Bible Reading: Hebrews 2:1-10

This is from a letter by St. Paul. I am bothered that "the modern consensus is that the letter was not written by Paul." Some modern scholars are such dopes and meat heads and I have little use for them. When the church of Alexandria in Egypt recognized Hebrews as a letter of Paul, and the rest of the East agreed, followed by the West, they knew what they were talking about. It's later scholars who overthink and expect a consistency of tone as if these were edited and standardized written documents and not what they were, which is committing to writing what were verbal orations. So here is a beautiful example of Paul's rhetoric, for he includes a direct citation from the Book of Psalms, and links it to his testimony about Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 2:1-10
"Exhortation to Faithfulness"
Therefore, we must attend all the more to what we have heard, so that we may not be carried away. For if the word announced through angels proved firm, and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompense, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? Announced originally through the Lord, it was confirmed for us by those who had heard. God added his testimony by signs, wonders, various acts of power, and distribution of the gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his will.

"Exaltation through Abasement"
For it was not to angels that he subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. Instead, someone has testified somewhere:

"What is man that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you crowned him with glory and honor,
subjecting all things under his feet."

[The above is quoted from Psalm 8:5-7. He then goes on to interpret that section of Psalm 8 as prophecy of Jesus Christ.]

In "subjecting" all things [to him], he left nothing not "subject to him." Yet at present we do not see "all things subject to him," but we do see Jesus "crowned with glory and honor" because he suffered death, he who "for a little while" was made "lower than the angels," that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

***
This is remarkable because when you read this text it is though you are literally listening to Paul as he preached to a Jewish audience. While Paul is known as the Apostle to the Gentiles, he did not "specialize" and ignore preaching to the prime Jewish audience wherever he found them. You can tell this was a mixed audience, because he says "someone" rather than citing "it is written," thus he is not assuming that the listeners know the Book. However, by quoting from the Book he is also speaking directly to the Jews in the audience, who would be very familiar with most of the Psalms. So Paul quotes from what we now call the Old Testament, and then with both the Jewish and Gentiles in his audience on the same frame of reference, he now explains how this Psalm was a prophecy of precisely Jesus Christ.

The reason that some scholars, I think, doubt this letter as being Paul's is because it is clearly a sermon that has been preserved in the form of a letter. So the letter lacks the self identifying flourishes and personal references that some scholars rely on to believe they can identify the speaker as Paul. If so they are overlooking the reference to "our brother Timothy" in 13:23 or feel that is not sufficient. But that is just being silly and having excessive scruples. Paul preached ceaselessly wonderful and intellectual sermons, and he is the one who consistently demonstrated in the surviving Epistles that he taps his prodigious religious formation and zealotry from when he was a very pious and learned Jew. You can't read this and not recognize that someone, one of the disciples (writing in Greek), captured for Paul on his behalf in this letter much of the "best of" all his sermons and step by step witness and faith formation for those who were both Jewish and Gentiles in his audience. That is why it does not have the "to my friends at here there and everywhere" address and flourish in the beginning. It was a letter that was not so much to a specific group as a letter that captured the essence of his "best of" preaching, and also why it alternates doctrinal teaching with moral exhortation. The reason it differs in style is because his "secretary," to use a modern term, combined like I said, to use another term "the best of Paul's preaching" in one "letter."

I hope you find these observations helpful.