Encountering the Book of hebrews

Encountering the Book of Hebrews. By Donald A. Hagner. Encountering Biblical Studies. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002, 213 pp., $21.99 paper.

This commentary by Donald Hagner, George Eldon Ladd Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, is part of the Encountering Biblical Studies series, a series that is distinctive enough to require some remarks on its features and objectives. The intended audience for the commentaries in this series is upper-level undergraduates: in content, style, and layout they are designed specifically for use in college courses. The approach is not to analyze the book critically but to survey themes and significance, making ample use of illustrations, sidebars, and excursuses. Every chapter begins with an epigraph (well chosen, in this case), a list of supplementary biblical texts, an outline of the chapter's contents, and a list of specific objectives; likewise, each chapter closes with a list of key terms (for which there is a glossary at the back of the volume) and study questions. Suggestions for further secondary reading accompan many of the excursuses and close each chapter; there is also a select bibliography at the back of the volume.

Clearly the editors have followed through with their plan to produce texts for the college classroom and to endow them with features suited to that end. Correspondingly, the value of the book for a given user may depend on just these features. In that vein it is worth noting that though the objectives and the study questions which bookend each chapter usually correspond quite closely, they do not always do so. Likewise, several of the excursuses add little or are redundant (e.g. pp. 66, 100, 160), though many are excellent and most are helpful. In a couple of these (pp. 77, 91), Hagner's comments on biblical vs. systematic theology may lack hermeneutical balance. It would also have been helpful in several cases to have cross-referenced the appropriate excursus in the body of the text. Further, it would have seemed appropriate to include all of the key words in the subject index (since they are "key" words), and at least one of these, "anachronism," is surprisingly defined (p. 201) given its use on p. 152. Yet on the whole these extra features are well done. The larger question for professors considering whether to use this as a text is to what extent they will build the course around them. It is unlikely that most students will pay much heed to them otherwise, at which point this book becomes another commentary among many of its type. In this case, fortunately, the commentary itself is not a weakness.

Hagner, not surprisingly, has executed his assignment skillfully, in the spirit of this series, taking full advantage of its editorial features and providing a reading of Hebrews that is fully competent, consistently judicious, and evenly lucid. The nature of this series makes detailed analysis of the text and dialogue with scholarly opinion inappropriate, but that this installment is the work of a mature scholar is everywhere in evidence. After an introduction, covering the usual historical, literary, and thematic issues (especially the OT in Hebrews, Hebrews' concept of archetypes and copies, and the book's attitude toward judaism), a chapter of exposition is assigned to each of Hebrews' chapters (except for two assigned to Hebrews 10). This division of the chapters, which seems less well advised than following more likely breaks within the discourse itself, is violated only by the grouping of 6:1-3 along with Hebrews 5. Historical perspective, literary and rhetorical appreciation, theological understanding, and contemporary application all receive their due within the series' limits. Major interpretive issues are noted, and the differing views are summarized. Following these expository chapters, a conclusion does a nice job of summing up key elements of the significance of Hebrews, particularly its special theological emphases and its contributions to the NT, the church, and the individual Christian respectively. An extended excursus on the entry of Hebrews into the NT canon closes the text.

The present commentary is a "totally fresh" piece but does run along the same interpretive lines as Hagner's earlier offering (GNC, 1983; NIBC, 1990). In sum: Hebrews, emanating anonymously from Pauline circles, was written during the 60s, just prior to Nero's persecution, to a community of Jewish Christians in Rome, some of whom were beginning to distance themselves publicly from their Christian identity and merge back into their former Jewish mode of life. Hebrews' argument appears to be correcting gnostic ideas as well. Its body alternates between the tracks of a running exposition and a running exhortation with the former in the service of the latter. Primarily through a series of "midrashic" interpretations of the Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures, especially Psalm 110, this sermon-treatise (also having some of the qualities of an epistle) intends "to set forth the incomparable superiority, and hence finality, of God's work in Jesus Christ. Christianity is thus absolute in character and universal in scope" (p.25, italics in original). Features of the argument and rhetoric suggest that the author (who was probably Jewish and who may have been a woman, the masculine participle of 11:32 being inconclusive; even so Hagner uses the masculine pronoun to refer to the author) was acquainted with Platonic idealism, but his dualism is best characterized as an eschatological dualism. Likewise, rather than an allegorical approach, such as one finds in Philo, this author's "understanding and exegesis of the Old Testament are governed by his christocentric perspective and involve the recognition of interconnections and correspondences (i.e., typology) with the New Testament through sensus plenior" (p. 34). If we grant the presuppositions and perspective of the author of Hebrews, this approach to the OT is "coherent, reasonable, and convincing." Chief among the writer's insights, and possibly original to him, is the way in which he uses Ps 110:1, 4 to establish the legitimacy of Christ's priesthood.