10 - With Jews a Jew

Paul’s liberation was the beginning of a new dedication. That morning he felt like an eagle released from a cage. There was not a moment to lose. The congregations of Ephesus and nearby cities were waiting for him. He hadn’t yet been to Laodicea and Colossae, and he’d written to Philemon to prepare a lodging for him. And what about his beloved Galatians and Philippians, who were so faithful? Hundreds of faithful soldiers were waiting for him.

Paul immediately assembled all his workers: Timothy, Mark, Luke, Priscilla and Aquila. A great new enterprise was to be launched, for Paul had learned that a sect of false and narrow pietists had risen in Asia Minor that sought to convert the faith of Christ into a rigid Nazarite and ascetic discipline, a variety of Hassidism. They rejected the world altogether, denied themselves wives, and did nothing but fast and pray in solitude, transforming the universal appeal of the faith into a spiritual privilege of a handful of adepts. To Paul this new tendency in the congregations was even more dangerous than the assault of the Gnostics. He felt that only his intervention among the congregations could check the tide of the wild pietists, and he needed all the help he could get.

Titus was already in Crete, and Aquila and Priscilla were about to leave for Ephesus. Timothy would follow later to help them strengthen the congregation, choose leaders, and purify the spirit. But first Timothy had another task to perform.

Paul was sending him to Jerusalem with a letter to the congregation there. With the martyrdom of James, Paul would send an offer of peace; an attempt to make whole what had been split, to reassert the common bond of blood.

And so, ready to leave Italy from the port of Puteoli, Paul dictates his letter to the Hebrews.

In the letter Paul refers back to what he learned at the feet of Gamaliel. He reviews the Torah from Genesis on, weaving quotations from it and the prophets into the letter, making use of the methods he learned in the school of his youth, interpreting the verses according to the tradition of the Pharisees. The tone of the letter is Jewish. No one but a pious Jew who had never departed from the tenets of the traditional faith could have written it. He doesn’t use the second person, but the plural first: not “you,” but “we.” He is no longer at odds with his brothers. He does not abrogate the Torah. On the contrary, it is through the power of the Torah of Moses that he would win them to Christ.

He addresses himself to their imagination and fantasy. He knows what sanctity attaches in the mind of Jews to the High Priesthood, and he would make an eternal priest of Christ. Christ is descended in the flesh from Abraham himself.

“He didn’t take on himself the nature of angels, but the nature of Abraham. Therefore it was fitting for him to be the equal of his brother in all things, that he might be a compassionate and faithful High Priest before God, who forgives the sins of the people.”

“For as he alone suffered so he is able to help others who are tried in him.”

He speaks tenderly of the fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as of Moses and the prophets, and even of the Torah. He adorns the letter throughout with quotes from the Torah.

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. . . . I will give my Torah in their midst, and I will write it on their hearts, and they will be my people and I will be their God.”

He sees Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the sacrifice. He compares him to the Holy of Holies in the Temple, but all Jews enter it, not just the High Priest.

Thus he speaks, “a Jew to Jews.” And like a prophet of consolation he evokes the great and glowing hope beyond the night of trial, terror, and anguish. He brings the Jews to Christ, not by threats and gloomy forebodings as he has done before, but by putting the glory of the High Priest’s robes on Christ, the robes he wears on the Day of Atonement when he enters the Holy of Holies to win forgiveness and reconciliation for the Jews.

“Jesus Christ has come in order to be a High Priest in the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect sanctuary, not made by human hands. Neither by the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies us for the purity of the flesh, how much more shall we be sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ, who through the Spirit offers himself without spot to God? How much more shall we be sanctified, and purged from dead works, to serve the living God?”

Toward the end of the letter Paul adds, “Whoever he loves, he disciplines,” and he reminds his fellow Jews of the saying of Hillel, “Follow peace and holiness with all men, without which no man shall see the Lord.”

He exhorts them to renewed observance of the Abrahamic practice of hospitality.

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for some have thereby entertained angels unaware,” an allusion, striking deep into Jewish memory, of the encounter between Abraham and the angels of God.

He tells the people of Jerusalem of his longing to see them again and implores them to pray to God that he might be “given to them” speedily. He ends the letter with the news of his liberation. He doesn’t do this in open language, but rather indirectly, knowing he will be understood.

“Know that our brother Timothy has been set at liberty,” he writes.

But he knew they were well aware of the saying of the Pharisees, “That which the rabbi is, the pupil is also.” If Paul the teacher was imprisoned, so was his pupil; and when Paul was set free, so was his pupil.

Having finished the letter, Paul entrusted it to Timothy, who had learned the holy language in his childhood days, and Timothy set out for Jerusalem. Then Paul gathered his companions about him and took ship for Asia Minor.