What Is the Book of Hebrews About? The Better Thread

Hebrews is an outlier in the New Testament: no author named, no opening greeting, no address. It simply begins "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets" — as though we have walked in partway through a sermon.

Who wrote it

Nobody knows. It is the only New Testament book whose author is entirely unidentified. Paul, Barnabas, Apollos and Priscilla have all been proposed. Origen wrote the honest verdict in the third century: who wrote it, God knows.

One word running through it: better

The Greek kreitton, "better", appears thirteen times.

Better than angels (ch 1) — who Jesus is.
Better than Moses (ch 3) — Moses a servant, Christ a son.
A better priesthood (ch 7) — after the order of Melchizedek, not Aaron.
A better covenant (ch 8).
A better sacrifice (ch 9-10) — offered once, effective for ever.

The writer is doing one thing throughout: showing Jewish Christians tempted to slip back to the old system that going back would be going down, not going home.

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.Hebrews 1:1-2 (KJV)

The five warnings

Cut into the argument are five stern warning passages (2:1-4, 3:7-4:13, 5:11-6:12, 10:26-39, 12:25-29). They are the key to the book — the readers are under pressure, and some have already stopped meeting (10:25). That is why the tone is both argument and appeal.

Chapter 11: the list

Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab — a whole chapter of names, each introduced with "by faith".

But read to the end of it: "these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise" (11:39). It is not a collection of success stories. Some on the list were sawn in two and stoned.

How to read it

Hebrews assumes you know the Old Testament — it is in conversation with Leviticus, Psalms and Jeremiah from beginning to end. If it feels heavy going, read Leviticus 16 (the Day of Atonement) first and then come back to Hebrews 9. It reads far more easily.

Use compare mode in the BiblePro app to keep Hebrews open beside the Old Testament passages it quotes. And do look for a local church to read alongside others.