Pros Ebraious – To Hebrews

[Santiago Cuellar]

Why focus on this letter to a community of believers who were Hebrews?
Because this letter and those of Ya’akov (James), Kefa (Peter),
Yochanan (John) and Y’hudah (Jude) are known as the General Letters,
since they are thought of as being written to the entire Community of
Jewish believers, rather than to Gentiles only (as are the majority of
Paul’s letters) or to an individual.

In the very opening verses of the Letter “Pros Ebraious” – To Hebrews,
we find some verses in reference to Yeshua the Messiah which at first
may actually seem foreign to Judaism, when in reality they are deeply
rooted in Jewish thinking. And that is my only purpose for writing
this brief study, to encourage all non-believers to open to the pages
of the NT with an open heart, because these things are well aligned
with our Jewish thinking.

Hebrews 1:1-6
1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers
by the prophets,2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his
Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he
created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the
exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word
of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the
right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to
angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

5 For to which of the angels did God ever say,
“You are my Son,
today I have begotten you”?

Or again,
“I will be to him a father,
and he shall be to me a son”?

6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,
“Let all God's angels worship him.”

Now let’s peel back these verses:

Verse1 – “In days gone by”, means when the Tanakh was being written;
“God spoke” as in “Thus saith the Lord!”. We also read in v1. “God
spoke in many and varied ways.”, meaning that God spoke directly and
indirectly, in dreams and stories, history and prophecy, poems and
proverbs; “to the Fathers” of the Jewish people and “through the
prophets” from Moses to Malachi, and before Moses to Avraham, Isaac
Jacob and Joseph.

Verses 2-3 – According to Jewish tradition Malachi was the last of the
Tanakh prophets. In other words, for the next four centuries, to use
the remark of an earlier prophet, “The word of Adonai was rare in
those days; there was no frequent vision” (1 Samuel 3:1).

“But in the acharit-hayamim”, the Tanakh’s ‘latter days’ which the NT
regards as already here (1Corth. 10:11), “He has spoken” again, not to
Fathers long dead (as in v1), but to us in the 1st century C.E. – How?
“through His Son” which literally means (a son). So by implication His
Son is better then the Prophets.

It is these verses (v2 & v3) that are full of indications which
demonstrate his superiority, such as: God “has given” him “ownership
of everything”. Which literally means God “has made him heir of all
things”. Does this sound foreign to Judaism? “Ask of me, and I will
give you nations as an inheritance and the ends of the earth as your
possession” (Psalms 2:8) (compare to Matthew 4:8-9, 21:38; Acts 1:8)

It also says that God “created the universe through” him, as taught
also at John 1:3, Corth. 1:16. That the universe was created through
an intermediary – the Word, the Sh’khinah, Wisdom, the Torah – is not
an ideas alien to Judaism, as shown by this quotation from Rabbi Akiva
in the Mishnah:

“He used to say, ‘ ….God loves Israel, because he gave them a precious
instrument [Hebrew “kli”, which means instrument or vessel]. But he
enhanced that love by letting them know that the precious instrument
they had been given was the very one through which the universe was
created – as it is said, “For I give you good doctrine; do not forsake
my Torah” (Proverbs 4:2) – Avot 3:14

Then there is “This Son is the radiance of”, literally the glory, best
renders Jewishly as the Sh’khinah, which the encyclopedia Judaica
(volume 14 – Pagges 1349 – 1351) defines as:

“The Divine Presence, the numinous immanence of God in the world,…. A
revelation of the holy in the midst of the profane….”

Both the angels in heaven and the righteous in olam ha-ba (the world
to come) are sustained by the radiance of the Shekinah (exodus Rabbah
32:4, B’rakhot 17a; cf. Exodus 34:29-35).

“According to Saadiah Gaon [882 – 942 C.E.], the Shekinah is identical
with kevod ha-Shem (the glory of God), which served as an intermediary
between God and man during the prophetic experience. He suggests that
the ‘glory of God’ is the biblical term, and Shekinah the talmudic
term for the created splendor of light which acts as an intermediary
between God and man, and which sometimes take on HUMAN FORM. Thus when
Moses asked to see the glory of God, he was shown the Shekinah, and
when the prophets in their visions saw God in human likeness, what
they actually saw was not God Himself, but the Shekinah. (see
Saadiah’s interpretation of Ezekiel 1:26, 1 Kings 22:19, and Daniel
7:9 in Book of Beliefs and Opinions 2:10)”
Then we have the Greek term “character” (very expression), used only
here in the NT, which delineates even more clearly than the Greek term
“eikon” (image), that “God’s essence” is manifested in the Messiah
(John 14:9). Before you reject this idea, compare Numbers 12:8: Moses,
unlike Miriam and Aaron, saw the t’munah (likeness, representation;
which in modern Hebrew is “picture”) of Adonai.

Raphael Patai brings the following extraordinary paragraph from the
works of the Alexandrian Jew Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE), using the term
“shoot” for Messiah – who remarkable words in the mouth of a Jewish
thinker says “differ not a whit from the divine image” and is the
Divine Father’s “eldest son….”:

“I have heard also an oracle from the lips of one of the disciples of
Moses which runs thus: ‘Behold a man whose name is the rising (shoot
or sprout), strangest of titles, surely, if you suppose that a being
composed of soul and body is here described. But if you suppose that
it is that INCORPOREAL ONE, who differs not a whit from the divine
image, you will agree that the name ‘rising’ assigned to him quite
truly describes him. For that MAN is the eldest son, whom the Father
of all raised up, and elsewhere calls him his firstborn, and indeed
the Son thus begotten followed the ways of his Father, and shaped the
different kinds, looking to the archetypal patterns which the Father
supplied” – Philo, De Confusione Linguarum 4:45, as cited in Rafael
Patai, The Messiah Texts Pages 171-172)

In these verses we also read “he sat down at the right hand of God” –
which is not a place but refers to the Messiah’s exalted status and to
his intimate involvement with God as Cohen Gadol, interceding for
those who trust in him.

In verse 4 “he has become much better than angels” – this again might
seem alien to Judaism, but in one midraah the Rabbis portray righteous
people as better than angels (Genesis Rabbah 78:1) and this picture
fits Yeshua well because he did not sin (Hebrews 4:15). But in another
midrash, the Messiah himself is so described:

“Behold my servant shall (deal wisely) prosper. This is King Messiah.
‘He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.’ He shall be
exalted beyond Avraham, and extolled beyond Moses, and raised high
above the MINISTERING ANGELS” (Yalkut Shim’oni 2:53:3, on Isaiah
52:13; quoted in B.F. Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews, P16) Note:
the Yalkut Shim’oni itself is a collection of some 10,000 stories and
comments from the Talmud and midrashim.

Also in V4 we read “The Name God has given him” which “is superior to”
that of angels. Here by context, it is “Son”; at Philippians 2:9 “the
name above every name” is Adonai.

We can continue to peel back some more on v. 5-6, but for a detailed
description of those verses, see also The Supremacy of God’ Son,
posted here on our group.

It is clear that these concepts are of Jewish thought and not conjured
up by Christians. I hope you find this of good use