Outside the Camp
Hebrews isn’t preached too often. The sermon (?) deals with the Jews, the law, high priests, sacrifices, and that mysterious figure named Melchizadek, stuff that flies over the heads of believers who are used to being spoon fed sound-bite IG devotions, cheery worship songs and verse-of-the-day phone alerts. But Hebrews is a crucial brick in the believer’s house of spiritual understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
Preaching to Jewish believers enduring rough persecution from their own people for their new-found faith, the writer assures them that the resurrection inaugurated a new age that burned up the shadows of the things to come.
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by a son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom he also made the ages. —Hebrews 1.1
Yes, God had spoken to the patriarchs. Yes, he had spoken to the prophets. But he made the ultimate statement through his own son. Knowing of his readers’ confidence in the Jewish traditions of angels mediating the law to Moses, he shows them through their own scriptures how much greater the Son is than the angels. And, he says, it’s not just because he’s the Son. It’s also because of the kind of death he died. His prose reaches a climax in Hebrews 2:9, 10.
“Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.”
It’s usually easy to catch these mistakes. Not so with Hebrews 2:9. The majority of manuscripts we have read by the grace of, but there is more than good evidence showing that the writer of Hebrews didn’t write that. He wrote separated instead.
A Little Textual Criticism, Would You Please?
Origen was a third-century church father who lived from 184 A.D. to 253 A.D. He was a distinguished scholar who created the Hexapla, a comparison of translations of the Old Testament in six columns. He recognized that the manuscripts existing in his day had both readings of Hebrews 2:9. That’s huge because he was just one generation away the original apostles.
James Moffatt was a Scottish theologian and Greek professor who created his own translation of the New Testament. He opted for by the grace of because of the number of manuscripts we have, but he acknowledged that Origen believed that separated was the original text. And so did a number of early church fathers such as Jerome, Anastasius Abbas, Fulgentius and Vigilius, and Theodore of Mopsuestia.
And then there is Bart Erhman of all people. Erhman is a New Testament scholar at the University of South Carolina at Chapel Hill who, ironically enough, left the faith some decades ago. A textual-criticism expert, he says there isn’t any real doubt that separated is the original reading. Here is a short excerpt of what he has written about it.
“... except to say that even though it occurs in only two documents of the tenth century, one of these (Ms. 1739) [NT scholars have assigned numbers to manuscripts to keep track of which is which] is known to have been produced from a copy that was at least as ancient as our earliest manuscripts. Of yet greater interest, the early-third-century scholar Origen tells us that this was the reading of the majority of manuscripts of his own day. Other evidence also suggests its early popularity: it was found in manuscripts known to Ambrose and Jerome in the Latin West, and it is quoted by a range of church writers down to the eleventh century. And so, despite the fact that it is not widely attested among our surviving manuscripts, the reading was at one time supported by strong external evidence. . . . Heb. 2:9 appears originally to have said that Jesus died “apart from God,” forsaken, much as he is portrayed in the Passion narrative of Mark’s Gospel.”
Original Reading
That said, Hebrews 2:9, 10 originally read this way.
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he, separated from God, should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. —Hebrews 2:9, 10
Is This is a Big Deal?
Yes, it’s a big deal because by the grace of dilutes the relevation of what really happened at the crucifixion. When we read by the grace of, we hear a general discourse about the plan of redemption, i.e., God sent forth his Son who became flesh and offered himself up on the cross to become a sacrifice so men could be saved. But the writer isn’t giving his readers a broad discussion about grace. He is demonstrating Jesus’ superiority over the law that their persecutors are grasping so hard. And a key piece of that superiority is the kind of death he died.
Regular Text
Here is what we usually read in our bibles.
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. —Hebrews 2:9, 10
But you know what’s intriguing about this little piece of scripture? See that phrase by the grace of? It makes perfect sense in light of Paul’s letters (“For by grace you have been saved through faith”), but that’s not what the writer of Hebrews wrote.
Some believers think our Bibles arrived ready-made and were dropped off at early Christians’ doorsteps like an Amazon Prime shipment. But they weren’t. They are the amalgamation of a number of ancient manuscripts cobbled together from different writers from different places who wrote at different periods of time. And many of the copies that have survived have scribal errors in them, things such as missing words, scribal annotations (the KJV’s Romans 8:1 is a good example), added words, or incorrect spelling. This changes the context completely, doesn't it? Peter, instead of associating Pilate's scourging with our healing, writes that our healing stems from the bruise Jesus sustained after he had offered himself on the cross. That bruise could only be spiritual.
This might explain why the translations all have used wounds or stripes. Contemporary theology isn't too fond of the idea that "he made him sin" actually means what it says.
It’s usually easy to catch these mistakes. Not so with Hebrews 2:9. The majority of manuscripts we have read by the grace of, but there is more than good evidence showing that the writer of Hebrews didn’t write that. He wrote separated instead.
“Who, in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was hearing in that he feared.”
Separated hammers home the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus, this one through whom the Father had created the ages, he says, didn’t just share in the flesh with us. He was crucified outside the camp, like the animals sacrificed under the law, which burned outside the tent out in the wilderness, an unspeakable horror to a first-century Jew.
For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. —Hebrews 13:11, 12
It is because he suffered this way—separated from God for the salvation of mankind—that he is now crowned with glory and honor. The writer stresses the nature and gravity and Jesus’ death to warn his readers against shrinking back, falling away from the faith, and possibly losing their salvation for good.
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
Redemption wasn’t unremarkable. And the faith isn’t either.
