Entry #9 Form and Content in Hebrews (1972, 1974).

In 58 and 63 I published when I intended at the time to be a discussion of the entire

structure of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I had discovered as a student of Fr. A. Vanhoye
the importance of the structure in understanding a biblical text, one of the most
important results of my licentiate work in Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in
Rome and Jerusalem. After a few years of preliminary study of the epistle I had come
to the conclusion that I could give a coherent account of its structure if I based my
analysis more explicitly on the meaning of the text that it seemed to me others before
me had done. The insight was valid and deserves repeating:
worthy as attention to form is, there is a concomitant danger which should
not be overlooked: if form is too much divorced from content it can lead to a
distortion of content, not a clarification. That is to say, the discovery of form is an
arduous undertaking, and if this undertaking is attempted in complete independence
of content it can well result in error as to the form. And any subsequent use of this
alleged form to interpret the content is of necessity conducive to error about the
content. Rather than establish form on purely formal principles it would seem
preferable to establish form on formal principles but in the light of content, just as
content should be studied on the basis of content but in the light of form.
These seemed to me to be words of wisdom at the time. They still do. But where I erred
seriously in the early seventies was in my conviction that Hebrews would yield a
structure after the relatively brief time of ten years of intermittent study. I should never
have attempted to achieve such an ambitious goal without reckoning on much more
time for reflection. Now, after decades of further intermittent study and teaching the
epistle in a variety of places, a variety which has proved to be stimulating (the
Netherlands, Romania, Italy, the United States, India) I feel wiser and hence, in a sense,
less ambitious.
I feel wiser for I have come to the conclusion that any attempt to come to terms with
the form/content of the epistle must include a serious attempt to come to terms with its
many cruces. At the same time I have grown less ambitious. Continued meditation on
the limits of exegesis has convinced me that absolute proof in biblical exegesis is
impossible. Biblical exegesis is an exercise in literary criticism, and literary criticism as
such can yield only literary plausibility, nothing more. This is not to say that literary
plausibility cannot be of a very high order of relative certitude. But it cannot be
unqualified in its claim of assent.
As an example I would adduce my treatment of the word ajpovstolo" in the epistle. In
1972 I concluded that ajpovstolo" in Heb 3,1 refers to Christs divinity and the word
ajrciereuv" in Heb 3,1 refers to his humanity. The inference drawn at the time was that
Heb 1,5 2,4 treats of Christ as divine and 2,5-18 treats of Christ as human (cf. 9, pp.
369-375). Although further reflection has led me to the conclusion that the division of
1,5 2,18 is concerned with the divinity and humanity of Christ, my argumentation is
much more nuanced. In particular, my understanding of the word ajpovstolo" is now
much nuanced and reflects my views that the content of Heb 1,5 3,6 is immensely
more profound in the context of Catholic tradition than I had any suspicion of thirty-
five years ago (cf. 211, in which I conclude that the word ajpovstolo" refers to Heb
2,12 as a being sent to announce Gods Christian name as a part of the Christian
td, a liturgical function which warrants the parallelism with ajrciereuv"). (Part of my
change in trying to come to terms with the Epistle to the Hebrews has been my growing
conviction of the importance of the suppositions in doing biblical exegesis, and as a
Roman Catholic this means for me a more explicit awareness and use of Roman
Catholic tradition in the context of a faith seeking understanding. This, of course, puts
even more importance on the coherence of form and content expected of exegesis
based on such a conviction, for coherence of form and content are accessible to some
extent at least on a basis independent of ones faith.)
The bottom line of this mulling over 58 and 63 is that although the principles
involved about the relationship between form and convent in studying Hebrews were
correct as far as they went, as understood and put into practice by me at the time they
simply did not go far enough. I should have cried caveat emptor a bit more loudly at
the time. But then caveat emptor should be part of the default approach of any student
trying to understand how anyone who presumes to publish lucubrations about a biblical
text should be viewed. (17 Octobre 2008)