Journal for the Study of the New Testament

For far too long, many interpreters of Hebrews have held the view that the author wrote to dissuade the audience from a return to Judaism—the so-called ‘relapse theory’. This article demonstrates the ways in which this theory does not cohere with current scholarship on Hebrews or on the New Testament more broadly. The ‘relapse theory’ assumes a clear ‘parting of the ways’ or separation between Judaism and Christianity in the first century as well as a rather negative outlook on Jewish rituals by the author of Hebrews. But as this article shows, evidence that this is the primary concern of the author is scarce, and the interpretations of various passages used to illustrate the author’s supposed supersessionism or replacement ideologies are at best overstated or hyperbolic and at worst misguided caricatures of Judaism in the first century. I begin with brief histories of interpretation regarding both the purpose of Hebrews and then put forward alternative readings for six texts often used to substantiate the idea that the author of Hebrews writes to critique Jewish religion (Heb 3.12; 7.11, 18–19; 8.13; 10.1–10; 9.9–10; 13.9–10).

This article examines the messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark, considering the paradigm shift within New Testament Studies, according to which the New Testament is to be regarded as part of Second Temple Judaism’s textual corpus, while viewing it against the backdrop of the First Jewish-Roman war. It draws on Georg Simmel’s Sociology of Secrecy, which remains a cornerstone text for theorizing secrecy, and ties in with Gerd Theißen’s thirty-year-old socio-epistemic attempt at an overall interpretation of the messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark. This article shows that a (messianic) secret must be explosive, as it certainly was in the context of Josephus’s war report, and seeks to reconstruct it for the Markan text in a historically plausible way, incorporating particularly Simmel’s distinction between relative and absolute secret. An introduction (sec. 1) is followed by methodological considerations (sec. 2) and a presentation of the historical events with particular focus on the topic of secrecy (sec. 3); together, these form the basis for a systematic analysis of the Markan secret (sec. 4). The investigation is rounded off with a summary and conclusion (sec. 5).

Why was the body of a man crucified by the Romans buried in a rock-hewn tomb? Whereas Jewish scruples about leaving the dead unburied would have been satisfied by burying Jesus in a shallow grave, a survey of Jewish burial practices indicates that instead he was buried in the kind of tomb normally reserved for the elite. Two of the Gospel accounts suggest that Joseph of Arimathea was a follower of Jesus, but this is historically unlikely. Piecing together the evidence from the Gospel narratives, it is proposed that, as a wealthy member of the Jewish ruling council, Joseph could well have been engaged in a programme of building tombs to honour prophets from the past. When faced with the death of a prophet in his own day, he may well have felt constrained to avert any divine retribution by giving Jesus an honourable burial. Memory theory is employed to suggest that distorted recollections of Joseph bribing Pilate to release Jesus’ body can be detected in the accounts of Jesus’ burial found in Matthew and John. This article aims to demonstrate that Jesus receiving an honourable burial in a rock-hewn tomb is historically plausible.

Are gentile and Jewish sin in Romans differentiated, so that chs. 9–11 are set apart from how Paul speaks of sin earlier in the epistle? Stephen L. Young has argued just that, and this article critically addresses his position, which is exaggerated and overlooks the textual habitat of the scriptural evidence used in Rom. 9–11. Cognitive sins are found among both gentiles and Jews. Paul’s eschatological framework enhances moral decline in general and is not susceptible to ethnic diversity. Rom. 1.18–3.20 and 9–11 are entangled in a complex web of terms and motifs. The past sins of Israel in Scripture are blended with experiences from Paul’s present mission.

The understanding of the salvation of all Israel in Rom. 11.26 remains controversial. In this article I propose a new perspective—the genealogical-religious Israelite view—based on Paul’s distinctive use of ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel’ and the occasion of his writing. Paul’s contemporary Israelites are a subset of Jews. Insofar as ‘Jews’ includes proselytes (Gentile Judaizers), Israelites are the subgroup of Jews with genealogical credentials. Paul yearns for the salvation of more of these genealogical Israelites in his time, and ‘all Israel’ is the sum of the remnant and the portion of the hardened genealogical Israelites who would ultimately believe in Jesus. Against Jason A. Staples, Gentiles-in-Christ are not resurrected Israelites. Rather, Paul presents descent from Jacob as a credential beyond Gentile reach. Gentiles can never become Israelites.

This article argues that Satan’s plot in Revelation 20 draws from the Asael/Azazel myth in 1 Enoch 10.4–8 and 54–57. The former Enochic passage, like Rev. 20, tells of an angel who is commissioned to imprison a rebellious angel for the moral corruption of humanity. Both are sealed in the pit until judgment day, when they are to be thrown into a great fire. The latter Enochic passage describes Asael’s preparation for war against the holy city and subsequent judgment, which resonates with Rev. 20’s battle against the city and judgment. This article argues that these allusions to Asael were specifically made to allude to the Azazel ritual of the Day of Atonement, which is the background to Asael’s imprisonment in 1 En. 10, and the idea finds affirmation in similar literature, Jewish traditions, and festal patterns in Revelation. This article lastly and briefly considers what typological and soteriological implications this allusion to the Day of Atonement may have.

Jonathan Rowlands recently argued that the historical-critical and the TIS approaches to reading Scripture are both justified, by their own lights, in that each represents a ‘language game’ whose rules are grounded in nothing more than a preference for a particular reading goal. This brief response will challenge two of Rowlands’s main claims: (1) that Wittgenstein’s ‘language game’ concept is applicable to the reading of texts, and (2) that the coexistence of authorial and textual (types of) meaning in a text justifies a plurality of approaches.