The Old Testament gives us the historical and theoretical (or theological) background necessary to understand what happens in the New Testament (See “The Old Testament Connection”).  In the Old Testament we see how offensive mankind has been to God, the consequences for that offense, and the solution God made for the problem.  God is presented as both a loving and Holy (He has standards) God.  Much of what we learn about God is through the 1500 year history of the Israelite or Jewish people.  God’s power and character were made clear in the way he interacted with the descendants of Jacob (Israel, see “What’s in a Name”).  The separation in the relationship between mankind (people) and God was shown through the way the Israelites had to relate to God, through the priests (who were descendants of Levi, or Levites) and with sacrifices (an illustration that sin, disobedience and rebellion toward God, has a price).  In the later 2/3 of Israelite history, this worship of God was conducted in a special building in Jerusalem, the Temple.  All of this however was instructive; it was a shadow of the truth.  The blood of offerings made in the Temple never really could deal with the sins of the people, it could only show them that sin needed to be dealt with and the price involved death.

In the New Testament we see the ultimate solution to the sin problem, Jesus.  As the infinite God man who never sinned he alone was adequate to pay the penalty for the sins (disobedience and rebellion) of all mankind.  This solution had been hinted at from the very beginning when God told Eve that one of her children would crush the devil, a symbol of that person dealing with the consequences of sin.  The solution was also hinted at when God told Abraham (the grandfather of Jacob or Israel) that in him all mankind would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).  If you read through Isaiah with us you might remember the suffering servant from Isaiah 53.  In verse 6 of that chapter we were told that the penalty of our sins would be put onto the back of that servant.  Jesus was and is the suffering servant who took away the sins of the world (John 1:29).  Jesus was a Jew and grew up in the Jewish religious system established in the Old Testament.  In his day the Temple was still in existence (not the original one but one rebuilt by Herod one of the emperors of Rome) and Levitical priests were still overseeing offerings and sacrifices.  After the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus many priests came to understand that Jesus was the promised solution (the Messiah or Christ) for our sin problem (Acts 6:7).  But what effect did that have on their lives and their way of honoring God?  Christianity started out or flowed out of the Jewish “religion”; in the beginning it was considered a sect or form of Judaism.  But that still did not answer the question of what to do with all of the old symbols and forms in Judaism.  At the time of Jesus there were many sects or “flavors” of the Jewish religion.  There were the Saducees, the Phairsees, the Herodians, the Essenes, and others.  Some of theses groups were “messianic”; that is they were looking forward to the coming of the promised “messiah” or chosen one.  Many understood this person to be a political leader who would restore the Jewish kingdom to what it had been under the leadership of David.  This can be seen in the response to Jesus when he entered Jerusalem in Mark 11:1-11 where he was treated like a king. It could be that very specific prophecies about the Messiah like in Daniel 9 had given rise to the expectations of the people.  Few or none of the Jewish people of his day really understood that the Messiah was the suffering servant of Isaiah.

In Matthew 5:17 Jesus told a large crowd that was listening to him that he did not come to “abolish the Law [of Moses] but to fulfill it.”  The word used there for “abolish” in the Greek language (the language most of the New Testament was originally written in) means to dissolve or make useless.  The word for “fulfill” means to “fill to overflowing”.  Jesus was telling the crowd that he would be the one who filled up the purpose of the Law.  The purpose of the Law of Moses was never to make things right between us and God, it was to show us that things needed to be made right and just how serious the problem was.  In Jesus our relationship with God would be made right.  In the words of the angles at the birth of Jesus there would be “peace and good will toward men.”  It is obvious from history that main point of what the angles said was that there was now a way for there to be peace between man and God.  While the Jewish people of Jesus’ day were looking for the promised physical kingdom Jesus was working first on the population for the kingdom.

It was in this environment of expectation and confusion that Jesus came, and lived and died and rose again.  So it is reasonable that there was continued confusion in the early church.  In the New Testament we have several writings, most of which were letters (See “The New Testament Dissection”) which deal with the relationship between this “new” beginning, the church, and the “old” school of Judaism.  Hebrews is one of those letters.

Unlike the other letters in the New Testament Hebrews does not tell us who wrote it or who it was written to.  We know it is a letter because of the ending of the letter.  The title “The Letter to the Hebrew” or “Hebrews” is not part of the original letter.  As far as we know it was added about 100 years after the letter was written and is based on the content of the letter.  It is clear from the content of Hebrews that is was written to Jewish (Hebrew) believers and that theses believers were being tempted to return to their Jewish way of living for God and abandon their new family, the church.  The detailed talk about the priesthood and different parts of the Temple way of honoring God seem to tell us that these Jewish believers in Jesus were not just average Jews; rather it points us toward priests who had become believers, the priests from Acts 6:7.  Under the Law of Moses the Levitical Priests earned their living by being priests and their job was in the Temple.  As believers in Jesus they would have lost that job and also would have been shunned by their friends, family, and society.

In Acts 6-7 we have the story of one of the first believers in Jesus, a guy named Stephen.   We see Stephen as a servant in the early church but he is also implicated in the fact that many priests were becoming believers.  Because of his influence Stephen was hauled into a “court” held by the Jewish religious leaders where he challenged them to listen to God.  Their response was to execute him as a false teacher.  In Acts 7:58 as the leaders stoned Stephen to death they laid their coats by the feet of a guy named Saul.  Interestingly in Acts 8:1 Luke tells us that Saul was in agreement with what they did to Stephen.  That implies that Saul was some sort of leader too.  The rest of that verse tells us that that was the beginning of a great time of persecution for the believers in Jesus.  It was so severe that most of them left Jerusalem, only the Apostles remained.  The believers who fled Jerusalem would have included the priests from Acts 6:7.   In Acts 9:1 we again meet Saul who asked the High Priest for a letter addressed to the Jewish leaders in Damascus giving him permission to arrest any Jewish people he found there who were following Jesus (he calls it “The Way”, maybe a reference to Jesus remark that he is “the way” to God, John 14:6).  He wanted to bring them back to Jerusalem for the same sort of trial that Stephen got.  In the verses in between (Acts 8:2-40) we see the story of one of the fleeing believers named Simon who headed south.  But from Saul’s actions it would seem that many headed north toward Damascus.  Fortunately for the early church Saul had a meeting with the risen Jesus on his way to Damascus where he became a believer himself and never looked back.  At some point Saul (his Jewish name) started going by Paul (a more Roman name).  Damascus was a major city about 150 miles north-east of Jerusalem.  It was not a part of the Jewish territory but there were Jew there.  When Paul arrived in Damascus he did two things; he spent several days with the followers of Jesus who were there and he began telling the Jews in the city about Jesus (Acts 9:19-20).

Where ever Paul went he boldly told people about Jesus.  As a result he was under constant threat by the Jewish people; he was challenging their sort of comfortable way of life.  He was chased from Damascus and went to Jerusalem where he met the original followers of Jesus, the Apostles.  He was threatened in Jerusalem and fled back to his hometown, Tarsus.  About 350 miles north of Jerusalem was a town called Antioch (sometimes called Antioch of Syria).  Tarsus was about 75 miles west around the Mediterranean coast from Antioch.  According to Acts 11:19 many of the believers from Jerusalem who fled after the execution of Stephen eventually settle in Antioch.  According to Acts 11:20 some of the early believers in Antioch were telling non-Jews, or Gentiles, about Jesus.  And many Gentiles (called Greeks in most translations) were putting their faith in Jesus.  One of the early believer named Barnabas heard about the large numbers of Gentiles turning to Jesus in Antioch so he found Paul and took him there.  When Paul first became a believer a man named Ananias in Damascus had a vision from God in which we learn that God was going to use Paul to reach out to the Gentiles with the good news about Jesus (Acts 9:15, many years later Paul refers to himself as the Apostle or Sent One to the Gentiles, Romans 11:13).  It was from this city and this church that Paul and his companions (which would include Luke, Barnabas, John Mark (Mark), Timothy, Silas, and others) would make three main journeys around the Mediterranean world, telling people about Jesus and starting churches.  Also it was in this city that believers were first called Christians (Christ followers).

There are three main ideas about where the Hebrew believers that the letter of Hebrews was sent to lived:  Rome, Jerusalem, and Antioch in Syria.  The Roman theory is based on Hebrews 13:24 where there seems to be some connection between the recipients and Rome, however.  For most of Christian history the church has guessed that the letter was sent to believers in or near Jerusalem.  This guess is based on the strong Jewish connection of the content of the letter.  Several scholars starting in the early 1900 proposed Antioch in Syria as the destination of the letter and displaced priests who had become believers as the recipients.  We know from the earlier discussion that there were many believers in Antioch from Jerusalem and also that there were new non-Jewish believers in the church there.  The word in Greek that we translate as church is “Eklessia”.  The word means “called out ones”.  In New Testament times the church was more about a gathering of believes than it was about a building.  In fact there were not “church” building in the first 200 years of church history.  The churches met in homes in different cities and usually all of the “house churches” were considered together as the church in a particular place.  So the church in Antioch would have been spread out among several different host homes. In Galatians 2 we learn that at some point Peter (Cephas) visited the church in Antioch and hung out with Jewish believers and Gentile believers alike.  But, when other Jewish believers arrived from Jerusalem, Peter wouldn’t hang out with the Gentile believers.  For his hypocrisy, Paul called him out, this occurred at least 14 years after Paul became a believer (33 AD. So at least 47 AD).  So there was tension in the church between Jews and Greeks (or Gentiles) for many years, in Antioch and elsewhere (See Titus 1:10 (c. 64 AD) and Revelation 3:9 ( 95 AD)).

According to Acts 9:31 after Paul was chased out of Jerusalem (early in his ministry) there was a sort of peace among the churches there.  It is clear from the later chapters of Hebrews that the Hebrew Christians were being tempted to turn their backs on their church friends.  That could have happened any time in the church in Antioch but several pieces of the puzzle point to a date in the late 60’s AD.  As I mentioned earlier the letter does not identify who wrote it nor who it was too.  As we have seen it was probably to the Jewish priests who had become Christians and were living in Antioch (or maybe Jerusalem).  Clearly the author knew who he was writing to and they knew who was writing to them.  In Hebrews 2:3 the author mentions that he learned about Jesus through eyewitnesses.  He seems to imply that he was not a “first generation” Christian.  Over the years scholars and early church leaders have proposed many different authors for the letter.  Due to the theology of the letter some have though that Paul wrote it.  The reference in 2:3 would not fit Paul since he was probably an eyewitness to many of not all of the events that the author of Hebrews is talking about.  Some experts have said someone like Paul wrote it.  Some early testimony from church history involves Paul for the ideas with another person actually writing the letter.  We know from verses like 1 Corinthians 16:21 and Galatians 6:11 that Paul used a secretary to write some if not all of his letters (Scholars call the secretary an amanuensis).  Similarities in the language and structure of Luke, Acts, and Hebrews suggest that the same person wrote them. Luke and Acts were written by Luke.  Luke was probably a second generation Christians who was a companion of Paul on many of his church starting journeys.  We also know from 2 Timothy 4:11 Philemon 24 that Luke was with Paul shortly before his execution (2 Timothy was written in 66 AD and Paul was executed in 67 AD).  It is very likely that Luke was the secretary as well as doctor for Paul.  Because of the various evidence it seems likely also that Luke wrote the letter we know as Hebrews.  He would have been very familiar with the ideas of Paul.  His writing is very similar to that of Hebrews and he would have had the reputation with these believers to speak with authority to them.

In the late 60’s AD there was growing tension between the Roman government and the Jewish people.  In 67 AD a rebellion broke out Judea (the name of the Roman province where Jerusalem was located).  The Jewish-roman war lasted from 67-70 AD at which time the Roman army entered Jerusalem and completely destroyed the Temple literally leaving no stones stacked together (Matthew 24:2).  During this time of increased loyalty by Jews to Jerusalem and their heritage there was probably increased pressure on all Jews to be more Jewish.  The Jewish priests who had become Christians certainly would have been challenged to return to their original faith.  At the same time Christianity itself was becoming increasingly unpopular among Roman leaders.  Then Emperor Nero hated and persecuted the Christians.  Paul was being executed.  The times seemed ripe for the priests to defect back to Judaism or at least lay low and disguise their church connection.  It seems like the kind of times an “anonymous’ letter to an “anonymous” group of believers might have been written.  Like in a secret TV interview the speaker was clouded in mystery and the faces in the audience were similarly blurred.

In the end it seems like Hebrews may have been written by Luke from Rome (See Hebrew 13:24) about the time Paul was executed (though before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD).  It was written to Jewish Christians, probably former priests, living in the city of Antioch in Syria.  The times were especially troubling for any on Jewish or Christian and doubly troubling for someone who was both a Jew and a Christian.  The fact that Hebrews was written to former Jewish priests being pressured by friends and family to return to the religion of their fathers does not mean that the letter is not for us too.  The truth about God found in the Old Testament sacrificial system and the way that truth works itself out in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is for all people in all times.  We all need Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life to come to God.  And anyone facing the trials of life certainly needs a clear picture of the person and power of the creator god become man.  In a world filled with increasing chaos we need the confidence that God is on our side.  Let’s explore Hebrews and see if we can gain more confidence in Jesus and what he has done for us.