water which had caused disease (2 Ki 2:21,22). Figuratively, the expression "healed slightly" (the English Revised Version "lightly") is used to describe the futile efforts of the false prophets and priests to remedy the backsliding of Israel (Jer 6:14; 8:11); here the word for "slightly" is the contemptuous term, qalal, which means despicably or insignificantly. In Ezek 30:21, the word "healed" is the rendering of the feminine passive participle, rephu'ah and is better translated in the Revised Version (British and American) "apply healing medicines." In the New Testament "healed" usually occurs in connection with the miracles of our Lord and the apostles. Here it is worthy of note that Luke more frequently uses the verb iaomai than therapeuo, in the proportion of 17 to 4, while in Matthew and Mark the proportion is 4 to 8.
Healer (chabhash) occurs once in Isa 3:7; the word literally means a "wrapper up" or "bandager."
Alexander Macalister
hel'-ing (marpe', te`alah, kehah): In the Old Testament this word is always used in its figurative sense; marpe', which literally means "a cure," is used in Jer 14:19 twice, and in Mal 4:2; te`alah, which literally means "an irrigation canal," here means something applied externally, as a plaster, in which sense it is used metaphorically in Jer 30:13; kehah occurs only in Nah 3:19 the King James Version and is translated "assuagings" in the Revised Version (British and American).
In the New Testament 5 times the verb is therapeuo; once (Acts 10:38) iaomai; in the other passages it is either iama, as in 1 Cor 12:9-30, or iasis, as in Acts 4:22, derivatives from this verb
(charismata iamaton): Among the "spiritual gifts" enumerated in 1 Cor 12:4-11,28 are included "gifts of healings." See SPIRITUAL GIFTS . The subject has risen into much prominence of recent years, and so calls for separate treatment. The points to be considered are: (1) the New Testament facts, (2) the nature of the gifts, (3) their permanence in the church.
The Gospels abundantly show that the ministry of Christ Himself was one of healing no less than of teaching (compare Mk 1:14 f with 1:32-34). When He sent forth the Twelve (Mk 6:7,13) and the Seventy (Lk 10:1,9), it was not only to preach the Kingdom of God but to heal the sick. The inauthentic conclusion of Mark's Gospel, if it does not preserve words actually used by Christ Himself, bears witness at all events to the traditional belief of the early church that after His departure from the world His disciples would still possess the gift of healing. The Book of Acts furnishes plentiful evidence of the exercise of this gift by apostles and other prominent men in the primitive church (Acts 3:7 f; 5:12-16; 8:7; 19:12; 28:8 f), and the Epistle of James refers to a ministry of healing carried on by the elders of a local church acting in their collective capacity (Jas 5:14 f). But Paul in this passage speaks of "gifts of healings" (the plural "healings" apparently refers to the variety of ailments that were cured) as being distributed along with other spiritual gifts among the ordinary members of the church. There were men, it would seem, who occupied no official position in the community, and who might not otherwise be distinguished among their fellow-members, on whom this special charisma of healing had been bestowed.
On this subject the New Testament furnishes no direct information, but it supplies evidence from which conclusions may be drawn. We notice that the exercise of the gift is ordinarily conditional on the faith of the recipient of the blessing (Mk 6:5,6; 10:52; Acts 14:9)--faith not only in God but in the human agent (Acts 3:4 ff; 5:15; 9:17). The healer himself is a person of great faith (Mt 17:19 f), while his power of inspiring the patient with confidence points to the possession of strong, magnetic personality. The diseases cured appear for the most part to have been not organic but functional; and many of them would now be classed as nervous disorders. The conclusion from these data is that the gifts of healing to which Paul alludes were not miraculous endowments, but natural therapeutic faculties raised to their highest power by Christian faith.
Modern psychology, by its revelation of the marvels of the subliminal self or subconscious mind and the power of "suggestion," shows how it is possible for one man to lay his hand on the very springs of personal life in another, and so discloses the psychical basis of the gift of healing. The medical science of our time, by its recognition of the dependence of the physical upon the spiritual, of the control of the bodily functions by the subconscious self, and of the physician's ability by means of suggestion, whether waking or hypnotic, to influence the subconscious soul and set free the healing powers of Nature, provides the physiological basis. And may we not add that many incontestable cases of Christian faith-cure (take as a type the well-known instance in which Luther at Weimar "tore Melanchthon," as the latter put it, "out of the very jaws of death"; See RE , XII , 520) furnish the religious basis, and prove that faith in God, working through the soul upon the body, is the mightiest of all healing influences, and that one who by his own faith and sympathy and force of personality can stir up faith in others may exercise by God's blessing the power of healing diseases?
3. Permanence of Healing Gifts in the Church:
There is abundant evidence that in the early centuries the gifts of healing were still claimed and practiced within the church (Justin, Apol. ii.6; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. ii. 32, 4; Tertullian, Apol. xxiii; Origen, Contra Celsum, vii.4). The free exercise of these gifts gradually ceased, partly, no doubt, through loss of the early faith and spirituality, but partly through the growth of an ascetic temper which ignored Christ's gospel for the body and tended to the view that pain and sickness are the indispensable ministers of His gospel for the soul. All down the history of the church, however, there have been notable personalities (e.g. Francis of Assisi, Luther, Wesley) and little societies of earnest Christians (e.g. the Waldenses, the early Moravians and Quakers) who have reasserted Christ's gospel on its physical side as a gospel for sickness no less than for sin, and claimed for the gift of healing the place Paul assigned to it among the gifts of the Spirit. In recent years the subject of Christian healing has risen into importance outside of the regularly organized churches through the activity of various faith-healing movements. That the leaders of these movements have laid hold of a truth at once Scriptural and scientific there can be little doubt, though they have usually combined it with what we regard as a mistaken hostility to the ordinary practice of medicine. It is worth remembering that with all his faith in the spiritual gift of healing and personal experience of its power, Paul chose Luke the physician as the companion of his later journeys; and worth noticing that Luke shared with the apostle the honors showered upon the missionaries by the people of Melita whom they had cured of their diseases (Acts 28:10). Upon the modern church there seems to lie the duty of reaffirming the reality and permanence of the primitive gift of healing, while relating it to the scientific practice of medicine as another power ordained of God, and its natural ally in the task of diffusing the Christian gospel of health.
LITERATURE.
Hort, Christian Ecclesia, chapter x; A.T. Schofield, Force of Mind, Unconscious Therapeutics; E. Worcester and others, Religion and Medicine; HJ, IV, 3, p. 606; The Expositor T, XVII, 349, 417.
J. C. Lambert
helth (shalom, yeshu`ah, 'arukhah; riph'uth, 'arukhah; soteria, hugiaino): Shalom is part of the formal salutation still common in Palestine. In this sense it is used in Gen 43:28; 2 Sam 20:9; the stem word means "peace," and is used in many varieties of expression relating to security, success and good bodily health. Yeshu`ah, which specifically means deliverance or help, occurs in the refrain of Ps 42:11; 43:5, as well as in Ps 67:2; in the American Standard Revised Version it is rendered "help." Riph'uth is literally, "healing," and is found only in Prov 3:8. Marpe' also means healing of the body, but is used in a figurative sense as of promoting soundness of mind and moral character in Prov 4:22; 12:18; 13:17; 16:24, as also in Jer 8:15, where the Revised Version (British and American) renders it "healing." 'Arukhah is also used in the same figurative sense in Isa 58:8; Jer 8:22; 30:17; 33:6; literally means "repairing or restoring"; it is the word used of the repair of the wall of Jerusalem by Nehemiah (chapter 4).
The word "health" occurs twice in the New Testament: in Paul's appeal to his shipmates to take food (Acts 27:34), he says it is for their soteria, literally, "safety"; so the American Standard Revised Version, the King James Version "health." The verb hugianino is used in 3 Jn 1:2, in the apostle's salutation to Gaius.
Alexander Macalister
hep (`aremah, gal, nedh, tel): "Heap" appears (1) in the simple sense of a gathering or pile, as the translation of `aremah, a "heap," in Ruth 3:7 of grain; Neh 4:2 of stones; in 2 Ch 31:6, etc., of the tithes, etc.; of chomer (boiling up), a "heap"; in Ex 8:14 of frogs; of gal, a "heap"; in Job 8:17 of stones. (2) As indicating "ruin," "waste," gal (2 Ki 19:25; Job 15:28; Isa 25:2; 37:26; Jer 9:11; 51:37); me`i (Isa 17:1); `i (Ps 79:1; Jer 26:18; Mic 1:6; 3:12); tel, "mound," "hillock," "heap" (Dt 13:16; Josh 8:28; Jer 30:18 the King James Version; 49:2). (3) Of waters, nedh, "heap," "pile" (Ex 15:8; Josh 3:13,16; Ps 33:7; 78:13); chomer (Hab 3:15, "the heap of mighty waters," the Revised Version margin "surge"). (4) A cairn, or heap of stones (a) over the dead body of a dishonored person, gal (Josh 7:26; 8:29; 2 Sam 18:17); (b) as a witness or boundary-heap (Gen 31:46 f, Gal`edh (Galeed) in Hebrew, also mitspah, "watch tower," Yeghar-Sahadhutha' (Jegar-sahadutha) in Aramaic, both words meaning "the heap of witness"; See Gen 31:47,49 the Revised Version (British and American)). (5) As a way mark, tamrurim, from tamar, "to stand erect" (Jer 31:21 the King James Version, "Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps," the Revised Version (British and American) "guide-posts," a more likely translation).
"To heap" represents various single words: chathah, "to take," "to take hold of," with one exception, applied to fire or burning coals (Prov 25:22, "Thou writ heap coals of fire upon his head," "Thou wilt take coals of fire (and heap them) on his head"); caphah, "to add" (Dt 32:23); tsabhar, "to heap up" (Hab 1:10); kabhats, "to press together" (with the fingers or hand) (Hab 2:5); rabhah, "to multiply" (Ezek 24:10); episoreuo, "to heap up upon" (2 Tim 4:3, they "will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts"); soreuo, "to heap up" (Rom 12:20, "Thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head"); thesaurizo, "to lay up" (as treasure) (Jas 5:3 the King James Version, "Ye have heaped treasure together," the Revised Version (British and American) "laid up"); tsabhar, "to heap up," "to heap" or "store up" (Job 27:16, "silver"; Ps 39:6, "riches"; Zec 9:3, "silver,"); sum, sim "to place," "set," "put" (Job 36:13 the King James Version, "The hypocrites in heart heap up wrath," the Revised Version (British and American) "They that are godless in heart lay up anger"). In Jdg 15:16 we have chamor, chamorothayim, "with the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps," the Revised Version margin "heap, two heaps"; one of Samson's sayings; chamor means "an ass," chomer "a heap."
For "heap up words" (Job 16:4), the Revised Version (British and American) has "join together"; for "shall be a heap" (Isa 17:11), "fleeth away," margin "shall be a heap"; "heap" for "number" (Nah 3:3); the English Revised Version "heap of stones" for "sling," margin as the King James Version and the American Standard Revised Version (Prov 26:8); "in one heap" for "upon a heap" (Josh 3:16); "he heapeth up (dust)" for "they shall heap" (Hab 1:10).
W. L. Walker
hart (lebh, lebhabh; kardia): The different senses in which the word occurs in the Old Testament and the New Testament may be grouped under the following heads:
It represents in the first place the bodily organ, and by easy transition those experiences which affect or are affected by the body. Fear, love, courage, anger, Joy, sorrow, hatred are always ascribed to the heart--especially in the Old Testament; thus courage for which usually ruach is used (Ps 27:14); joy (Ps 4:7); anger (Dt 19:6, "while his heart is hot," lebhabh); fear (1 Sam 25:37); sorrow (Ps 13:2), etc.
Hence, naturally it came to stand for the man himself (Dt 7:17; "say in thine heart," Isa 14:13).
As representing the man himself, it was considered to be the seat of the emotions and passions and appetites (Gen 18:5; Lev 19:17; Ps 104:15), and embraced likewise the intellectual and moral faculties--though these are necessarily ascribed to the "soul" as well. This distinction is not always observed.
"Soul" in Hebrew can never be rendered by "heart"; nor can "heart" be considered as a synonym for "soul." Cremer has well observed: "The Hebrew nephesh ("soul") is never translated kardia ("heart"). .... The range of the Hebrew nephesh, to which the Greek psuche alone corresponds, differs so widely from the ideas connected with psuche, that utter confusion would have ensued had psuche been employed in an unlimited degree for lebh ("heart"). The Biblical lebh never, like psuche, denotes the personal subject, nor could it do so. That which in classical Greek is ascribed to psuche (a good soul, a just soul, etc.) is in the Bible ascribed to the heart alone and cannot be otherwise" (Cremer, Lexicon, article "Kardia," 437 ff, German edition).
In the heart vital action is centered (1 Ki 21:7). "Heart," except as a bodily organ, is never ascribed to animals, as is the case sometimes with nephesh and ruach (Lev 17:11, nephesh; Gen 2:19; Nu 16:22; Gen 7:22, ruach). "Heart" is thus often used interchangeably with these two (Gen 41:8; Ps 86:4; 119:20); but "it never denotes the personal subject, always the personal organ."
As the central organ in the body, forming a focus for its vital action, it has come to stand for the center of its moral, spiritual, intellectual life. "In particular the heart is the place in which the process of self-consciousness is carried out, in which the soul is at home with itself, and is conscious of all its doing and suffering as its own" (Oehler). Hence, it is that men of "courage" are called "men of the heart"; that the Lord is said to speak "in his heart" (Gen 8:21); that men "know in their own heart" (Dt 8:5); that "no one considereth in his heart' (Isa 44:19 the King James Version). "Heart" in this connection is sometimes rendered "mind," as in Nu 16:28 ("of mine own mind," Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) ex proprio corde, Septuagint ap' emautou); the foolish "is void of understanding," i.e. "heart" (Prov 6:32, where the Septuagint renders phrenon, Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) cordis, Luther "der ist ein Narr"). God is represented as "searching the heart" and "trying the reins" (Jer 17:10 the King James Version). Thus, "heart" comes to stand for "conscience," for which there is no word in Hebrew, as in Job 27:6, "My heart shall not reproach me," or in 1 Sam 24:5, "David's heart smote him"; compare 1 Sam 25:31. From this it appears, in the words of Owen: "The heart in Scripture is variously used, sometimes for the mind and understanding, sometimes for the will, sometimes for the affections, sometimes for the conscience, sometimes for the whole soul. Generally, it denotes the whole soul of man and all the faculties of it, not absolutely, but as they are all one principle of moral operations, as they all concur in our doing of good and evil."
The radical corruption of human nature is clearly taught in Scripture and brought into connection with the heart. It is "uncircumcised" (Jer 9:26; Ezek 44:7; compare Acts 7:51); and "hardened" (Ex 4:21); "wicked" (Prov 26:23); "perverse" (Prov 11:20); "godless" (Job 36:13); "deceitful and desperately wicked" (Jer 17:9 the King James Version). It defiles the whole man (Mt 15:19,20); resists, as in the case of Pharaoh, the repeated call of God (Ex 7:13). There, however, the law of God is written (Rom 2:15); there the work of grace is wrought (Acts 15:9), for the "heart" may be "renewed" by grace (Ezek 36:26), because the "heart" is the seat of sin (Gen 6:5; 8:21).
This process of heart-renewal is indicated in various ways. It is the removal of a "stony heart" (Ezek 11:19). The heart becomes "clean" (Ps 51:10); "fixed" (Ps 112:7) through "the fear" of the Lord (verse 1); "With the heart man believeth" (Rom 10:10); on the "heart" the power of God is exercised for renewal (Jer 31:33). To God the bereaved apostles pray as a knower of the heart (Acts 1:24--a word not known to classical writers, found only here in the New Testament and in Acts 15:8, kardiognostes). In the "heart" God's Spirit dwells with might (Eph 3:16, eis ton eso anthropon); in the "heart" God's love is poured forth (Rom 5:5). The Spirit of His son has been "sent forth into the heart" (Gal 4:6); the "earnest of the Spirit" has been given "in the heart" (2 Cor 1:22). In the work of grace, therefore, the heart occupies a position almost unique.
We might also refer here to the command, on which both the Old Testament and New Testament revelation of love is based: "Thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Dt 6:5); where "heart" always takes the first place, and is the term which in the New Testament rendering remains unchanged (compare Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30,33; Lk 10:27, where "heart" always takes precedence).
A bare reference may be made to the employment of the term for that which is innermost, hidden, deepest in anything (Ex 15:8; Jon 2:3), the very center of things. This we find in all languages. Compare Eph 3:16,17, "in the inward man," as above.
J. I. Marais
harth: Occurs 7 times in the King James Version: Gen 18:6; Ps 102:3; Isa 30:14; Jer 36:22,23 bis; Zec 12:6; 4 times in the Revised Version: Lev 6:9; Isa 30:14; Ezek 43:15,16 ("altar hearth"); compare also Isa 29:1 the Revised Version margin. It will be noted that the renderings of the two versions agree in only one passage (Isa 30:14).
(1) The hearth in case of a tent was nothing more than a depression in the ground in which fire was kindled for cooking or for warmth. Cakes were baked, after the fashion of Gen 18:6, in the ashes or upon hot stones. In this passage, however, there is nothing in the Hebrew corresponding to the King James Version "on the hearth." In the poorer class of houses also the hearth consisted of such a depression, of varying dimensions, in the middle or in one corner of the room. There was no chimney for the smoke, which escaped as it could, or through a latticed opening for the purpose (the "chimney" of Hos 13:3). While the nature of the hearth is thus clear enough, more or less uncertainty attaches to specific terms used in the Hebrew. In Isa 30:14 the expression means simply "that which is kindled," referring to the bed of live coals. From this same verb (yaqadh, "be kindled") are formed the nouns moqedh (Ps 102:3 (Hebrew 4)) and moqkedhah (Lev 6:9 (Hebrew 2)) which might, according to their formation, mean either the material kindled or the place where a fire is kindled. Hence, the various renderings, "firebrand," "hearth," etc. Moreover, in Lev 6:9 (2) the termination -ah of moqedhah may be taken as the pronominal suffix, "its"; hence, the Revised Version margin "on its firewood."
(2) Two other terms have reference to heating in the better class of houses. In Jer 36:22,23 the word ('ach) means a "brazier" of burning coals, with which Jehoiakim's "winter house" was heated. The same purpose was served by the "pan (kiyyor) of fire" of Zec 12:6 the Revised Version (British and American), apparently a wide, shallow vessel otherwise used for cooking (1 Sam 2:14, English Versions of the Bible "pan"), or as a wash basin (compare Ex 30:18; 1 Ki 7:38, etc., "laver").
(3) Another class of passages is referred to the signification "altar hearth," which seems to have been a term applied to the top of the altar of burnt offering. The moqedhah of Lev 6:9 (2), though related by derivation to the words discussed under (1) above, belongs here (compare also Ecclesiasticus 50:12, "by the hearth of the altar," par' eschara bomou). Again in Ezekiel's description of the altar of the restored temple (43:15,16), he designates the top of the altar by a special term (the Revised Version margin, ariel), which is by most understood to mean "altar hearth" (so the Revised Version (British and American)). With this may be compared the symbolical name given to Jerusalem (Isa 29:1), and variously explained as "lion (or lioness) of God," or "hearth of God."
Benjamin Reno Downer
har'-ti-li: Occurs (Col 3:23) as the translation of ek psuches, "out of the soul," "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord (who sees the heart and recompenses "whatsoever good thing a man does") and not unto men" (however they, your masters according to the flesh, may regard it); the Revised Version (British and American) "work heartily," margin (Greek) "from the soul."
In 2 Macc 4:37, we have "Antiochus was heartily sorry," psuchikos ("from the soul").
het (chom, horebh, "drought," Job 30:30; Isa 4:6; 25:4; Jer 36:30; sharabh, Isa 49:10, translated in the Revised Version margin "mirage"; zestos, "fervent," Rev 3:15, therme, Acts 28:3, kauma, Rev 7:16, kauson, Mt 20:12; See MIRAGE ):
The heat of the summer is greatly dreaded in Palestine, and as a rule the people rest under cover during the middle of the day, when the sun is hottest. There is no rain from May to October, and scarcely a cloud in the sky to cool the air or to screen off the burning vertical rays of the sun. The first word of advice given to visitors to the country is to protect themselves from the sun. Even on the mountains, where the temperature of the air is lower, the sun is perhaps more fierce, owing to the lesser density of the atmosphere.
This continuous summer heat often causes sunstroke, and the glare causes diseases of the eye which affect a large percentage of the people of Palestine and Egypt.
It is to be expected that in these times of heat and drought the ideal pleasure has come to be to sit in the shade by some cool flowing fountain. In the mountains the village which has the coolest spring of water is the most desired. These considerations give renewed meaning to the passages: "as cold waters to a thirsty soul" (Prov 25:25); "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters" (Ps 23:2). What a blessing to be "under the shadow of the Almighty" (Ps 91:1), where "the sun shall not strike upon them, nor any heat" (Rev 7:16)!
The middle of the day is often referred to as the "heat of the day" (1 Sam 11:11). It made a great difference to the army whether it could win the battle before the midday heat. Saladin won the great battle at Hattin by taking advantage of this fact. It was a particular time of the day when it was the custom to rest. "They came about the heat of the day to the house of Ish-bosheth, as he took his rest at noon" (2 Sam 4:5). Yahweh appeared to Abraham as "he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day" (Gen 18:1). The hardship of working throughout the day is expressed in Mt 20:12, "who have borne the burden of the day and scorching heat." Sometimes just after sunrise the contrast of the cold of night and the heat of the sun is especially noticeable. "The sun ariseth with the scorching wind" (Jas 1:11).
In summer the wind is usually from the Southwest, but in case it is from the South it is sure to be hot. "When ye see a south wind blowing, ye say, There will be a scorching heat" (Lk 12:55). The heat on a damp, sultry day, when the atmosphere is full of dust haze is especially oppressive, and is referred to in Isa 25:5 as "the heat by the shade of a cloud." The heat of summer melts the snow on the mountains and causes all vegetation to dry up and wither. Ice and snow vanish in the heat thereof (Job 6:17), "Drought and heat consume the snow waters" (Job 24:19). But the "tree planted by the waters, that spreadeth out its roots by the river .... shall not fear when heat cometh, but its leaf shall be green" (Jer 17:8).
The word is used often in connection with anger in the Scriptures: "hot anger" (Ex 11:8); "hot displeasure" (Dt 9:19); "anger of the Lord was hot against Israel" (Jdg 2:14 the King James Version); "thine anger from waxing hot" (Ps 85:3 King James Version, margin); "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot" (Rev 3:15).
Alfred H. Joy
heth.
See TAMARISK .
he'-th'-n, he'-then.
See GENTILES .
hev of'-er-ing.
See SACRIFICE .
hev'-'n.
See ASTRONOMY .
See ASTRONOMY , sec. I, 1.
See ASTRONOMY , sec. I, 1; II, 13.
See ASTRONOMY , sec. III, 4.
hev'-'n-li (ouranios, epouranios): Pertaining to heaven or the heavens. See HEAVENS . The phrase ta epourania, translated "heavenly things" in Jn 3:12; Heb 8:5; 9:23, but in Ephesians "heavenly places" (Jn 1:3,10; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12), has shades of meaning defined by the context. In Jn 3:12, in contrast with "earthly things" (i.e. such as can be brought to the test of experience), it denotes truths known only through revelation (God's love in salvation). In Hebrews the sense is local. In Ephesians it denotes the sphere of spiritual privilege in Christ, except in 6:12, where it stands for the unseen spiritual world, in which both good and evil forces operate. It is always the sphere of the super-earthly.
James Orr
hev'-'nz (shamayim; ouranoi): On the physical heavens See ASTRONOMY ;WORLD . Above these, in popular conception, were the celestial heavens, the abode of God and of the hosts of angels (Ps 11:4; 103:19-21; Isa 66:1; Rev 4:2; 5:11; compare Dan 7:10), though it was recognized that Yahweh's presence was not confined to any region (1 Ki 8:27). Later Judaism reckoned seven heavens. The apostle Paul speaks of himself as caught up into "the third heaven," which he evidently identifies with Paradise (2 Cor 12:2).
See HEAVENLY .
2. Earliest Conceptions: Cosmic verses National Type
3. Different from Mythological Theory
4. Antiquity of Cosmical Conception
5. The Cosmical Dependent on the Ethico-Religious
6. The End Correspondent to the Beginning
7. The Cosmical Heavens: Hebrews 12:26-29
8. Palingenesis: Matthew 19:28
The formal conception of new heavens and a new earth occurs in Isa 65:17; 66:22; 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1 (where "heaven," singular). The idea in substance is also found in Isa 51:16; Mt 19:28; 2 Cor 5:17; Heb 12:26-28. In each case the reference is eschatological, indeed the adjective "new" seems to have acquired in this and other connections a semi-technical eschatological sense. It must be remembered that the Old Testament has no single word for "universe," and that the phrase "heaven and earth" serves to supply the deficiency. The promise of a new heavens and a new earth is therefore equivalent to a promise of world renewal.
2. Earliest Conceptions: Cosmic verses National Type:
It is a debated question how old in the history of revelation this promise is. Isaiah is the prophet with whom the idea first occurs in explicit form, and that in passages which many critics would assign to the post-exilic period (the so-called Trito-Isaiah). In general, until recently, the trend of criticism has been to represent the universalistic-cosmic type of eschatology as developed out of the particularistic-national type by a gradual process of widening of the horizon of prophecy, a view which would put the emergence of the former at a comparatively late date. More recently, however, Gressmann (Der Ursprung der israelitisch-judischen Eschatologie, 1905) and others have endeavored to show that often even prophecies belonging to the latter type embody material and employ means of expression which presuppose acquaintance with the idea of a world-catastrophe at the end. On this view the world-eschatology would have, from ancient times, existed alongside of the more narrowly confined outlook, and would be even older than the latter. These writers further assume that the cosmic eschatology was not indigenous among the Hebrews, but of oriental (Babylonian) origin, a theory which they apply not only to the more developed system of the later apocalyptic writings, but also to its preformations in the Old Testament. The cosmic eschatology is not believed to have been the distinctive property of the great ethical prophets, but rather a commonly current mythological belief to which the prophets refer without formally endorsing it.
3. Different from Mythological Theory:
Its central thought is said to have been the belief that the end of the world-process must correspond to the beginning, that consequently the original condition of things, when heaven and earth were new, must repeat itself at some future point, and the state of paradise with its concomitants return, a belief supposed to have rested on certain astronomical observations.
4. Antiquity of Cosmical Conception
While this theory in the form presented is unproven and unacceptable, it deserves credit for having focused attention on certain phenomena in the Old Testament which clearly show that Messianic prophecy, and particularly the world-embracing scope which it assumes in some predictions, is far older than modern criticism had been willing to concede. The Old Testament from the beginning has an eschatology and puts the eschatological promise on the broadest racial basis (Gen 3). It does not first ascend from Israel to the new humanity, but at the very outset takes its point of departure in the race and from this descends to the election of Israel, always keeping the Universalistic goal in clear view. Also in the earliest accounts, already elements of a cosmical universalism find their place side by side with those of a racial kind, as when Nature is represented as sharing in the consequences of the fall of man.
5. The Cosmical Dependent on the Ethico-Religious:
As regards the antiquity of the universalistic and cosmical eschatology, therefore, the conclusions of these writers may be registered as a gain, while on the two other points of the pagan origin and the unethical character of the expectation involved, dissent from them should be expressed. According to the Old Testament, the whole idea of world-renewal is of strictly super-natural origin, and in it the cosmical follows the ethical hope. The cosmical eschatology is simply the correlate of the fundamental Biblical principle that the issues of the world-process depend on the ethico-religious developments in the history of man (compare 2 Pet 3:13).
6. The End Correspondent to the Beginning:
But the end correspondent to the beginning is likewise a true Scriptural principle, which theory in question has helped to reemphasize, although there is this difference that Scripture does not look forward to a repetition of the same process, but to a restoration of the primeval harmony on a higher plane such as precludes all further disturbance. In the passages above cited, there are clear reminiscences of the account of creation (Isa 51:16, "that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth"; 65:17, "I create new heavens and a new earth"; 2 Pet 3:13 compared with 3:4-6; Rev 21:1 compared with the imagery of paradise throughout the chapter). Besides this, where the thought of the renewal of earth is met with in older prophecy, this is depicted in colors of the state of paradise (Isa 11:6-9; Hos 2:18-21). The "regeneration" (palingenesia) of Mt 19:28 also points back to the first genesis of the world. The `inhabited earth to come' (oikoumene mellousa) of Heb 2:5 occurs at the opening of a context throughout which the account of Gen 1 through 3 evidently stood before the writer's mind.
7. The Cosmical Heavens: Hebrews 12:26-29:
In the combination "new heavens and a new earth," the term "heavens" must therefore be taken in the sense imposed upon it by the story of creation, where "heavens" designates not the celestial habitation of God, but the cosmical heavens, the region of the supernal waters, sun moon and stars. The Bible nowhere suggests that there is anything abnormal or requiring renewal in God's dwelling-place (Heb 9:23 is of a different import). In Rev 21, where "the new heaven and the new earth" appear, it is at the same time stated that the new Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven (compare 21:1,2,10). In Heb 12:26-28 also the implication is that only the lower heavens are subject to renewal. The "shaking" that accompanies the new covenant and corresponds to the shaking of the law-giving at Sinai, is a shaking of "not the earth only, but also the heaven." This shaking, in its reference to heaven as well as to earth, signifies a removal of the things shaken. But from the things thus shaken and removed (including heaven), the writer distinguishes "those things which are not shaken," which are destined to remain, and these are identified with the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God, however, according to the general trend of the teaching of the epistle, has its center in the heavenly world. The words "that have been made," in 12:27, do not assign their created character as the reason why heaven and earth can be shaken, an exegesis which would involve us in the difficulty that among that which remains there is something uncreated besides God; the true construction and correct paraphrase are: "as of things that were made with the thought in the mind of God that those things which cannot be shaken may remain," i.e. already at creation God contemplated an unchangeable universe as the ultimate, higher state of things.
8. Palingenesis: Matthew 19:28:
In Mt 19:28 the term palingenesia marks the world-renewing as the renewal of an abnormal state of things. The Scripture teaching, therefore, is that around the center of God's heaven, which is not subject to deterioration or renewal, a new cosmical heaven and a new earth will be established to be the dwelling-place of the eschatological humanity. The light in which the promise thus appears reminds us that the renewed kosmos, earth as well as cosmical heavens, is destined to play a permanent (not merely provisional, on the principle of chiliasm) part in the future life of the people of God. This is in entire harmony with the prevailing Biblical representation, not only in the Old Testament but likewise in the New Testament (compare Mt 5:5; Heb 2:5), although in the Fourth Gospel and in the Pauline Epistles the emphasis is to such an extent thrown on the heaven-centered character of the future life that the role to be played in it by the renewed earth recedes into the background. Revelation, on the other hand, recognizes this element in its imagery of "the new Jerus" coming down from God out of heaven upon earth.
That the new heavens and the new earth are represented as the result of a "creation" does not necessarily involve a production ex nihilo. The terms employed in 2 Pet 3:6-13 seem rather to imply that the renewal will out of the old produce a purified universe, whence also the catastrophe is compared to that of the Deluge. As then the old world perished by water and the present world arose out of the flood, so in the end-crisis "the heavens shall be dissolved by fire and the elements melt with fervent heat," to give rise to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells. The term palingenesia (Mt 19:28) points to renewal, not to creation de novo. The Talmud also teaches that the world will pass through a process of purification, although at the same time it seems to break up the continuity between this and the coming world by the fantastic assumption that the new heavens and the new earth of Isa 65:17 were created at the close of the Hexemeron of Gen 1. This was inferred from the occurrence of the article in Isa 66:22, "the new heavens and the new earth."
Geerhardus Vos
hev'-i, hev'-i-nes (kabhedh, de'aghah; lupe):
Heavy (heave, to lift) is used literally with respect to material things, as the translation of kobhedh, "heaviness" (Prov 27:3, "a stone is heavy"); of kabhedh, "to be weighty" (1 Sam 4:18; 2 Sam 14:26; Lam 3:7); of `amac, "to load" (Isa 46:1 the King James Version; compare Mt 26:43; Mk 14:40; Lk 9:32, "Their eyes were heavy"); bareomai, "to be weighed down."
It is used (1) for what is hard to bear, oppressive, kabhedh (Ex 18:18; Nu 11:14; 1 Sam 5:6,11; Ps 38:4; Isa 24:20); motah, a "yoke" (Isa 58:6, the Revised Version (British and American) "bands of the yoke"); qasheh, "sharp," "hard" (1 Ki 14:6, "heavy tidings"); barus, "heavy" (Mt 23:4); (2) for sad, sorrowful (weighed down), mar, "bitter" (Prov 31:6, the Revised Version (British and American) "bitter"); ra`, "evil" (Prov 25:20); ademoneo, literally, "to be sated," "wearied," then, "to be very heavy," "dejected" (Mt 26:37, of our Lord in Gethsemane, "(he) began to be sorrowful and very heavy," the Revised Version (British and American) "sore troubled"); "ademonein denotes a kind of stupefaction and bewilderment, the intellectual powers reeling and staggering under the pressure of the ideas presented to them" (Mason, The Conditions of our Lord's Life on Earth); compare Mk 14:33; (3) morose, sulky, as well as sad, car, "sullen," "sour," "angry" (1 Ki 20:43; 21:4, "heavy and displeased"); (4) dull, kabhedh (Isa 6:10, "make their ears heavy"; 59:1, "neither (is) his ear heavy"); (5) "tired" seems to be the meaning in Ex 17:12, "Moses' hands were heavy" (kabhedh); compare Mt 26:43 and parallels above.
Heavily is the translation of kebhedhuth, "heaviness" (Ex 14:25), meaning "with difficulty"; of qadhar, "to be black," "to be a mourner" (Ps 35:14 the King James Version, the Revised Version (British and American) "I bowed down mourning"); of kabhedh (Isa 47:6).
Heaviness has always the sense of anxiety, sorrow, grief, etc.; de'aghah, "fear," "dread," "anxious care" (Prov 12:25, "Heaviness in the heart of a man maketh it stoop," the Revised Version margin "or care"); kehah, "to be feeble," "weak" (Isa 61:3, "the spirit of heaviness"); panim, "face," "aspect" (Job 9:27 the King James Version, "I will leave off my heaviness," the Revised Version (British and American) "(sad) countenance"; compare 2 Esdras 5:16; The Wisdom of Solomon 17:4; Ecclesiasticus 25:23); ta'aniyah, from 'anah, "to groan," "to sigh" (Isa 29:2, the Revised Version (British and American) "mourning and lamentation"); tughah, "sadness," "sorrow" (Ps 119:28; Prov 10:1; 14:13); ta`anith, "affliction of one's self," "fasting" (Ezr 9:5, the Revised Version (British and American) "humiliation," margin "fasting"); katepheia, "dejection," "sorrow" (literally, "of the eyes") (Jas 4:9, "your joy (turned) to heaviness"); lupe, "grief" (Rom 9:2, the Revised Version (British and American) "great sorrow"; 2 Cor 2:1, the Revised Version (British and American) "sorrow"); lupeomai (1 Pet 1:6, the Revised Version (British and American) "put to grief"); for nush, "to be sick," "feeble" (Ps 69:20, the Revised Version margin "sore sick"), and ademoneo (Phil 2:26 the Revised Version (British and American) "sore troubled"), the King James Version has "full of heaviness." "Heaviness," in the sense of sorrow, sadness, occurs in 2 Esdras 10:7,8,24; Tobit 2:5; lupe (Ecclesiasticus 22:4, the Revised Version (British and American) "grief"; 30:21, "Give not thy soul to heaviness," the Revised Version (British and American) "sorrow"; 1 Macc 6:4); lupeo (Ecclesiasticus 30:9, the Revised Version (British and American) "will grieve thee"; penthos (1 Macc 3:51, etc.).
The Revised Version has "heavier work" for "more work" (Ex 5:9); "heavy upon men" for "common among men" (Eccl 6:1); for "were heavy loaden" (Isa 46:1), "are made a load"; for "the burden thereof is heavy" (Isa 30:27), "in thick rising smoke."
W. L. Walker
he'-ber (chebher, "associate" or, possibly, "enchanter"; Eber): A name occurring several times in the Old Testament as the name of an individual or of a clan.
(1) A member of the tribe of Asher and son of Beraiah (Gen 46:17; Nu 26:45; 1 Ch 7:31 f).
(2) A Kenite, husband of Jael, who deceptively slew Sisera, captain of the army of Jabin, a Canaanite king (Jdg 4:17; 5:24). He had separated himself from the main body of the Kenites, which accounts for his tent being near Kedesh, the place of Sisera's disastrous battle (Jdg 4:11).
(3) Head of a clan of Judah, and son of Mered by his Jewish, as distinguished from an Egyptian wife. He was father, or founder, of Soco (1 Ch 4:18).
(4) A Benjamite, or clan or family of Elpaal belonging to Benjamin (1 Ch 8:17).
(5) Heber, of our Lord's genealogy (Lk 3:35 the King James Version), better, Eber.
So, the name "Eber," `ebher, in 1 Ch 5:13; 8:22, is not to be confused with Heber, chebher, as in the foregoing passages.
Edward Bagby Pollard
he'-ber-its (ha-chebhri): Descendants of Heber, a prominent clan of Asher, (Nu 26:45). Supposed by some to be connected with the Chabiri of the Tell el-Amarna Letters.
See LANGUAGES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ;ARAMAIC .
he'-broo, he'-broo-es (`ibhri, feminine `ibhriyah; Hebraios): The earliest name for Abraham (Gen 14:13) and his descendants (Joseph, Gen 39:14,17; 40:15; 41:12; 43:32; Israelites in Egypt, Ex 1:15; 2:6,11,13; 3:18; in laws, Ex 21:2; Dt 15:12; in history, 1 Sam 4:6,9; 13:7,19, etc.; later, Jer 34:9, "Hebrewess," 34:14; Jon 1:9; in the New Testament, Acts 6:1; 2 Cor 11:22; Phil 3:5). The etymology of the word is disputed. It may be derived from Eber (Gen 10:21,24,25, etc.), or, as some think, from the verb `abhar, "to cross over" (people from across the Euphrates; compare Josh 24:2). A connection is sought by some with the apri or epri of the Egyptian monuments, and again with the Habiri of the Tell el-Amarna Letters. In Acts 6:1, the "Hebrews" are contrasted with "Hellenists," or Greek-speaking Jews. By the "Hebrew" tongue in the New Testament (Hebraisti, Jn 5:2; 19:13,17,20; 20:16) is meant ARAMAIC (which see), but also in Rev 9:11; 16:16, Hebrew proper.
James Orr
he'-brooz,
1. The Author's Culture and Style
2. Letter, Epistle or Treatise?
3. A Unity or a Composite Work?
(3) Rome and the West: Anonymous
2. The Witness of the Epistle Itself
(b) Barnabas; Priscilla and Aquila; Philip; Aristion; Apollos
1. General Character of the Readers
3. The Locality of the Readers
2. Conversion and History of the Readers
LITERATURE
In the King James Version and the English Revised Version the title of this book describes it as "the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews." Modern scholarship has disputed the applicability of every word of this title. Neither does it appear in the oldest manuscripts, where we find simply "to Hebrews" (pros Hebraious). This, too, seems to have been prefixed to the original writing by a collector or copyist. It is too vague and general for the author to have used it. And there is nothing in the body of the book which affirms any part of either title. Even the shorter title was an inference from the general character of the writing. Nowhere is criticism less hampered by problems of authenticity and inspiration. No question arises, at least directly, of pseudonymity either of author or of readers, for both are anonymous. For the purpose of tracing the history and interpreting the meaning of the book, the absence of a title, or of any definite historical data, is a disadvantage. We are left to infer its historical context from a few fragments of uncertain tradition, and from such general references to historical conditions as the document itself contains. Where no date, name or well-known event is fixed, it becomes impossible to decide, among many possibilities, what known historical conditions, if any, are pre-supposed. Yet this very fact, of the book's detachment from personal and historical incidents, renders it more self-contained, and its exegesis less dependent upon understanding the exact historical situation. But its general relation to the thought of its time must be taken into account if we are to understand it at all.
1. The Author's Culture and Style:
The writer was evidently a man of culture, who had a masterly command of the Greek language. The theory of Clement of Alexandria, that the work was a translation from Hebrew, was merely an inference from the supposition that it was first addressed to Hebrew-speaking Christians. It bears none of the marks of a translation. It is written in pure idiomatic Greek. The writer had an intimate knowledge of the Septuagint, and was familiar with Jewish life. He was well-read in Hellenic literally (e.g. Wisdom), and had probably made a careful study of Philo (See VI below). His argument proceeds continuously and methodically, in general, though not strict, accord with the rules of Greek rhetoric, and without the interruptions and digressions which render Paul's arguments so hard to follow. "Where the literary skill of the author comes out is in the deft adjustment of the argumentative to the hortatory sections" (Moffatt, Introduction, 424 f). He has been classed with Lk as the most "cultured" of the early Christian writers.
2. Letter, Epistle or Treatise?:
It has been questioned whether Hebrews is rightly called a letter at all. Unlike all Paul's letters, it opens without any personal note of address or salutation; and at the outset it sets forth, in rounded periods and in philosophical language, the central theme which is developed throughout. In this respect it resembles the Johannine writings alone in the New Testament. But as the argument proceeds, the personal note of application, exhortation and expostulation emerges more clearly (Heb 2:1; 3:1-12; 4:1,14; 5:11; 6:9; 10:9; 13:7); and it ends with greetings and salutations (Heb 13:18 ff). The writer calls it "a word of exhortation." The verb epesteila (the Revised Version (British and American) "I have written") is the usual expression for writing a letter (Heb 13:22). Hebrews begins like an essay, proceeds like a sermon, and ends as a letter.
Deissmann, who distinguishes between a "true letter," the genuine personal message of one man to another, and an "epistle," or a treatise written in imitation of the form of a letter, but with an eye on the reading public, puts Hebrews in the latter class; nor would he "consider it anything but a literary oration--hence, not as an epistle at all--if the epesteila, and the greetings at the close, did not permit of the supposition that it had at one time opened with something of the nature of an address as well" (Bible Studies, 49-50). There is no textual or historical evidence of any opening address having ever stood as part of the text; nor does the opening section bear any mark or suggestion of fragmentariness, as if it had once followed such an address.
Yet the supposition that a greeting once stood at the beginning of our document is not so impossible as Zahn thinks (Introduction to the New Testament, II, 313 f), as a comparison with James or 1 Peter will show.
So unusual is the phenomenon of a letter without a greeting, that among the ancients, Pantaenus had offered the explanation that Paul, out of modesty, had refrained from putting his name to a letter addressed to the Hebrews, because the Lord Himself had been apostle to them.
In recent times, Julicher and Harnack have conjectured that the author intentionally suppressed the greeting, either from motives of prudence at a time of persecution, or because it was unnecessary, since the bearer of the letter would communicate the name of the sender to the recipients.
Overbeck advanced the more revolutionary hypothesis that the letter once opened with a greeting, but from someone other than Paul; that in order to satisfy the general conditions of canonization, the non-apostolic greeting was struck out by the Alexandrians, and the personal references in Heb 13:22-25 added, in order to represent it as Pauline.
3. A Unity or a Composite Work?:
W. Wrede, starting from this theory, rejects the first part of it and adopts the second. He does not base his hypothesis on the conditions of canonization, but on an examination of the writing itself. He adopts Deissmann's rejected alternative, and argues that the main part of the book was originally not an epistle at all, but a general doctrinal treatise. Then Heb 13, and especially 13:18 ff, were added by a later hand, in order to represent the whole as a Pauline letter, and the book in its final form was made, after all, pseudonymous. The latter supposition is based upon an assumed reference to imprisonment in 13:19 (compare Philem 1:22) and upon the reference to Timothy in Heb 13:23 (compare Phil 2:19); and the proof that these professed Pauline phrases are not really Pauline is found in a supposed contradiction between Heb 13:19 and 13:23. But 13:19 does not necessarily refer to imprisonment exclusively or even at all, and therefore it stands in no contradiction with 13:23 (compare Rom 1:9-13). And Timothy must have associated with many Christian leaders besides Paul. But why should anybody who wanted to represent the letter as Pauline and who scrupled not to add to it for that purpose, refrain from the obvious device of prefixing a Pauline greeting? Moreover, it is only by the most forced special pleading that it can be maintained that Heb 1 through 12 are a mere doctrinal treatise, devoid of all evidences of a personal relation to a circumscribed circle of readers. The period and manner of the readers' conversion are defined (2:3 f). Their present spiritual condition is described in terms of such anxiety and hope as betoken a very intimate personal relation (5:11 f; 6:9-11). Their past conflicts, temptations, endurance and triumph are recalled for their encouragement under present trials, and both past and present are defined in particular terms that point to concrete situations well known to writer and readers (10:32-36). There is, it is true, not in Hebrews the same intense and all-pervading personal note as appears in the earlier Pauline letters; the writer often loses sight of his particular audience and develops his argument in detached and abstract form. But it cannot be assumed that nothing is a letter which does not conform to the Pauline model. And the presence of long, abstract arguments does not justify the excision or explaining away of undoubted personal passages. Neither the language nor the logic of the book either demands or permits the separation of doctrinal and personal passages from one another, so as to leave for residuum a mere doctrinal treatise. Doctrinal statements lead up to personal exhortations, and personal exhortations form the transition to new arguments; they are indissolubly involved in one another; and chapter 13 presents no such exceptional. features as to justify its separation from the whole work. There is really no reason, but the unwarrantable assumption that an ancient writer must have conformed with a certain convention of letter-writing, to forbid the acceptance of Hebrews for what it appears to be--a defense of Christianity written for the benefit of definite readers, growing more intimate and personal as the writer gathers his argument into a practical appeal to the hearts and consciences of his readers,
Certain coincidences of language and thought between this epistle and that of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians justify the inference that Hebrews was known in Rome toward the end of the 1st century AD (compare Heb 11:7,31 and 1:3 ff with Clement ad Cor 9,12,36). Clement makes no explicit reference to the book or its author: the quotations are unacknowledged. But they show that Hebrews already had some authority in Rome. The same inference is supported by similarities of expression found also in the Shepherd of Hermas. The possible marks of its influence in Polycarp and Justin Martyr are too uncertain and indefinite to justify any inference. Its name does not appear in the list of New Testament writings compiled and acknowledged by Marcion, nor in that of the Muratorian Fragment. The latter definitely assigns letters by Paul to only seven churches, and so inferentially excludes Hebrews.
When the book emerges into the clear light of history toward the end of the 2nd century, the tradition as to its authorship is seen to divide into three different streams.
In Alexandria, it was regarded as in some sense the work of Paul. Clement tells how his teacher, apparently Pantaenus, explained why Paul does not in this letter, as in others, address his readers under his name. Out of reverence for the Lord (II, 2, above) and to avoid suspicion and prejudice, he as apostle of the Gentiles refrains from addressing himself to the Hebrews as their apostle. Clement accepts this explanation, and adds to it that the original Hebrew of Paul's epistle had been translated into Greek by Luke. That Paul wrote in Hebrew was assumed from the tradition or inference that the letter was addressed to Aramaic-speaking Hebrews. Clement also had noticed the dissimilarity of its Greek from that of Paul's epistles, and thought he found a resemblance to that of Acts.
Origen starts with the same tradition, but he knew, moreover, that other churches did not accept the Alexandrian view, and that they even criticized Alexandria for admitting Hebrews into the Canon. And he feels, more than Clement, that not only the language, but the forms of thought are different from those of Paul's epistles. This he tries to explain by the hypothesis that while the ideas were Paul's, they had been formulated and written down by some other disciple. He found traditions that named Luke and Clement of Rome, but who the actual writer was, Origen declares that "God alone knows."
The Pauline tradition persisted in Alexandria, and by the 4th century it was accepted without any of the qualifications made by Clement and Origen. It had also in the same period spread over the other eastern churches, both Greek and Syrian. But the Pauline tradition, where it is nearest the fountain-head of history, in Clement and Origen, only ascribes Hebrews to Paul in a secondary sense.
In the West, the Pauline tradition failed to assert itself till the 4th century, and was not generally accepted till the 5th century. In Africa, another tradition prevailed, namely, that Barnabas was the author. This was the only other definite tradition of authorship that prevailed in antiquity. Tertullian, introducing a quotation of Heb 6:1,4-6, writes: "There is also an Epistle to the Hebrews under the name of Barnabas .... and the Epistle of Barnabas is more generally received among the churches than that apocryphal `Shepherd' of adulterers" (De Pudicitia, 20). Tertullian is not expressing his mere personal opinion, but quoting a tradition which had so far established itself as to appear in the title of the epistle in the MS, and he betrays no consciousness of the existence of any other tradition. Zahn infers that this view prevailed in Montanist churches and may have originated in Asia. Moffatt thinks that it had also behind it "some Roman tradition" (Introduction, 437). If it was originally, or at any time, the tradition of the African churches, it gave way there to the Alexandrian view in the course of the 4th century. A Council of Hippo in 393 reckons "thirteen epistles of the apostle Paul, and one by the same to the Hebrews." A council of Carthage in 419 reckons "fourteen epistles of the apostle Paul." By such gradual stages did the Pauline tradition establish itself.
(3) Rome and the West: Anonymous
All the evidence tends to show that in Rome and the remaining churches of the West, the epistle was originally anonymous. No tradition of authorship appears before the 4th century. And Stephen Gobarus, writing in 600, says that both Irenaeus and Hippolytus denied the Pauline authorship. Photius repeats this statement as regards Hippolytus. Neither he nor Gobarus mentions any alternative view (Zahn, Intro, II, 310). The epistle was known in Rome (to Clement) toward the end of the 1st century, and if Paul's name, or any other, had been associated with it from the beginning, it is impossible that it could have been forgotten by the time of Hippolytus. The western churches had no reason for refusing to admit Hebrews into the Pauline and canonical list of books, except only that they did not believe it to be the work of Paul, or of any other apostle.
It seems therefore certain that the epistle first became generally known as an anonymous writing. Even the Alexandrian tradition implies as much, for it appears first as an explanation by Pantaenus why Paul concealed his name. The idea that Paul was the author was therefore an Alexandrian inference. The religious value of the epistle was naturally first recognized in Alexandria, and the name of Paul, the chief letter-writer of the church, at once occurred to those in search for its author. Two facts account for the ultimate acceptance of that view by the whole church. The spiritual value and authority of the book were seen to be too great to relegate it into the same class as the Shepherd or the Epistle of Barnabas. And the conception of the Canon developed into the hard-and-fast rule of apostolicity. No writing could be admitted into the Canon unless it had an apostle for its author; and when Hebrews could no longer be excluded, it followed that its apostolic authorship must be affirmed. The tradition already existing in Alexandria supplied the demand, and who but Paul, among the apostles, could have written it?
The Pauline theory prevailed together with the scheme of thought that made it necessary, from the 5th to the 16th century. The Humanists and the Reformers rejected it. But it was again revived in the 17th and 18th centuries, along with the recrudescence of scholastic ideas. It is clear, however, that tradition and history shed no light upon the question of the authorship of Hebrews. They neither prove nor disprove the Pauline, or any other theory.
2. The Witness of the Epistle Itself:
We are therefore thrown back, in our search for the author, on such evidence as the epistle itself affords, and that is wholly inferential. It seems probable that the author was a Hellenist, a Greek-speaking Jew. He was familiar with the Scriptures of the Old Testament and with the religious ideas and worship of the Jews. He claims the inheritance of their sacred history, traditions and institutions (Heb 1:1), and dwells on them with an intimate knowledge and enthusiasm that would be improbable, though not impossible, in a proselyte, and still more in a Christian convert from heathenism. But he knew the Old Testament only in the Septuagint translation, which he follows even where it deviates from the Hebrew. He writes Greek with a purity of style and vocabulary to which the writings of Luke alone in the New Testament can be compared. His mind is imbued with that combination of Hebrew and Greek thought which is best known in the writings of Philo. His general typological mode of thinking, his use of the allegorical method, as well as the adoption of many terms that are most familiar in Alexandrian thought, all reveal the Hellenistic mind. Yet his fundamental conceptions are in full accord with the teaching of Paul and of the Johannine writings.
The central position assigned to Christ, the high estimate of His person, the saving significance of His death, the general trend of the ethical teaching, the writer's opposition to asceticism and his esteem for the rulers and teachers of the church, all bear out the inference that he belonged to a Christian circle dominated by Pauline ideas. The author and his readers alike were not personal disciples of Jesus, but had received the gospel from those who had heard the Lord (Heb 2:3) and who were no longer living (Heb 13:7). He had lived among his readers, and had probably been their teacher and leader; he is now separated from them but he hopes soon to return to them again (Heb 13:18 f).
Is it possible to give a name to this person?
Although the Pauline tradition itself proves nothing, the internal evidence is conclusive against it. We know enough about Paul to be certain that he could not have written Hebrews, and that is all that can be said with confidence on the question of authorship. The style and language, the categories of thought and the method of argument, all differ widely from those of any writings ascribed to Paul. The latter quotes the Old Testament from the Hebrew and Septuagint, but He only from Septuagint. Paul's formula of quotation is, "It is written" or "The scripture saith"; that of Hebrews, "God," or "The Holy Spirit," or "One somewhere saith." For Paul the Old Testament is law, and stands in antithesis to the New Testament, but in Hebrews the Old Testament is covenant, and is the "shadow" of the New Covenant. Paul's characteristic terms, "Christ Jesus," and "Our Lord Jesus Christ," are never found in Hebrews; and "Jesus Christ" only 3 times (10:10; 13:8), and "the Lord" (for Christ) only twice (2:3; 7:14)--phrases used by Paul over 600 times (Zahn). Paul's Christology turns around the death, resurrection and living presence of Christ in the church, that of Hebrews around His high-priestly function in heaven. Their conceptions of God differ accordingly. In Hebrews it is Judaistic-Platonistic, or (in later terminology) Deistic. The revelation of the Divine Fatherhood and the consequent immanence of God in history and in the world had not possessed the author s mind as it had Paul's. Since the present world is conceived in Hebrews as a world of "shadows," God could only intervene in it by mediators.
The experience and conception of salvation are also different in these two writers. There is no evidence in Hebrews of inward conflict and conversion and of constant personal relation with Christ, which constituted the entire spiritual life of Paul. The apostle's central doctrine, that of justification by faith, does not appear in Hebrews. Faith is less the personal, mystical relation with Christ, that it is for Paul, than a general hope which lays hold of the future to overcome the present; and salvation is accomplished by cleansing, sanctification and perfection, not by justification. While Paul's mind was not uninfluenced by Hellenistic thought, as we find it in Alexandria (as, e.g. in Col and Eph), it nowhere appears in his epistles so clearly and prominently as it does in Hebrews. Moreover, the author of Hebrews was probably a member of the community to which he writes (Heb 13:18 f), but Paul never stood in quite the relation supposed here to any church. Finally, Paul could not have written Heb 2:3, for he emphatically declares that he did not receive his gospel from the older disciples (Gal 1:12; 2:6).
The general Christian ideas on which He was in agreement with Paul were part of the heritage which the apostle had left to all the churches. The few more particular affinities of Hebrews with certain Pauline writings (e.g. Heb 2:2 parallel Gal 3:19; Heb 12:22; 3:14 parallel Gal 4:25; Heb 2:10 parallel Rom 11:36; also with Ephesians; see yon Soden, Hand-Commentar, 3) are easily explicable either as due to the author's reading of Paul's Epistles or as reminiscences of Pauline phrases that were current in the churches. But they are too few and slender to rest upon them any presumption against the arguments which disprove the Pauline tradition.
The passage that is most conclusive against the Pauline authorship (Heb 2:3) is equally conclusive against any other apostle being the author. But almost every prominent name among the Christians of the second generation has been suggested. The epistle itself excludes Timothy (Heb 13:23), and Titus awaits his turn. Otherwise Luke, Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Silas, Apollos, Priscilla and Aquila, Philip the Deacon, and Aristion have all had their champions.
The first two, Luke and Clement, were brought in through their connection with Paul. Where it was recognized that a direct Pauline authorship could not be maintained, the Pauline tradition might still be retained, if the epistle could be assigned to one of the apostle's disciples. These two were fixed upon as being well-known writers. But this very fact reveals the improbability of theory. Similar arguments from language and thought to those derived from the comparison of Hebrews with the Pauline writings avail also in the comparison of Hebrews with the writings of Lk and Clement. Both these disciples of the apostle adhere much closer to his system of thought than Hebrews does, and they reveal none of the influences of Alexandrian thought, which is predominant in Hebrews.
(b) Barnabas; Priscilla and Aquila; Philip; Aristion; Apollos
Of all the other persons suggested, so little is known that it is impossible to establish, with any convincing force, an argument for or against their authorship.
(i) Barnabas was a Levite of Cyprus (Acts 4:36), and once a companion of Paul (Acts 13:2 ff). Another ancient writing is called "the Epistle of Barnabas," but it has no affinity with Hebrews. The coincidence of the occurrence of the word "consolation" in Barnabas' name (Acts 4:36) and in the writer's description of Hebrews (13:22) is quite irrelevant. Tertullian's tradition is the only positive argument in favor of the Barnabas theory. It has been argued against it that Barnabas, being a Levite, could not have shown the opposition to the Levitical system, and the unfamiliarity with it (Heb 7:27; 9:4), which is supposed to mark our epistle. But the author's Levitical system was derived, not from the Hebrew Old Testament, nor from the Jerusalem temple, but from Jewish tradition; and the supposed inaccuracies as to the daily sin offering (7:27), and the position of the golden altar of incense (9:4) have been traced to Jewish tradition (see Moffatt, Introduction, 438). And the writer's hostility to the Levitical system is not nearly as intense as that of Paul to Pharisaism. There is nothing that renders it intrinsically impossible that Barnabas was the author, nor is anything known of him that makes it probable; and if he was, it is a mystery why the tradition was confined to Africa.
(ii) Harnack has argued the probability of a joint authorship by Priscilla and Aquila. The interchange of "I" and "we" he explains as due to a dual authorship by persons intimately related, but such an interchange of the personal "I" and the epistolary "we" can be paralleled in the Epistles of Paul (e.g. Romans) where no question of joint authorship arises. The probable relation of the author to a church in Rome may suit Priscilla arid Aquila (compare Rom 16:5 with Heb 13:22-24), but even if this interpretation of the aforementioned passages were correct, it is possible and probable that Luke, Barnabas, Apollos, and certainly Clement, stood in a similar relation to a Roman church. Harnack, on this theory, explains the disappearance of the author's name as due to prejudice against women teachers. This is the only novel point in favor of this theory as compared with several others; and it does not explain why Aquila's name should not have been retained with the address. The evidences adduced of a feminine mind behind the epistle are highly disputable. On the other hand, a female disciple of Paul's circle would scarcely assume such authority in the church as the author of Hebrews does (13:17 f; compare 1 Cor 14:34 f). And nothing that is known of Priscilla and Aquila would suggest the culture and the familiarity with Alexandrian thought possessed by this writer. Acts 18:26 does not prove that they were expert and cultured teachers, but only that they knew and could repeat the salient points of Paul's early preaching. So unusual a phenomenon as this theory supposes demands more evidence to make it even probable. (But see Rendel Harris, Sidelights on New Testament Research, 148-76.)
(iii) Philip the Deacon and Aristion, "a disciple of the Lord" mentioned by Papias, are little more than names to us. No positive knowledge of either survives on which any theory can be built. It is probable that both were personal disciples of the Lord, and they could not therefore have written Heb 2:3.
(iv) Apollos has found favor with many scholars from Luther downward. No ancient tradition supports this theory, a fact which tells heavily against it, but not conclusively, for someone must have written the letter, and his name was actually lost to early tradition, unless it were Barnabas, and that tradition too was Unknown to the vast majority of the early churches. All that is known of Apollos suits the author of Hebrews. He may have learned the gospel from "them that heard" (2:3); he was a Jew, "an Alexandrian by race, a learned (or eloquent) man," "mighty in the Scriptures," "he powerfully confuted the Jews" (Acts 18:24 ff), and he belonged to the same Pauline circle as Timothy and Titus (1 Cor 16:10-12; Tit 3:13; compare Heb 13:23). The Alexandrian type of thought, the affinities with Philo, the arguments from Jewish tradition and ceremonial, the fluent style, may all have issued from "an eloquent Jew of Alexandria." But it does not follow that Apollos was the only person of this type. The author may have been a Gentile, as the purity of his Greek language and style suggests; and the combination of Greek and Hebrew thought, which the epistle reflects, and even Philo's terms, may have had a wide currency outside Alexandria, as for instance in the great cosmopolitan cities of Asia. All that can be said is that the author of Hebrews was someone generally like what is known of Apollos, but who he actually was, we must confess with Origen, "God alone knows."
The identity of the first readers of Hebrews is, if possible, more obscure than that of the author. It was written to Christians, and to a specific body or group of Christians (See I above). The title "to Hebrews" might mean properly Palestinian Jews who spoke the Hebrew language, but the fact that the epistle was written in Greek excludes that supposition. It therefore meant Christians of Jewish origin, and gives no indication of their place of residence. The title represents an early inference drawn from the contents of the document, and the tradition it embodies was unanimously accepted from the 2nd century down to the early part of the last century. Now, however, a considerable body of critics hold that the original readers were Gentiles. The question is entirely one of inference from the contents of the epistle itself.
1. General Character of the Readers:
The readers, like the writer, received the gospel first from "them that heard" (Heb 2:3), from the personal disciples of the Lord, but they were not of their number. They had witnessed "signs and wonders" and "manifold powers" and "gifts of the Holy Spirit" (Heb 2:4). Their conversion had been thorough, and their faith and Christian life had been of a high order. They had a sound knowledge of the first principles of Christ (Heb 6:1 ff). They had become "partakers of Christ," and had need only to "hold fast the beginning of (their) confidence firm unto the end" (Heb 3:14). They had been fruitful in good works, ministering unto the saints (Heb 6:10), enduring suffering and persecution, and sympathizing with whose who were imprisoned (Heb 10:32-34). All this had been in former days which appeared now remote. Their rulers and ministers of those days are now dead (Heb 13:7). And they themselves have undergone a great change. While they should have been teachers, they have become dull of hearing, and have need again to be taught the rudiments of the first principles of the gospel (Heb 5:12), and they are in danger of a great apostasy from the faith. They need warning against "an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God" (Heb 3:12). They are become sluggish (Heb 6:12), profane like Esau (Heb 12:16), worldly-minded (Heb 13:5). Perhaps their religion was tending toward a false asceticism and outward works (Heb 13:4,9). And now that this moral dulness and spiritual indifference had fallen upon them, they are being subjected to a new test by persecution from outside (Heb 10:36; 12:4), which renders the danger of their falling away from the faith all the more imminent. The author apparently bases his claim to warn them on the fact that he had been a teacher among them, and hoped soon to return to them (Heb 13:18 f). The same might be said perhaps of Timothy (Heb 13:23). Both author and readers had friends in Italy (Heb 13:24) who were with the author when he wrote, either in Italy saluting the readers outside, or outside, saluting the readers in Italy. In all this there is little or nothing to help to fix the destination of the letter, for it might be true at some time or other of any church.
The old tradition that the readers were Jews claims some more definite support from the epistle itself. The writer assumes an intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and of Jewish ceremonial on their part. The fathers of the Hebrew race are also their fathers (Heb 1:1; 3:9). The humanity that Christ assumed and redeemed is called "the seed of Abraham" (Heb 2:16). All this, however, might stand in reference to a Gentilechurch, for the early Christians, without distinction of race, regarded themselves as the true Israel and heirs of the Hebrew revelation, and of all that related to it (1 Cor 10:1; Gal 3:7 ff; 4:21 ff; Rom 4:11-18). Still there is force in Zahn's argument that "Hebrews does not contain a single sentence in which it is so much as intimated that the readers became members of God's people who descended from Abraham, and heirs of the promise given to them and their forefathers, and how they became such" (Intro to New Testament, II, 323). Zahn further finds a direct proof in Heb 13:13 that "both the readers and the author belong to the Jewish people," which he interprets as "meaning that the readers were to renounce fellowship with the Jewish people who had rejected Jesus, to confess the crucified Jesus, and to take upon themselves all the ignominy that Jesus met at the hands of his countrymen" (ibid., 324-25). But that is too large an inference to draw from a figurative expression which need not, and probably does not, mean more than an exhortation to rely on the sacrifice of Christ, rather than upon any external rules and ceremomes. Nor were the "divers and strange teachings" about marriage and meats (13:4,9) necessarily Jewish doctrines. They might be the doctrines of an incipient Gnosticism which spread widely throughout the Christian churches, both Jewish and gentile, toward the end of the 1st century. There is otherwise no evidence that the apostasy, of which the readers stood in danger, was into Judaism, but it was rather a general unbelief and "falling away from the living God" (3:12).
It is the whole argument of the epistle, rather than any special references, that produced the tradition, and supports the view, that the readers were Jews. The entire message of the epistle, the dominant claims of Christ and of the Christian faith, rests upon the supposition that the readers held Moses, Aaron, the Jewish priesthood, the old Covenant and the Levitical ritual, in the highest esteem. The author's argument is: You will grant the Divine authority and greatness of Moses, Aaron and the Jewish institutions: Christ is greater than they; therefore you ought to be faithful to Him. He assumes an exclusively Jewish point of view in the minds of his readers as his major premise. He could scarcely do that, if they had been Gentiles. Paul, when writing to the mixed church at Rome, relates his philosophy of the Christian revelation to both Jewish and Gentilepre-Christian revelation. Gentile Christians adopted the Jewish tradition as their own in consequence of, and secondary to, their attachment to Christianity. Even Judaizing GentileChristians, such as may be supposed to have belonged to the Galatian and Corinthian churches, adopted some parts of the Jewish law only as a supplement to Christianity, but not as its basis.
Von Soden and others have argued with much reason that these Christians were not in danger of falling back into Judaism from Christianity, but rather of falling away from all faith into unbelief and materialism, like the Israelites in the wilderness (Heb 3:7 ff), or Esau (Heb 12:16). With all its references to Old Testament sacrifice and ceremonial, the letter contains not a single warning against reviving them, nor any indications that the readers were in danger of so doing (Hand-Commentar, 12-16). But it has been too readily assumed that these facts prove that the readers were not Jews. The pressure of Social influence and persecution rendered Jews and Jewish Christians, as well as GentileChristians, liable to apostatize to heathenism or irreligion (The Wisdom of Solomon 2:10,20; 2 Macc 4; 6; 7; Philo, De Migratione Abrahami, XVI; Mt 24:10,12; Acts 20:30; 1 Cor 10:7,14; 2 Thess 2:4; 1 Jn 2:18; 5:21; Pliny Epistle X, 96). Von Soden's argument really cuts the other way. If the writer had been dealing with Gentile Christians who were in danger of relapsing into heathenism or of falling into religious indifference, his argument from the shadowy and temporary glories of Judaism to the perfect salvation in Christ would avail nothing, because, for such, his premises would depend upon his conclusion. But if they were Jewish Christians, even though leaning toward heathenism, his argument is well calculated to call up on its side all the dormant force of their early religious training. He is not arguing them out of a "subtle Judaism" quickened by the zeal of a propaganda (Moffatt, Introduction, 449-50), but from "drifting away" in Heb (2:1), from "neglect" (2:3), from "an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God" (3:12), from "disobedience" (4:11), from "a dulness of hearing" (5:11), but into "diligence .... that ye be not sluggish" (6:11 f), into "boldness and patience" (10:35 f), and to "lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees" (12:12); and this he might well do by his appeal to their whole religious experience, both Jewish and Christian, and to the whole religious history of their race.
3. The Locality of the Readers:
The question of the locality of these "Hebrews" remains a matter for mere conjecture. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, Colosse, Ephesus, Berea, Ravenna and other places have been suggested. Tradition, since Clement of Alexandria, fixed on Jerusalem, but on the untenable ground that the letter was written to Aramaic-speaking Jews. The undisputed fact that it was written in Greek tells against Jerusalem. So does the absence of all reference to the temple ritual, and the mention of almsgiving as the chief grace of the "Hebrews" (6:10). Jerusalem received rather than gave alms. Nor is it likely that all the personal disciples of the Lord would have died out in Jerusalem (2:3). And it could not be charged against the mother church that it had produced no teachers (5:12). These points also tell with almost equal force against any Palestinian locality.
Alexandria was suggested as an alternative to Jerusalem, on the supposition that those references to Jewish ritual which did not correspond with the Jerusalem ritual (Heb 7:27; 9:4; 10:11) might refer to the temple at Leontopolis. But the ritual system of the epistle is that of the tabernacle and of tradition, and not of any temple. The Alexandrian character of the letter has bearing on the identity of the author, but not so much on that of his readers. The erroneous idea that Paul was the author arose in Alexandria, but it would have been least likely to arise where the letter was originally sent.
Rome has lately found much favor. We first learn of the existence of the letter at Rome. The phrase "they of Italy salute you" (Heb 13:24) implies that either the writer or his readers were in Italy. It may be more natural to think of the writer, with a small group of Italian friends away from home, sending greetings to Italy, than to suppose that a greeting from Italy generally was sent to a church at a distance. It is probable that a body of Jewish Christians existed in Rome, as in other large cities of the Empire. But this view does not, as von Soden thinks, explain any coincidences between Hebrews and Romans. A Roman origin might. It could explain the use of Hebrews by Clement. But the letter might also have come to Rome by Clement's time, even though it was originally sent elsewhere. The slender arguments in favor of Rome find favor chiefly because no arguments can be adduced in favor of any other place.
The latest date for the composition of Hebrews is clearly fixed as earlier than 96 AD by reason of its use by Clement of Rome about that time. There is no justification for the view that Hebrews shows dependence on Josephus. The earliest date cannot be so definitely fixed. The apparent dependence of Hebrews on Paul's Epistles, Galatians, 1 Corinthians and Romans, brings it beyond 50 AD.
2. Conversion and History of Readers:
But we have data in the epistle itself which require a date considerably later. The readers had been converted by personal disciples of the Lord (Heb 2:3). They did not, therefore, belong to the earliest group of Christians. But it is not necessary to suppose a long interval between the Lord's ascension and their conversion. The disciples were scattered widely from Jerusalem by the persecution that followed the death of Stephen (Acts 8:1). "We may well believe that the vigorous preaching of Stephen would set a wave in motion which would be felt even at Rome" (Sanday, Romans, xxviii). They are not, therefore, necessarily to be described as Christians of the 2nd generation in the strict chronological sense. But the letter was written a considerable time after their conversion. They have had time for great development in Heb (5:12). They have forgotten the former days after their conversion (10:32). Their early leaders are now dead (13:7). Yet the majority of the church still consists of the first converts (2:3; 10:32). And although no argument can be based upon the mention of 40 years (3:9), for it is only an incidental phrase in a quotation, yet no longer interval could lie between the founding of the church and the writing of the letter. It might be shorter. And the church may have been founded at any time from 32 to 70 AD.
The doctrinal development represented in Hebrews stands midway between the system of the later Pauline Epistles (Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians) and that of the Johannine Writings. The divers and strange teachings mentioned include only such ascetic tendencies about meat and marriage (Heb 13:4,9) as are reflected in Paul's Epistles early and late. There is no sign of the appearance of the full-blown heresies of the Ebionites, Docetists, and Gnostics, which became prevalent before the end of the 1st century. On the other hand the Logos-doctrine as the interpretation of the person of Christ (Heb 1:1-4) is more fully thought out than in Paul, but less explicit, and less assimilated with the purpose of Christianity, than in the Fourth Gospel.
It has been argued that the letter must have been written before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, because in writing to a Jewish community, and especially in dealing with Jewish ritual, the writer would have referred to that event, if it had happened. This point would be relevant, if the letter had been addressed to Jerusalem, which is highly improbable. But, at a distance, an author so utterly unconcerned with contemporary history could easily have omitted mention of even so important a fact. For in fact the author never mentions the temple or its ritual. His system is that of the tabernacle of the Old Testament and of Jewish tradition. The writer's interest is not in historical Judaism, and his omission to mention the great catastrophe does not prove that it had not occurred. The use of the present tense of the ritual does not imply its present continuance. "The present expresses the fact that so it is enjoined in the law, the past that with the founding of the New Covenant the old had been abolished" (Peake, Hebrews, 39).
A point of contact with contemporary history is found in the fact that Timothy was still living and active when Hebrews was written (13:23), but it does not carry us far. Timothy was a young man and already a disciple, when Paul visited Galatia on his 2nd journey about 46 AD (Acts 16:1). And he may have lived to the end of the century or near to it. It cannot be safely argued from the mere mention of his name alone, that Paul and his other companions were dead.
Two incidents in the history of the readers are mentioned which afford further ground for a somewhat late date. Immediately after their conversion, they suffered persecution, "a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, becoming partakers with them that were so used" (Heb 10:32 f). And now again, when the letter is written, they are entering upon another time of similar trial, in which they "have need of patience" (Heb 10:36), though they "have not yet resisted unto blood" (Heb 12:4). Their leaders, at least, it would appear, the writer and Timothy, have also been in prison, but one is at liberty and the other expects to be soon (Heb 13:19,23). It has been conjectured that the first persecution was that under Nero in 64 AD, and the second, that in the reign of Domitian, after 81 AD. But when it is remembered that in some part of the Empire Christians were almost always under persecution, and that the locale of these readers is very uncertain, these last criteria do not justify any dogmatizing. It is certain that the letter was written in the second half of the 1st century. Certain general impressions, the probability that the first apostles and leaders of the church were dead, the absence of any mention of Paul, the development of Paul's theological ideas in a new medium, the disappearance of the early enthusiasm, the many and great changes that had come over the community, point strongly to the last quarter of the century. The opinions of scholars at present seem to converge about the year 80 AD or a little later.
|| I. The Revelation of God in His Son (Heb 1-2).
1. Christ the completion of revelation (Heb 1:1-3).
2. Christ's superiority over the angels (Heb 1:4 ff).
(1) Because lie is a Son (Heb 1:4-6).
(2) Because His reign is eternal (Heb 1:7 ff).
3. The dangers of neglecting salvation through the Son (Heb 2:1-4).
4. The Son and humanity (Heb 2:5 ff).
(1) The lowliness and dignity of man (Heb 2:5-8).
(2) Necessity for the Incarnation (Heb 2:9 ff).
(a) To fulfill God's gracious purpose (Heb 2:9 f) .
(b) That the Saviour and saved might be one (Heb 2:11-15).
(c) That the Saviour may sympathize with the saved (Heb 2:16 ff).
II. The Prince of Salvation (Heb 3:1 through 4:13).
1. Christ as Son superior to Moses as servant (Heb 3:1-6).
2. Consequences of Israel's unbelief (Heb 3:7-11).
3. Warning the "Hebrews" against similar unbelief (Heb 3:12 ff).
4. Exhortations to faithfulness (Heb 4:1-13).
(1) Because a rest remains for the people of God (Heb 4:1-11).
(2) Because the omniscient God is judge (Heb 4:12 f).
III. The Great High Priest (Heb 4:14 through 10:18).
1. Christ's priesthood the Christian's confidence (Heb 4:14-16).
2. Christ has the essential qualifications for priesthood (Heb 5:1-10).
(1) Sympathy with men (Heb 5:1-3).
(2) God's appointment (Heb 5:4-10).
3. The spiritual dulness of the Hebrews (Heb 5:11 through 6:12).
(1) Their lack of growth in knowledge (Heb 5:11 ff).
(2) "Press on unto perfection" (Heb 6:1-3).
(3) The danger of falling away from Christ (Heb 6:4-8).
(4) Their past history ground for hoping better things (Heb 6:9-12).
4. God's oath the ground of Christ's priesthood and of the believer's hope (Heb 6:13 ff).
5. Christ a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb 7:1 ff).
(1) The history of Melchizedek (Heb 7:1-3).
(2) The superiority of his order over that of Aaron (Heb 7:4-10).
(3) Supersession of the Aaronic priesthood (Heb 7:11-19).
(4) Superiority of Christ's priesthood (Heb 7:20-24).
(5) Christ a priest befitting us (Heb 7:24 ff).
6. Christ the true high priest (Heb 8:1 through 10:18).
(1) Because He entered the true sanctuary (Heb 8:1-5).
(2) Because He is priest of the New Covenant (Heb 8:6 ff).
(3) A description of the old tabernacle and its services (Heb 9:1-7).
(4) Ineffectiveness of its sacrifices (Heb 9:8-10).
(5) Superiority of Christ's sacrifice (Heb 9:11-14).
(6) The Mediator of the New Covenant through His own blood (Heb 9:15 ff).
(7) Weakness of the sacrifices of the law (Heb 10:1-5).
(8) Incarnation for the sake of sacrifice (Heb 10:6-9).
(9) The one satisfactory sacrifice (Heb 10:10-18).
IV. Practical Exhortations (Heb 10:19 through 13:25).
1. Draw near to God and hold fast the faith (Heb 10:19-23).
2. The responsibility of Christians and the judgment of God (Heb 10:24-31).
3. Past faithfulness a ground for present confidence (Heb 10:32 ff).
4. The household of faith (Heb 11:1 ff).
(1) What is faith? (Heb 11:1-3).
(2) The examples of faith (Heb 11:4-32).
(3) The triumphs of faith (Heb 11:33 ff).
5. Run the race looking unto Jesus (Heb 12:1-3).
6. Sufferings as discipline from the Father (Heb 12:4-11).
7. The duty of helping and loving the brethren (Heb 12:12-17).
8. Comparison of the trials and privileges of Christians with those of the Israelites (Heb 12:18 ff).
9. Various duties (Heb 13:1-17).
(1) Moral and social relations (Heb 13:1-6).
(2) Loyalty to leaders (Heb 13:7 f).
(3) Beware of Jewish heresies (Heb 13:9-4).
(4) Ecclesiastical worship and order (Heb 13:15-17).
10. Personal affairs and greetings (Heb 13:18 ff).
(1) A request for the prayers of the church (Heb 13:18 f).
(2) A prayer for the church (Heb 13:20 f) .
(3) "Bear with the word of exhortation" (Heb 13:22).
(4) "Our brother Timothy" (Heb 13:23).
The theme of the epistle is the absoluteness of the Christian religion, as based-upon the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, the one and only mediator of salvation. The essence of Christ's preeminence is that He fully realizes in His own person the principles of revelation and reconciliation. It is made manifest in His superiority over the Jewish system of salvation, which He therefore at once supersedes and fulfils. The author's working concept is the Logos-doctrine of Philo; and the empirical data to which it is related is the religious history of Israel, as it culminates in Christianity. He makes no attempt to prove either his ideal first principles or his historical premises, and his philosophy of religion takes no account of the heathen world. The inner method of his argument is to fit Judaism and Christianity into the Logos-concept; but his actual is related to the ideal in the way of Plato's antithesis, of shadow and reality, of pattern and original, rather than in Aristotle's way of development, although the influence of the latter method may often be traced, as in the history of faith, which is carried back to the beginnings of history, but is made perfect only in the Christian consummation (Heb 11:40). In a number of other ideas the teleological movement may be seen cutting across the categories of shadow and reality (Heb 1:3; 1:10; 4:8 f; 5:8 f; 9:12; 10:12; 12:22).
The form of the argument may be described as either rabbinical or Alexandrian. The writer, after laying down his proposition, proceeds to prove it by quotations from the Old Testament, taken out of their context and historical connection, adapted and even changed to suit his present purpose. This practice was common to Palestinian and Alexandrian writers; as was also the use of allegory which plays a large part in Hebrews (e.g. Heb 3:7 through 4:11; 13:11 f). But the writer's allegorical method differs from that of the rabbis in that it is like Philo's, part of a conscious philosophy, according to which the whole of the past and present history of the world is only a shadow of the true realities which are laid up in heaven (Heb 8:5; 9:23 f; 10:1). His interest in historical facts, in Old Testament writers, in Jewish institutions and even in the historical life of Jesus, is quite subordinate to his prepossession with the eternal and heavenly realities which they, in more or less shadowy fashion, represent. That the affinities of Hebrews are Alexandrian rather than Palestinian is further proved by many philological and literary correspondences with The Wisdom of Solomon and Philo. Most of the characteristic terms and phrases of the epistle are also found in these earlier writers. It has been argued that Hebrews and Wisdom came from the same hand, and it seems certain that the author of Hebrews was familiar with both Wisdom and the writings of Philo (Plumptre in The Expositor, I, 329 ff, 409 ff; von Soden in Hand-Commentar, 5-6). In Philo the dualism of appearance and reality finds its ultimate synthesis in his master-conception of the Logos, and although this term does not appear in Hebrews in Philo's sense, the doctrine is set forth in Philonic phraseology in the opening verses (1:1-4). As Logos, Christ excels the prophets as revealer of God, is superior to the angels who Were the mediators of the old Covenant, and is more glorious than Moses as the builder of God's true tabernacle, His eternal house; He is a greater Saviour than Joshua, for He brings his own to final rest; and He supersedes the Aaronic priesthood, for while they ministered in a "holy place made with hands, like in pattern to the true," under a "law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things" (Heb 9:24; 10:1), He "having come a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands .... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb 9:11 f).
Yet it is possible to exaggerate the dependence of Hebrews on Alexandrian thought. Deeper than the allegorical interpretation of passages culled from the Septuagint, deeper than the Logos-philosophy which formed the framework of his thought, is the writer's experience and idea of the personal Christ. His central interest lies, not in the theoretical scheme which he adopts, but in the living person who, while He is the eternal reality behind all shadows, and the very image of God's essence, is also our brother who lived and suffered on earth, the author of our salvation, our "fore-runner within the veil," who "is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb 1:1-4; 2:14 ff; 2:10; 5:7-9; 4:14-15; 6:20; 7:25). As in Paul and John, so in Hebrews, the historical and ever-living Christ comes in as an original and creative element, which transforms the abstract philosophy of Hellenistic thought into a living system of salvation. Because of His essential and personal preeminence over the institutions and personalities of the old Covenant, Christ has founded a new Covenant, given a new revelation and proclaimed a new gospel. The writer never loses sight of the present bearing of these eternal realities on the lives of his readers. They are for their warning against apostasy, for their encouragement in the face of persecution, and for their undying hope while they `run the race that is set before (them), looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of .... faith (Heb 2:3; 3:12 ff; 4:1 ff; 10:28 ff; 12:1 f,22 ff).
LITERATURE.
(1) Commentary by A. S. Peake, Century Bible; A.B. Davidson, Bible Handbooks; Marcus Dods, Expositor's Greek Test.; T.C. Edwards, Expositor's Bible; F. Rendall (London, 1888); Westcott3 (1903); von Soden, Hand-Commentar; Hollmann, Die Schriften des New Testament.
(2) Introductions by Moffatt, Introduction to the Lit. of the New Testament; A. B. Bruce in HDB; von Soden in EB; Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament; H.H.B Ayles, Destination, Date, and Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews; Harnack, "Probabilia, uber die Addresse und den Verfasser des Hebraerbriefes," ZNTW, I (1900); W. Wrede, Das literarische Ratsel des Hebraerbriefes (1906).
(3) Theology: Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews; Milligan, The Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews; Menegoz, La theologie de l'epitre aux Hebreux. For fuller list, see Moffatt, in the work quoted
T. Rees
HEBREWS, GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE
(Euaggelion kath' Hebraious, to Hebraikon, to Ioudaikon; Evangelium Hebraeorum, Judeorum):
1. References in Early Church History
2. Its Character and Contents
3. Its Circulation and Language
4. Relation to Matthew
5. Time of Composition
6. Uncanonical Sayings and Incidents
7. Conclusion
LITERATURE
"The Gospel according to the Hebrews" was a work of early Christian literature to which reference is frequently made by the church Fathers in the first five centuries, and of which some twenty or more fragments, preserved in their writings, have come down to us. The book itself has long disappeared. It has, howe