HEBREWS 1:3
HEBREWS 1:3
So now, let’s refocus just on Hebrews 1:3—the verse that the KJV says references Wisdom 7:26. We start with the Jimmy Swaggart Bible Commentary:
Paul [who Swaggart believes wrote Hebrews] correlates in this Epistle as in no other, this great Finished Work with Old Testament typology … anyone who would have written this Book would have had to have been a Scholar of unparalleled proportions of the Old Testament. It would have otherwise been impossible… to have written the Book of Hebrews, which, in effect, is an explanation of the Message of the Cross from Old Testament principles … So here the Holy Spirit teaches that all the Divinely given Shadows, Types, Symbols, and Figures are satisfied in Christ … It is addressed to the many thousands of Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah…
… Paul sees, or rather the Holy Spirit through him sees, the entirety of the Old Testament pointing to Jesus. What the ancient Writings say is fulfilled in Him. This means more than that specific Prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus. Rather the thrust of the whole Old Testament is such that it leads inescapably to Him.[1]
If we then turn to Swaggart’s analysis of Hebrews 1:3 (“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power…”), he writes that:
The Son is superior to the Prophets as should be obvious, because He is the brightness of God’s Glory. “Brightness” in the Greek is “apaugasma,” and means “a radiance, or effulgence.” It is used of light beaming from a luminous body. The word, Expositors say, seems to mean, not rays of light streaming from a body in their connection with that body or as part of it, still less the reflection of these rays caused by their falling upon another body, but rather rays of light coming out from the original body and forming a similar light-body themselves. That may not be easy to understand, and in fact cannot literally be understood, but that’s the best that expositors can come up with as it regards the translation of the Greek words.
The author of the Epistle chose to use phrasing taken from the Book of Wisdom “[t]hat may not be easy to understand, and in fact cannot literally be understood, but that’s the best that expositors can come up with as it regards the translation of the Greek words.”
“Glory” spoken of here refers to the expression of the Divine attributes collectively. It is the unfolded fullness of the Divine perfections.
“Glory” was also used in Wisdom 7:25, as the lead-in to the cited section of Wisdom (7:26): God’s Wisdom “…is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty … For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new…”
The phrase, “And the express image of His person,” refers to a distinctive mark or a token impressed on a person or thing, by which it is known from others, a characteristic, the character of. It refers here to an exact reproduction. Vincent says, “Here the essential Being of God is conceived as setting its distinctive stamp upon Christ, coming into definite and characteristic expression in His Person, so that the Son bears the exact impress of the Divine Nature and Character.” Jesus is absolute Deity because He is the exact reproduction of the essence of God. Incidentally, the words “express image” as used here occur nowhere else in the New Testament.
There is a conception of the essential Being of God that alludes to the Book of Wisdom, using words that occur nowhere else in the New Testament; but the allusion was clear to the KJV, the author of the Epistle, and the Hebrews who were the Epistle’s intended audience.
Plumptre, in his essay, gave us a fuller understanding, because it is not just that the words “express image” occur nowhere else in the New Testament—they also do not occur anywhere else in the Old:
“the two most striking words in the opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews are to be found in the description of Wisdom in the book” of Wisdom. He also notes the parallel claim to being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of God, and that “the two words which are thus found in such close juxtaposition in the two passages are found nowhere else in the whole range of the New Testament, or the LXX version of the Old…”[2]
We have seen now that there are a great many parallels involved, all connecting this key concept in the Epistle to the Hebrews back to the Book of Wisdom.
But just how important is the Epistle and its allusions to the Book of Wisdom, in the grand scheme of the Bible?
There is no book in the New Testament more important than this Epistle… Every Reader of the Old Testament needs such a guide as this Epistle, written by someone who had an intimate acquaintance from childhood with the Jewish System; who had all the advantages of the most able and faithful instruction, and who was under the influence of inspiration …This Book of Hebrews is the true key with which to unlock the Old Testament; … it is a treatment on Christ and the Cross as nothing else in the entirety of the Word of God. (Comment to Heb 13:25).
Still, let’s get a second opinion. The Abingdon Bible Commentary (Abingdon Press 1929) gives us an old school Methodist take:
… Hebrews appears on the surface to be one of the most Jewish writings we possess. The argument seems to move entirely within the circle of Jewish ideas. From its commencement to its close from the string of quotations in the first chapter to the appeal to the altar and the sacrifice of beasts whose bodies were burned outside the camp in the last—the thought of the Epistle seems to be “cribb’d, cabin’d, and confin’d” within the narrow precincts of Jewish thought.… (Intro to Heb.)
Entirely within the circle of Jewish ideas, confined within the narrow precincts of Jewish thought, and a string of quotations in the first chapter—starting with a key reference to the Book of Wisdom (which declares itself to be Divinely-inspired Scripture). In addition, we learn that:
… If [the author] was a Jew, as he probably was (though this is incapable of absolute proof), he belonged to the more liberal school known as the Hellenists. The Bible which he used and from which he constantly quotes, is the Greek translation known as the Septuagint (LXX), and not the original Hebrew text, with which he does not seem to have been acquainted.
So, we have a Divinely-inspired Evangelist who does not seem to even be acquainted with the Hebrew Bible. That is from a one-hundred-year-old Abingdon Bible Commentary, but The New Interpreter’s Bible (the NIB, also by Abingdon Press) confirms this:
Both the instructions and the exhortations of the letter reveal a person well educated in Greek rhetoric as well as in Judaism, especially Hellenistic Judaism formed in part by the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament. The Greek translation and not the Hebrew text provides the major lines and the subtler nuances of the writer’s argument and appeal. … The Scripture for the writer of Hebrews is the Old Testament in Greek translation, hereafter referred to as the Septuagint (LXX)… (Intro to Heb.)
John F. MacArthur, Jr., in The MacArthur Study Bible, also confirms this:
Whoever the author was, he preferred citing OT references from the Greek OT (LXX) rather than from the Hebrew text…. consistent use of the LXX….” (Intro to Heb.)
And of course, “[t]he Book of Wisdom… is a book written in Greek … It is not part of the Hebrew Bible but is included in the Septuagint…”[3]
But it is not just the author who used the Septuagint with Hebrews as his Bible; it must have been his audience as well. William Barclay’s The Daily Study Bible (Westminster Press) tells us more about the audience:
[Intro]: Moreover, it was obviously written to a scholarly group. From 5:12 we can see that they had long been under instruction and were preparing themselves to become teachers of the Christian faith. Still further, Hebrews demands such a knowledge of the Old Testament that it must always have been a book written by a scholar for scholars…. The man who wrote this letter knew the scriptures; he was eloquent; and he thought and argued in the way that a cultured Alexandrian would.
[Regarding verses 1:1-3]: …The writer to the Hebrews felt that, since he was going to speak of the supreme revelation of God to men, he must clothe his thought in the noblest language that it was possible to find. …The writer to the Hebrews uses two great pictures to describe What Jesus was. He says that he was the apaugasma of God’s glory. Apaugasma can mean one of two things in Greek. It can mean effulgence, the light which shines forth, … the writer to the Hebrews said that Jesus was the character of the being of God, he meant that he was the exact image of God. Just as when you look at the impression, you see exactly what the seal which made it is like, so when you look at Jesus you see exactly what God is like…
He must clothe his thought in the noblest language that it was possible to find (Barclay), and what he found came from the Book of Wisdom. The language may “not be easy to understand, and in fact cannot literally be understood, but that’s the best that expositors can come up with as it regards the translation of the Greek words” (Swaggart) and uses word that “can’t be found anywhere else in the New Testament or in the Old Testament” (Plumptre). The Epistle to the Hebrews is not just a book written by a scholar for scholars but by a teacher for teachers of the Christian faith (Barclay). And the teacher of teachers references the Book of Wisdom (which declares itself to be Divinely-inspired Scripture) as part of that teaching of the Christian faith.
The NIB tells us still more:
… this letter offers the most elaborate Christian reading of the Old Testament to be found in the New Testament … The author assumes an audience familiar enough with the Old Testament to make detailed exegesis of its texts convincing, word studies delightful, and swift allusions powerful. (Intro to Heb.)
The author also assumed an audience familiar enough with the Book of Wisdom (which declares itself to be Divinely-inspired Scripture) to make detailed exegesis of its texts convincing, its word studies delightful, and its swift allusions powerful.
[The audience’s] earlier instruction … included extended engagement with the text of the Greek Old Testament. The author’s freedom to argue from nuances of the Greek translation of the Hebrew text and to make allusions to persons and events in Israel’s history certainly implies a familiarity with that material on the part of the addressees.
That would be the Greek Old Testament that included the Book of Wisdom (which declares itself to be Divinely-inspired Scripture).
But there is still far more to consider: this language from the Book of Wisdom may have been used in a Christian hymn even before being included in the Epistle:
1:3. … Some scholars account for the shift by seeing this verse as all or part of an early christological hymn that has been skillfully incorporated by the writer. [Footnote: See J. T. Sanders, New Testament Christological Hymns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) 19-20, who follows suggestions of earlier scholars.] Certainly elements found in passages widely accepted as hymns (Phil 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20; 1 Tim 3:16) are here: the relative pronoun ös (hos, “who,” translated here as “he”), balanced phrasing (being, sustaining, having made), and a full display of the Son’s sojourn (pre-existence, humiliation, exaltation). If the author is quoting a hymn, he has woven it well into the larger affirmation.
Others concur and explain more about these hymns:
One of the earliest and best descriptions of early Christian behavior comes from Pliny… they “were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god” (Letter 10.96). … So if this is the case, where are the hymns in the New Testament? How can they be found? … one will likely conclude that such passages as … Heb 1:1-3 … may very well have had earlier literary lives as actual hymns sung by early Christian communities. … the biblical authors use these hymns to teach the early churches the content of their confession and socialize them into a world where Jesus the Messiah reigns over all other political and supernatural powers and authorities.[4]
Sometimes, this same concept is described as a “creedal statement:”
… creedal passages are thought to include … Hebrews 1:3 … these hymns and creeds come from the earliest period of Jewish-Christian worship, which is significantly earlier than the New Testament books they appear in (likely within the first couple of decades following Jesus’s death)… Blomberg says, “Such beliefs [in Christ’s deity] thus emerged early in the history of the church, not at some advanced stage of the ‘evolution’ of Christian doctrine.” He adds: “Oldest of all are passages used by Paul and Peter in their letters that scholars have identified as most likely predating the epistles in which they appear.” …
1. While the books of the New Testament take us back to the apostolic age, the primitive creeds, confessions, and hymns contained in certain New Testament books press back to the earliest period of Jewish Christianity.
2. These primitive creeds, confessions, and hymns illustrate that the earliest Christians viewed Jesus as divine (a high Christology) and serve to falsify the claim that belief in Jesus’s deity went through an extended period of evolution.
3. The earliest Christians, though staunch Jewish monotheists, nevertheless almost immediately worshiped Jesus Christ as an extension of Yahweh and thus exhibited a mutation of traditional monotheism.[5]
Before the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, and perhaps before any part of the New Testament was written (not even a decade after the death and Resurrection of Jesus), there may have already been a hymn being sung by the very earliest Christians. This hymn was “Christological,” meaning it explained the nature of Christ and His Divinity. In order to explain it, the hymn alluded not to any of the books of the modern Jewish canon but to the Book of Wisdom, even using two crucial terms taken directly from the Book of Wisdom (the mirrored reflection (radiance) and exact imprint (representation) of God’s being), an implicit claim that Jesus Christ fulfilled the statements in the Book of Wisdom (which declares itself to be Divinely-inspired Scripture). These words “may not be easy to understand, and in fact cannot literally be understood, but that’s the best that expositors can come up with as it regards the translation of the Greek words”—but they made sense to the Jewish Christians, which “had long been under instruction and were preparing themselves to become teachers of the Christian faith.”
Often, we are told that before there was a New Testament, the only Scripture was the Old Testament. During that time, the earliest Christians (many of whom presumably would have seen and spoken to Jesus) sang this hymn to exalt and explain the nature of Christ. Some of those earliest Christians had even been Jewish Priests; others were Jewish Christian children, singing this hymn to express a key element of faith—all while the Apostles were still alive, before they started writing and became Evangelists.
This hymn/creedal statement continues to be crucial to who we are and what we believe—so much so that it is part of the Nicene Creed (the first Creed of the Christian faith) and is read to the congregation on Christmas Day, per the Revised Common Lectionary.
Kruger: Hebrews for You
And how about this for Divinely-inspired “coincidence?” Our main man Michael J. Kruger has written just one single Bible commentary, and it happens to be on the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is called “Hebrews For You” (and is a perfectly wonderful read, if you are interested). For our purposes, here is a point to consider (emphasis added):
[1:3]: … Our author [of Hebrews] has taken attributes which are given to the God of Israel throughout the Old Testament and ascribed them to Jesus. …
… he is God enfleshed. Who can reveal God better than God? This is clear in the language of Hebrews 1:3: “He is the radiance of the glory of God.” This word “radiance” means “brightness” or “shining.” Old Testament visions of God describe him as bright and glorious (Exodus 24:10, 17; Ezekiel 1:4; Daniel 7:9).
Exactly! They certainly do. And yet, the hymn and the divinely-inspired Evangelist did not use or reference the wording from those sections of the Old Testament to describe Jesus; they referenced the wording of the Book of Wisdom (which declares itself to be Divinely-inspired Scripture) instead.
I submit that Kruger is an example of what an author would do if the author did not believe that the Book of Wisdom was Scripture: they would just reference other passages from “authentic Scripture” instead. Kruger gives us three passages they could have quoted or alluded to, though they did not. Instead, they alluded to the Book of Wisdom by using the exact words used nowhere else in the Bible.
And there are two authors here—the author of the hymn, plus the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Evangelist incorporated the hymn that already included the reference to the Book of Wisdom, then went on to allude to the Book of Wisdom many more times throughout the entire Epistle. He did so without ever warning anyone away from the Book (which claims to be the inspired word of God).
The hymn’s creator had no desire to allude to the other Books Kruger notes, and the author of the Epistle had no desire to tie his Epistle to such other Books. They could have easily done so but did not. This choice seems strange if the Book of Wisdom (which declares itself to be Divinely-inspired Scripture) were not Scripture to the author and audience of the Epistle to the Hebrews; usually, such people are overeager to make connections to Scripture. And from the audience’s perspective as well, the point would seem to be better made, and more persuasively made, by referencing “authentic” Scripture.
Before I change topics slightly, I will note a few points regarding the Book of Wisdom, each to be discussed individually later. But the problem with the Apocrypha as a topic is that everything is multifaceted and multidimensional, so it is difficult to proceed in an orderly fashion; sometimes, we have to step back and see it all together.
I have noted how tied the Book of Wisdom seems to be to the Epistle to the Hebrews, as well as to a key Christological hymn/creed that found its way into the Epistle, plus 1 Clement (perhaps written before the last books of the New Testament were written) and the 325 AD Nicene Creed, etc.
In a moment, I will turn to other possible and deeply theological uses of the Book of Wisdom in the Bible—e.g., Matthew and his Jewish audience may have seen Jesus as the fulfillment of specific prophesies made from it, etc.
Later on, we will see that www.biblindex.org/citation_biblique/search notes 1,798 references to the Book of Wisdom from early Fathers. We can compare that to Job, also an Old Testament “Poetic” Book, with 4552, at a rate of 4.26 references per verse (Job has 1068 verses). The Book of Wisdom has 436 verses, so it has an essentially identical rate of 4.12.
I do not have access to every such reference, and my review was not exhaustive; still, I found more than 500 references[6] in works where a Father specifically stated that the Book of Wisdom was Holy Scripture, the Word of God, Divinely-inspired, Prophecy, etc.
When we look at canon lists, we will also see that “Wisdom” appears on every Christian canon list until 350 AD. All but one of those mentions are clear references to the Book of Wisdom; the one outlier (Melito’s) is just the title “Wisdom,” which only might be a reference to the Book of Wisdom (but possibly it was an alternative reference to the Book of Proverbs).[7]
[1] Hebrews, World Evangelism Press 2001, introduction.
[2] Plumptre found many unique parallels in the Epistle: “Scarcely less striking is the resemblance between the language of Wisd. xviii. 22, “Thine almighty Word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, . . . . and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword,” and that of Heb. iv. 12, ‘‘The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword…again the writer of the Book of Wisdom teaches that “by envy of the devil death entered into the world” (ii. 24) and the Epistle to the Hebrews names the devil as “him that hath the power of death” (ii. 14)… I note, as extending the induction, the “place of repentance” of Wisd. xii. IO, and Heb. xii. 17 (this phrase also occurring in these two passages only); … Wisd. xvi. 21 and Heb. i. 3, iii. 14, xi. 1; the “servant” of Wisd. xvii. 21, as applied to Moses, with Heb. iii. 5 (the word does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament) ; the “ maketh all things new” of Wisd. vii. 27 with Heb. vi. 6 (not elsewhere, as before); “God is witness of his reins and a true beholder of his heart” (Wisd. i. 6), and the “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” of Heb. iv. 12 ; the mystic reference to the dress of the High Priest as a symbol of the universe (Wisd. xviii. 24), and the strange epithet of “the cosmic sanctuary” as applied to the Tabernacle (Heb. ix. I).”
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Wisdom.
[4] www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/hymns-in-the-new-testament
[5] www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/reflections/an-early-christmas-hymn-in-the-new-testament
[6] That is inarguably “a lot” in this context, by any comparison to other data I know of (many of which I will show you below). If one were to clean up the data (remove double entries in the index, etc.), then probably a third of the Books of the Protestant canon were not even vaguely alluded to 500 times in the first 450 years, let alone specifically noted as Scripture in the book doing the alluding. In the end, I gave up searching for more because if 500 does not make the point, nothing will. “Neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” Luke 16:31.
[7] And Melito’s list is arguably not a Christian list. See below.
