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The problem is people who claim that there is such a stratification can't make clear examples when we get into trying to make such categories. They insist they exist, but no one agrees what laws belong to which category and what marks one off from the other. Comparing it to Trinity which is simply an attempt at explanation of the full deity of Christ is an inapt comparison. There's no point at which Paul expresses such a stratification of the law, and no Jew would have accepted that the entire law wasn't moral because it was commanded by God.
All Scripture Inspired by Yahweh did not let men/mankind/social/concepts, ideas, or thoughts be used , not even by Paul.
Yes and it's what I'm saying we won't know if we don't do the exegetical work, if we don't ask the questions? And being guided by the text to determine if there was one. Otherwise we are making an assumption that it didn't have one. Which is circular reasoning. Correct me if I am wrong, but that's how I understood what you were saying. We should assume that there isn't one? I.e. it doesnt have a specific audience because it was written for everyone. It was written for everyone because it doesn't have a specific audience.
Exegesis includes investigating literary devices and will consider whether the audience serves this purpose... it becomes part of the process.
I'm saying the exegetical process should consider everything. And if their is enough evidence to support an audience/or not and if it brings to bear upon the meaning or supports the timeless principles that should be applied then surely it adds to understanding.
Exegesis, strictly speaking, is concerned only with what is in the text and not with reconstructing histories that are not contained in the text. It is a fact that the letter/sermon/whatever that is called "Hebrews" does not have a greeting identifying any particular audience. So any attempts to identify an original audience are going to involve speculative exercises that may or may not have some benefit. I am of the opinion that if Scripture is silent on a topic, trying to fill that silence is usually not a good idea.
Yes, literary analysis. But the greeting isn't necessarily identifying an audience at all. It served a formal function, and was not always intended as a literal address.
The exegetical process should stick as closely to working with what is present in the text, and leave speculative issues to the side wherever possible. If the audience was important, then we wouldn't be left to speculate about it. Sometimes restraint is what is more important exegetically responsible rather than seeking to answer questions for the sake of answering questions.
Again, maybe I wasn't clear. I'm saying, if the end of the study yields that there is no evidence for a specific audience. Great. But it seems to me you are saying we can conclude that it is silent without that studious evidence, which is a form of circular reasoning. First do the enquiry then make the conclusion.
Again, you must do the work to come to the conclusion.
Yes, it should strictly speaking, but unfortunately you won't know if you don't investigate. How did you determine that Hebrews is silent on the audience? By making the assumption that their is no introductory greeting. I mentioned this in a previous post. But then I also stated that we know letters in the ancient world was most likely carried by an amenuensis, interpreted and presented to the audience.
Heb 10 - writing to Hebrew Christians says of the animal sacrifice and offerings "He takes away the first to establish the second". Where the "second" is the High Priesthood of Christ and the blood of Christ as the atoning sacrifice - rather than animal blood.
In the book of Acts both Jews and gentiles are in the synagogue for worship "every Sabbath" Acts 18:4
It doesn't take extensive exegetical work to make that conclusion, it's simply examining the opening and recognizing that it doesn't contain a greeting. The issue I am pointing out is that too often exegesis is treated like a check list of concerns that need to be addressed in order to better understand the text, when the only thing that matters as far as exegesis goes is what the text says. Though exegesis does not exhaust interpretation, it is simply a responsible starting point.
There is a good deal of background work that goes into forming a proper understanding, but doing so is more than just exegesis which is purely about what the text itself says.
Assumption? No, it's not present in our current text and any attempt to reconstruct it is guess work. You're right about the use of amenuensis which is just one difference between letters today and letters in 1st century Greece/Rome. A more serious consideration is that many of our perceptions of written works are very different than they were in the ancient world because we treat reading as an individual exercise, whereas in the ancient world it was very much a public event. These kind of background knowledge issues can inform our interpretation, but they are not properly exegetical as exegesis only involves what is written in the text and not necessarily addressing the curiosities or specific contextual questions. So the exegetical process begins by recognizing that Hebrews lacks a greeting, and then attempts to understand why that might be.
It's not assumptions, it's beginning with what is and isn't in the text and then attempting to identify why that might be the case. You seem intent on beginning with questions that sometimes are worth asking for a fuller understanding, but critical exegesis always begins with what is and isn't in the text and then tries to answer questions rather than beginning with questions and then searching for textual support.
You've made a claim about Acts 15, that is not getting into the nitty gritty about which laws are ceremonial and which are moral and how we identify the difference when reading them in the OT context. Nor is it a demonstration that Paul made such a distinction, as the conflict was not a question of morality but maintaining relationships and reducing offense to both groups.
Change the law? By no means. But His elevation of it changed our relationship to it, or at least how we best understand that relationship. No longer is it the external prescriptions that matter. It is not a penal code to be followed meticulously, the Law is the person of Christ. Christian morality is not deontological ethics but virtue ethics, it deals with personal character and not how well we follow a set of rules. We live by the Spirit which brings life, not the letter which ministers death. No hermeneutical gymnastics involved, unlike among those who try to carve up the law to make it liveable and fail to understand its role in bringing sin into the full measure of sin.
It takes some exegetical work, and that it doesn't start from an assumption that there is no audience, which was the circular reasoning I was referring to.
You have to be more specific with what you mean by "what the text says".... Exegesis is a process and in its simplicity, observation, meaning, relation and application.
Yes it is, therefore I don't see how you perceive being responsible as "a check list of concerns that need to be addressed in order to better understand the text" unless your concern is with structured approaches or the hermeneutical method being employed.
If you mean the background work of the exegete ie. Recognising and acknowdging biases and presuppositions, and the continuous work of being prayerful. etc.. then yes.
Yes, being far removed from the ancient world makes it crucial for us to wrestle with the text and distinguish between our world and theirs. Otherwise, we risk reading our modern assumptions into the text and missing the timeless principles that the text is meant to convey, and which we should apply.
Ive been saying that the exegetical process starts somewhere, not nowhere. I was adressing that in your previous responses where you appeared to say that the exegetical process which includes observation is not necessary as a check, which I pointed out as circular reasoning. i.e. assuming there is no audience therefore there is no audience.
And it's never been my reasoning, which was simply pointing out that the lack of greeting in the text is of more interest to whether or not we should be concerned about what the audience is than what I view as misguided commitments to a particular method of hermeneutic investigation.
What I mean is that when it comes to exegesis in a strict sense the only thing that matters is the literal meaning of the words and structure of the text. Exegesis involves processes, but ultimately its concerns are linguistic and not broader historical issues. Though interpretation is not exhausted by exegesis, it is simply our starting point.
It's the order in which the questions are engaged with, as too often exegesis is approached as if we have to work through a checklist of questions before we start looking at the text rather than beginning with the brass tack questions of literary construction.
That's part of it, but also extrabiblical historical knowledge that plays into understanding how these texts are constructed. Knowledge from external sources(both intertextual and extrabiblical) about what was going on at that point in history, approximate dating of the letters and the like. None of this is directly exegetical, but all of it plays into interpretation.
Yes, but more often the questions we're asking are of more interest to a modern critical scholarship way of thinking than one in keeping with the concerns the authors of the text would have been concerned with. So even when we begin trying to address these larger questions we must begin with the text itself and ask "What considerations might the author make in writing this?"
Exegesis starts with the text. Grammar, diction, literary genre...historical context issues like audience require a significant level of textual engagement before we ever get to such questions. Though I know that exegetical textbooks often teach otherwise, starting with historical issues leads to introducing presuppositions and a subjective element prior to engagement with the more objective elements.
