The Book of Hebrews
The Book of Hebrews
In Christian systematics, this is the document that decisively addresses the distinction between Mosaic sacrifice as the way of reconciliation with God, versus crucifixion of His Son opening a new way, through faith.
Where the blood of animals is used in observing Moses' law, "He has obtained a more excellent ministry' ((8.6): "Who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices , fgirst for his own sins and then for the people's, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself." (((7.27) "Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: "We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." (8.1)
The essential elements of the doctrine of the Trinity are also here. It is the eternal Holy Spirit (9.14) leading Him, the Son, the Father incarnate, who is both High Priest, and blood sacrifice. The Father sacrificing Himself through the Son's sacrifice, by the Spirit binding both. This completes the approach to God through sacrifice. "A new covenant" (8.13) to wipe out prior sinfulness is sealed by His blood. "He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and old is ready to vanish away." (8.13).
Other doctrines.
I. Hebrews equates the Incarnation with the Logos, Greek term used in John 1 for what "God, who in various times and in various ways spoke to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son." (1.1,2)
II. The creative Logos is both: Perfect Man, from the stock of Jesse; and Son of God, of cosmic origin. "Above the angels, seated at the right hand of the Father." (1.5f.; 8.1)
III. These thing are made known through faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.) (11.1-3) The lineage of those who "knew through faith" is given in Chapter 11, a "great cloud of witnesses" looking unto Jesus.
IV. God's covenant with Abraham is replaced by the new covenant sealed in Christ's blood. (8.13) Mosaic law, designating Levites as the priests among Israel's twelve tribes, is replaced by Jesus' self-sacrifice once for all, a "priest on the Order of Melchizedek". Levi was "still in the loins of his father" when Melchizedek met him. (7.10)
V. The lengthy and detailed account of Jesus Christ as a Priest on the order of Melchizedek,
The most profound historical controversy over how the Old and New Testament relate to each other concerns the interpretation of this figure. Such widely separated figures of Clement of Alexandria, Madam Blavatsky and Gurdjieff take Melchizedek to be non-semitic.
At the symbolic level, Christ's resurrection and eternal existence is seen, through faith, in the same terms as this very ancient order at "Salem" (assumed to be Jerusalem) in Genesis 14; immortal beings "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God" (7.3). This link is exoteric, explicable as desire to show continuity with traditional teaching, lessening resistance to the radical departure accepting the Incarnation required.
Beneath, or threaded through, this, however is a deeper, esoteric level of meaning.
Etymological evidence points back to pre-(if not anti-)semitic links to ancient Sumer and Babylon. "Hebrew", itself, is a transliteration of "Nibiru", used in Sumerian texts for a planet of spacecraft. "Melchizedek", similarly, is non-semitic, harking back to the region of Babylon, Kish, Ur, from whence Abram's father Terah came. The name of the god votaried by the Salem priests is given as "YHWH EL ELYON," translated "God most High" and used nowhere else in the Bible. As a composit of the relatively late "YHWH" of Jewish tradition and the older, broader "EL" cults in the surrounding crescent, spreading north east. Further, "Abram" who pays a title to Melchizedek's God most High, in effect acknowledging equality if not identity, has not yet undergone name change to "Abraham" (Genesis 17), These signs, taken altogether, testify that a non-Judaic tradition is evoked by the author of Hebrews. It belong in the same context as John 8.58 "Before Abraham was, I AM".
VI. The role of the Holy Spirit -- completes the metaphysical element of the Trinity. It is the ontological unity of the Word in the voice of the fathers, priests, prophets, Son; bestowed as a grace for nurture of the human soul, instill faith.
VII. The dialectic of Law and Grace. The Grace of the Holy Spirit filled the Man, His Son, to sacrifice Himself to The Father. From the other side, it is the sacrifice of the Father to Himself through the Son. The Spirit of the Law is Grace; the obedience-to-sacrifice is sacrificed. The Father,The Son, and the Holy Ghost -- brought to earth through the womb of
***
Outside the Bible context, some 4 or 5 centuries before Hebrews, the basic template of its story can be discerned in Plato's Timaeus, sans the notion of salvation by sacrifice. It goes much further than Genesis in elaborating how "God" (Theos) created man and soul. "First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses* in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and lord of all that is in us; to this the gods, wen they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants, considering that it must partake of every sort of motion." (44d). The four limbs are added as stabilizers. "In order then that it might not tumble about among the high and deep places of earth, but might be able to get over the one and out of the other, they provided the body to be its vehicle and means of locomotion, which consequently had length, and was furnished with four limbs extended and flexible." They installed "so much of fire as would not burn" in the head, which "gave a gentle light", so that when daylight surrounds the stream of vision, then "like falls on like"; light "that falls from within meets with an external object" and that explains vision. The "two courses" are sensation and intellect.
This could be taken as rationalized God-created-man detail, elaborating on the same theme. Although this may seem a stretch, there is common background. Pythagoras, prior to Plato, believer in reincarnation, credited the Logos in number and geometry to Gods known in ancient times.
This is the rational tradition that merges with the Christian. As noted above, it omits The Holy Spirit as cosmic ontological category, though Pythagorean 're-births' must have occurred.
More decisively: it totally ignores another side of the psyche, the biology-first, body-stem reptilian brain mythology. This connects with the esoteric dimension of Melchizedeks.
In Christian systematics, this is the document that decisively addresses the distinction between Mosaic sacrifice as the way of reconciliation with God, versus crucifixion of His Son opening a new way, through faith.
Where the blood of animals is used in observing Moses' law, "He has obtained a more excellent ministry' ((8.6): "Who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices , fgirst for his own sins and then for the people's, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself." (((7.27) "Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: "We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." (8.1)
The essential elements of the doctrine of the Trinity are also here. It is the eternal Holy Spirit (9.14) leading Him, the Son, the Father incarnate, who is both High Priest, and blood sacrifice. The Father sacrificing Himself through the Son's sacrifice, by the Spirit binding both. This completes the approach to God through sacrifice. "A new covenant" (8.13) to wipe out prior sinfulness is sealed by His blood. "He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and old is ready to vanish away." (8.13).
Other doctrines.
I. Hebrews equates the Incarnation with the Logos, Greek term used in John 1 for what "God, who in various times and in various ways spoke to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son." (1.1,2)
II. The creative Logos is both: Perfect Man, from the stock of Jesse; and Son of God, of cosmic origin. "Above the angels, seated at the right hand of the Father." (1.5f.; 8.1)
III. These thing are made known through faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.) (11.1-3) The lineage of those who "knew through faith" is given in Chapter 11, a "great cloud of witnesses" looking unto Jesus.
IV. God's covenant with Abraham is replaced by the new covenant sealed in Christ's blood. (8.13) Mosaic law, designating Levites as the priests among Israel's twelve tribes, is replaced by Jesus' self-sacrifice once for all, a "priest on the Order of Melchizedek". Levi was "still in the loins of his father" when Melchizedek met him. (7.10)
V. The lengthy and detailed account of Jesus Christ as a Priest on the order of Melchizedek,
The most profound historical controversy over how the Old and New Testament relate to each other concerns the interpretation of this figure. Such widely separated figures of Clement of Alexandria, Madam Blavatsky and Gurdjieff take Melchizedek to be non-semitic.
At the symbolic level, Christ's resurrection and eternal existence is seen, through faith, in the same terms as this very ancient order at "Salem" (assumed to be Jerusalem) in Genesis 14; immortal beings "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God" (7.3). This link is exoteric, explicable as desire to show continuity with traditional teaching, lessening resistance to the radical departure accepting the Incarnation required.
Beneath, or threaded through, this, however is a deeper, esoteric level of meaning.
Etymological evidence points back to pre-(if not anti-)semitic links to ancient Sumer and Babylon. "Hebrew", itself, is a transliteration of "Nibiru", used in Sumerian texts for a planet of spacecraft. "Melchizedek", similarly, is non-semitic, harking back to the region of Babylon, Kish, Ur, from whence Abram's father Terah came. The name of the god votaried by the Salem priests is given as "YHWH EL ELYON," translated "God most High" and used nowhere else in the Bible. As a composit of the relatively late "YHWH" of Jewish tradition and the older, broader "EL" cults in the surrounding crescent, spreading north east. Further, "Abram" who pays a title to Melchizedek's God most High, in effect acknowledging equality if not identity, has not yet undergone name change to "Abraham" (Genesis 17), These signs, taken altogether, testify that a non-Judaic tradition is evoked by the author of Hebrews. It belong in the same context as John 8.58 "Before Abraham was, I AM".
VI. The role of the Holy Spirit -- completes the metaphysical element of the Trinity. It is the ontological unity of the Word in the voice of the fathers, priests, prophets, Son; bestowed as a grace for nurture of the human soul, instill faith.
VII. The dialectic of Law and Grace. The Grace of the Holy Spirit filled the Man, His Son, to sacrifice Himself to The Father. From the other side, it is the sacrifice of the Father to Himself through the Son. The Spirit of the Law is Grace; the obedience-to-sacrifice is sacrificed. The Father,The Son, and the Holy Ghost -- brought to earth through the womb of
***
Outside the Bible context, some 4 or 5 centuries before Hebrews, the basic template of its story can be discerned in Plato's Timaeus, sans the notion of salvation by sacrifice. It goes much further than Genesis in elaborating how "God" (Theos) created man and soul. "First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses* in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and lord of all that is in us; to this the gods, wen they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants, considering that it must partake of every sort of motion." (44d). The four limbs are added as stabilizers. "In order then that it might not tumble about among the high and deep places of earth, but might be able to get over the one and out of the other, they provided the body to be its vehicle and means of locomotion, which consequently had length, and was furnished with four limbs extended and flexible." They installed "so much of fire as would not burn" in the head, which "gave a gentle light", so that when daylight surrounds the stream of vision, then "like falls on like"; light "that falls from within meets with an external object" and that explains vision. The "two courses" are sensation and intellect.
This could be taken as rationalized God-created-man detail, elaborating on the same theme. Although this may seem a stretch, there is common background. Pythagoras, prior to Plato, believer in reincarnation, credited the Logos in number and geometry to Gods known in ancient times.
This is the rational tradition that merges with the Christian. As noted above, it omits The Holy Spirit as cosmic ontological category, though Pythagorean 're-births' must have occurred.
More decisively: it totally ignores another side of the psyche, the biology-first, body-stem reptilian brain mythology. This connects with the esoteric dimension of Melchizedeks.
posted by Sid Thomas | 12:57 PM
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