Hebrews Update

I've refrained from posting all my Hebrews' study I've been doing this week--it would soon become clutter. I counted 39 explicit citations of the Old Testament in Hebrews, 29 of which are attributed/put on the mouth of either God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit. Only two are attributed to a specific human, Moses, and that's because he's the one speaking in the biblical story.

So that has brought me to a more important question. Which of these attributions are attributions of authorship and which are simply references to "characters" speaking in biblical narratives (for any who might not be acquainted with this language, I'm not at all implying that these are made up stories--it's just a way to talk about the text)? What I mean is this. I might write a story about Benny the Rabbit and have Benny say something. What I've calculated above lumps references to "Ken writes in his best selling children's book Benny the Rabbit..." in with references to "Benny said, 'My, what big carrots you have.'"

So let's recalculate. Of the 18 quotes of God speaking, how many are God speaking in the story, as a character in the plot, so to speak, and which are thinking of God as the author of the text, as the one standing behind the text's meaning as text, not just as story?

In some cases it is easy to decide. So (in the paradigm of the author of Hebrews) Psalm 2 depicts God speaking to the Messiah (1:5a; 5:5); 2 Samuel 7:14 depicts God speaking to David (1:5b); in Deut. 32 God is speaking (1:6; 10:30a, 30b?). Psalm 110:1 and 4 are both God speaking in the text (1:13; 5:6; 7:17, 21). Gen. 22:16 is God speaking to Abraham in the story (6:13). Similarly it is God in the story who speaks in Jeremiah 31 (8:8-12; 10:16-17). Finally both Hab. 2:4-6 (10:37-38) and Hag. 2:6 (12:26) are God speaking in the biblical text.

In other cases there may (or may not) be more nuance involved. So Ps. 104:4 (1:7) is about God and is not strictly God speaking in the text. We might accordingly take this as God as author behind the text saying something about himself. Ps. 45:6-7 is not spoken by God in the most likely reading of the psalm. It is a good candidate for God being behind the text.

Psalm 102:25-27 is a fascinating one. On first glance, this psalm is someone crying out to God for help and the words in question are clearly about God the Father rather than Christ. However, 1) early Christians sometimes read psalms like this one as Jesus praying. In that case it is at least theoretically possible that 2) the author of Hebrews or others saw 25-28 as God's response to Christ's plea in 23-24. In that case we would classify this citation in with God as "character" rather than "author." Of course it is possible that the author of Hebrews is completely ignoring the context of the broader psalm, in which case it is another God behind the text instance. Hard to tell given what we have to go on.

I do not propose that the author of Hebrews had carefully thought through the distinction I am analyzing here: God as character in the text and God as voice behind the text. I note only for the moment that despite God having the majority of attributions for explicit citations, I find only two somewhat nominal instances of God speaking through the text where the text itself cannot be said to attribute the words to God in some way.

For more intervening research... http://www.schenckalongside.blogspot.com