Thursday, December 01, 2011

Targum of Hebrews 13:9-16

I love the idea of targum--an interpretive paraphrase of Scripture.  The Jews did it.  Arguably there is a significant element of this in the NT use of the OT, as well as in the early phase of copying the New Testament.  The old idea that they counted line by line to make sure they didn't miss anything applied to the Masoretes 1000 years later, not to the biblical authors and early Christians.  The Message was much more the name of the game than the ESV.

I'd love to do a targum on the whole New Testament, but I doubt any publisher would be interested.  But here's my targum on Hebrews 13:9-16:

"Do not be carried away with the varied, strange, Levitical substitutes that have arisen since the temple’s destruction. We should be confident in God’s grace through the sacrifice of Christ rather than in whatever foods some are now suggesting represent the foods they used to eat in the temple. We have the altar of Christ, a sacrificial altar from which those who only rely on the “wilderness tabernacle” do not have authority to eat. When Israel was in the wilderness, they took the carcasses of sacrificial animals outside the camp and burned them. Jesus’ body was also taken outside the gate of Jerusalem—our altar is not inside the camp, nor inside the earthly tent. Let us therefore go outside the camp, outside Jerusalem, and bear the reproach that Jesus bore when the Romans crucified him, just as the Romans have brought shame on us again by destroying Jerusalem and the temple. The earthly Jerusalem is not our true city anyway, and we should not expect it to remain forever. We belong instead to the heavenly Jerusalem that is coming. The sacrifices we should be offering now are sacrifices of praise, doing good deeds, and fellowship. We should not worry about the old temple sacrifices."

2 comments:

FrGregACCA said...

"We have the altar of Christ, a sacrificial altar from which those who only rely on the “wilderness tabernacle” do not have authority to eat."

Good. Retains the implicit reference to the Eucharist.

"The sacrifices we should be offering now are sacrifices of praise, doing good deeds, and fellowship."

Not so much here. "Fellowship" above, as you know, translates "koinonia" or a related word and this also includes the Eucharist as being integral to it. (Besides, how can "fellowship" be sacrificial in and of itself, apart from the Eucharist?)

Ken Schenck said...

I've generally considered it a matter of insufficient evidence to know whether the verse refers to the Eucharist meal or not here. It certainly could.