Hank Smith: 00:03 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of FollowHIM. My name’s Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my fabulous co-host, John Bytheway. Welcome, John.

John Bytheway: 00:11 Genuinely happy to be here. So fun.

Hank Smith: 00:14 Yeah, it is so fun to be back each week. John, we are going to study the book of Hebrews today. What are you excited about?

John Bytheway: 00:21 Well, it’s been fun to see Paul go around the Mediterranean and all these different places and visit them in Acts, and then write letters to them. Now, Paul and his companions, and as the gospel grows, they have to write back to the Hebrews about how their old traditions fit with the new gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m just excited to see how this all fits together.

Hank Smith: 00:43 Excellent, John. I’m excited as well. We have a returning guest with us, Dr. Matt Grey. Matt, what are we looking forward to here in the book of Hebrews?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:52 The book of Hebrews is a fascinating text. Today, we’re going to look at Hebrews 1-6, and probably even take it a little bit into chapter seven, but this is one of the most fascinating books in the entire New Testament, I think. Partially because this is where we get this very powerful idea that Jesus is our great high priest who is offering intercession for humanity, connecting humanity to God, and the idea that Jesus is the ultimate atoning sacrifice whose death provides that reconciliation between humans and God. Concepts that are so foundational and formational for Christianity and Christian theology.

  01:30 In fact, it’s so common that sometimes we take those ideas for granted and forget that this block in the book of Hebrews is actually the fullest articulation of those really powerful ideas that we have in the New Testament. It’s a magnificent book, a remarkable way to frame the meaning of Jesus’s work and his life and his death, and I’m just really looking forward to working through this text with you today.

Hank Smith: 01:52 Fantastic. I’m already getting excited and I know one of my favorite names of the Savior comes up in the book of Hebrews. He’s called the High Priest of good things to come. I’ve always remembered that name and where it came from, this letter to the Hebrews. John, Matt is not new to the podcast, but he might be new to some listeners. Can you introduce him to our audience?

John Bytheway: 02:13 Yeah, I’d love to. Dr. Matthew Grey is a professor of ancient scripture and an affiliate faculty member of the Ancient Near Eastern Studies Program at Brigham Young University. He was born and raised in the Chicago area, served as a full-time missionary in the California Santa Rosa mission, attended BYU where he received a Bachelor’s in Near Eastern Studies, received a Master of Arts in Archeology and the History of Antiquity from Andrews University, and a Master’s in Jewish studies with an emphasis on Judaism in the Greco-Roman world from the University of Oxford.

  02:48 A PhD in Ancient Mediterranean Religions with a major emphasis on Archeology and the history of early Judaism, and a minor emphasis on New Testament studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also taught at the Institute of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, University of Oxford, and also back to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke.

  03:12 Dr. Matt Grey has been actively involved in archeological research and publication relating to the world of the Bible in Israel, Jordan and Italy since 2011. He supervised excavations at the Roman Era Village in synagogue at Huqoq. Matt and his wife, Mary, have three children, Priscilla, Hannah, and John, and they currently live in Springville.

  03:34 You’ve been around. What a fascinating, fascinating background you have, so excited to hear from you today. Welcome, Matt.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 03:41 Oh, thanks John. No, it’s really great to be here, both of you.

Hank Smith: 03:44 Oh, fantastic. We’re so excited to have you, Matt, and we need to tell Mary, Priscilla, Hannah and John thank you for letting us borrow your dad today. It sounds like you guys have been around the world a couple of times.

  03:56 John, a lot of our listeners might not know that we put together a little book called Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. This was put together by a member of the Sorensen family, Annabelle. If anybody wants to pick this up, I’m sure you can grab it on Amazon. And I want to read from one of Matt’s excerpts.

  04:13 Last year he was with us for the end of Exodus and some of the chapters in Leviticus. He said, “I’d like to think of temple preparation as learning a language.” I remember this. I’ve used it in my classes many times. We need to learn the language of ritual and symbolism and the type of things we would encounter in a temple space.

  04:31 Because if it’s like learning a normal language, it means that we need to pay a certain price to learn the vocabulary. When we pay that price to learn that language and then we go to that space, what was once a very frustrating and confusing experience can become a very communicative experience.

  04:48 Now, you not only know what is going on, but it is meaningful to you. It is revealing things to you, whereas before it felt like things were being concealed and he just said that off the cuff. It’s so beautiful. It’s such a wonderful idea. Now, Matt, with that in mind, are we going to be connecting to your lesson last year on the Tabernacle today in Hebrews?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 05:09 Yeah, in some ways we are. Last year we were able to look at how the law of Moses, how the writings of the Torah, especially Exodus and Leviticus, talk about this Levitical priesthood system that functioned in this portable tabernacle, which seemed to function as a prototype for the temple in Jerusalem once it was built.

  05:28 That fascinating system not only is very informative, as you said, to us learning the language of the temple broadly how ancient and even modern temples work, but in the case of the book of Hebrews, we now get to see an author who takes those themes of priestly intercession, sacrificial atonement, and now we’ll apply them to the life, work, death and ministry of Jesus.

  05:53 That idea of Jesus being the great high priest is built on an understanding of the Old Testament Aaronic high priest, or the idea of Jesus being the ultimate atoning sacrifice is definitely built on the sacrificial system that we discussed last year. You’re right. In a lot of ways, these two conversations work very nicely as a part one and a part two when we’re thinking about temples in ancient Israel and then temple significance to early followers of Jesus.

Hank Smith: 06:19 Fantastic. It was episode 19 last year. If anybody wants to go back and listen to that episode and you’ll be able to see all the connections we make today. Matt, before we jump in to chapter one, what do we need to know beforehand?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 06:33 The book of Hebrews is one of the most fascinating texts in the New Testament. It’s one of my favorite books in the second half of the New Testament for sure. One of the things that’s difficult about reading this text is just how complicated the rhetoric is.

  06:46 If anyone’s ever tried to sit down and just read it from chapter one through chapter 13, without a lot of background, maybe without some good resources, some study bibles, maybe, it can be a very confusing experience. It’s really somewhat difficult to follow the logic of it. I just wanted to acknowledge upfront that this is a critically important text for early Christianity, but it’s also a very complicated text.

  07:09 I’m really looking forward to walking through it step by step together and unpacking the logic of it, unpacking the message of it, and I think the complexity with this text actually begins with its background. As it turns out, we all know that context matters. Anytime we’re reading any book of scripture, we always need to start with, okay, who wrote it and when was this written and what were the circumstances? Who’s the audience? What are they wrestling with that this text addresses?

  07:38 Those are all really important questions that we always need to ask before we study any book of scripture and that really sets an important framework. But with those background questions in this text, we have a lot of question marks. There’s a lot we don’t know about this text.

Hank Smith: 07:52 Okay, I’m ready for some background. What do you have for us?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 07:56 Great. It’s really fun to work through Hebrew scholarship and interact with scholars who spend a lot of their career studying this book. Speaking of the complexity of the background and how much we do or don’t know, one of my favorite common sayings in Hebrew scholarship, the more you study the epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, the more you come away with three certainties. One is that it’s not an epistle. Two, that it was not written by Paul, and three, that it was not written to the Hebrews.

  08:24 That’s a fun way to acknowledge that scholars acknowledge there’s a lot we actually don’t know about this text. I think that saying is really fun and it certainly reflects the challenges of reconstructing the background. I think we can maybe be a little bit more precise on some of those things, but it’s just a way to acknowledge that there’s a lot we don’t know.

  08:40 I think it might be helpful to start with some of those issues. What do we know about the author? What do we know about the date? What do we know about the audience, and then just go from there. The first issue, of course is authorship. And traditionally for a very long time, this has been simply associated with Paul. But I think it’s important to recognize right upfront that the text of Hebrews itself is actually anonymous.

  09:03 Aside from the title, the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, which was added to the text long after the text was written. The title does not seem to be original to the text itself. We’re talking about a text that is anonymous. It never does identify who wrote it, which unlike Paul’s letters, Paul always talks about who wrote it. He always starts off his letters by saying, I, Paul, maybe with a companion or two, wrote this thing. Hebrews never really does that.

  09:30 It does seem that by the second or third century, a tradition had built up that Paul was the author and we see hints towards that tradition in the sense that when we get our earliest collection of Paul’s letters by the third and early fourth century, Hebrews is occasionally in those collections. Over time, the book of Hebrews was in fact inserted with the larger collection of Pauline letters.

  09:56 It’s definitely an early Christian tradition starting the second or third century that Paul wrote it. Eastern Christians in the third and fourth century definitely believed that Paul wrote it and that was one of their arguments for getting it into the New Testament cannon. But the reality is people both ancient and modern have always noted that there doesn’t seem to be any convincing evidence that Paul actually wrote this.

  10:18 There’s all sorts of different style issues. We’ve now spent several weeks looking at the letters of Paul as a community. We have a good sense now of the style of Paul, kind of the cadence, the rhythm of his writing, his vocabulary, his worldview, and the book of Hebrews just is different on all of those fronts. Uses a lot of different vocabulary than we’ve seen Paul use. It uses a different style of writing. The Greek is quite different than the letters that we’ve seen of Paul, and there are simply themes that are in this book that occasionally have points of contact with Paul’s letters, but that otherwise explore different ideas and even might have a different perspective.

  10:55 Paul, for example, is very committed to the idea that Christianity is not replacing Judaism. In Paul’s letters we frequently saw this idea that Christianity, the Jesus movement, is fulfilling the final chapters of Isaiah, which is that we’re taking the tent of Zion and we’re lifting up the tent pegs and we’re expanding the tent to include people that had been previously excluded.

  11:16 Paul sees the Christian movement in that way, so we’re not abandoning the Jewish covenant. We’re not abandoning the covenantal relationship between Israel and God. We’re just expanding that covenant to include non-Jewish people, for example.

  11:30 The book of Hebrews has a bit of a different tone on this. The book of Hebrews does seem to emphasize that in Jesus, all things are new. There is a new covenant, and you need to leave previous institutions. You need to abandon your reliance on the Jerusalem temple. You need to no longer rely on the Jewish priests to mediate between you and God. All things are new in Jesus and so there’s almost a hint of supersessionism in Hebrews that we don’t really see in Paul’s letters. The idea that it’s a new era, it’s a new covenant, it’s a new community rather than the way Paul framed it.

  12:05 None of these things are definitive, but adding up the style and the vocabulary, the themes, the approach, even the messages has made readers from the very beginning wonder, did Paul actually write this or did someone else write it? One example that shows that even by the time we get our King James Bible, there’s still a really interesting question as to whether Paul wrote this is the fact of where Hebrews is placed in the cannon. Because if you think about the letters of Paul in the New Testament, they’re not arranged by chronological composition when they were written. They’re arranged by length.

  12:38 Romans is first, then I Corinthians, then II Corinthians. We move all the way down to Philemon, the smallest, the shortest of all the letters. And then at the very end we see a 13 chapter Hebrews, which suggests that even the compilers of the New Testament that we’ve inherited, they didn’t really know where to put it. They didn’t know should we put it after Romans or should we just tack it on at the end as a tradition?

  13:00 That’s just a way to acknowledge that we don’t know actually who wrote it. In fact, one of my favorite quotes about this is from an early Christian writer named Origen from the third Century. He says, “Only God knows who wrote Hebrews.” You have some early Christians and modern scholars who wonder if it could have been written by Barnabas, this Levite who joins the Christian Church who ends up being a companion of Paul in the Book of Acts. Is it possible that somebody like Barnabas could have written this?

  13:28 That’s a really interesting possibility. Barnabas being a Levite, he’s very connected to the Levitical priesthood and Levitical temple system and therefore might have a Jesus-centered way of reading these things. That’s very possible. We don’t know that for sure. That’s just one suggestion. Another fun suggestion, I believe Martin Luther was a fan of this suggestion is that Apollos from Alexandria might’ve actually written this. Partially because we know from the book of Acts that Apollos was a very educated, highly educated Diaspora Jewish thinker from Alexandria in Egypt. He’d been trained not only in Jewish thinking and Jewish scripture, but also in Hellenistic ways of thought.

  14:07 And then he, someone, Acts tells us who wanders around the Eastern Mediterranean teaching Jesus through that lens. Some have wondered could he have written this book and as we’ll see in the next few minutes, it’s not impossible. That’s the type of background that this author has. A highly educated Hellenistic Diaspora Jew who now is seeing these Old Testament institutions through the lens of Jesus.

  14:29 I think maybe the most responsible way to approach this then is rather than double down on, oh, the tradition that Paul wrote this is how we have to see it. I just think that we take a step back and we just say what it is. It’s the author of Hebrews. It’s an anonymous text. We don’t know who it is. I believe that in recent years, even some church leadership has started to speak in that direction.

Hank Smith: 14:49 They use that term, actually.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 14:50 Yeah, exactly. Elder Holland I think gave a talk recently where rather than talking about Paul writing Hebrews, he just simply talked about the author of Hebrews. I think that’s a really helpful, healthy way to acknowledge that we don’t know this. And I’ll just end the authorship question by saying I really don’t think that for as kind of concerned as we sometimes feel about who exactly wrote what and is this traditional attribution correct.

  15:15 I do think it’s important to remember that at least for the Latter-day Saint Community, this is just not one of our articles of faith. I think that we’re in a good position as a Latter-day Saint community to acknowledge the complexities say maybe, but also maybe not. Then proceed to just enjoy the richness and the perspective that this author has on who Jesus is.

Hank Smith: 15:35 Awesome. I have that Elder Holland talk right in front of me. It’s the fifth paragraph in the talk Tomorrow The Lord Will Do Wonders Among You. April of 2016. Starts with this, “The author of Hebrews warned us of this when he wrote …” You can see that. Thanks for bringing that up. That is very helpful.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 15:53 Yeah, that’s really great. I think the way we proceed is we use that phrase, the author of Hebrews, and then we just acknowledge what the text shows. This author, whoever wrote this, has extremely polished Greek. It’s some of the best Greek in the entire New Testament. This author is extremely interested in Jewish scripture. I think out of all the books in the entire New Testament, this book more than any others has that kind of intertextuality where it’s constantly quoting from the Old Testament. I mean, if you get a good study Bible and read through Hebrews, you’ll be shocked to notice how often the language of Hebrews is simply paraphrasing or directly quoting Psalms or other Old Testament books.

Hank Smith: 16:29 Fantastic.

John Bytheway: 16:29 I love what you said, Matt, and it says in our Come, Follow Me manual. “Some scholars have questioned whether Paul wrote the epistle to the Hebrews. The literary style of Hebrews is somewhat different from Paul’s other letters. And the earliest versions of the text did not name an author. However, because the ideas expressed in Hebrews are consistent with Paul’s other teachings, Latter-day Saints in keeping with Christian tradition have generally accepted that Paul was at least involved in writing this epistle.”

  16:57 Like you said, it’s not a place to hang your hat. It has the power of scripture and we can tell when we read it and the ideas are beautiful and they’re spirit-filled. Paul was at least involved. I like the way they put that there.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 17:09 Exactly, yeah. If you look at the scholarship on Hebrews, you’ll notice that scholars have a bit of a date range of when it may have been composed, and that date range could be as early as the 60s AD, which would be right at the very end of Paul’s ministry. But possibly even reaching as far as the 80s or 90s AD, which would’ve made it one of the later books written in the New Testament.

  17:33 One of the reasons why that date range of possibilities is so important as a reader is because when you think the book was written actually does determine to an extent how you’re reading the book. The whole issue being, of course, do you think that the Jerusalem temple is still standing?

John Bytheway: 17:49 Right, because that was 70 AD. Right?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 17:52 Which was destroyed in 70 AD, or was it not standing? Because the whole book is trying to convince an audience that you no longer need to rely on the sacrifices and the priestly mediation of the Jerusalem temple because we have Jesus. If you think the book is written while the temple is still standing, meaning in the 60s before 70 AD, then the way you’re reading this book is the author trying to convince this audience of Jesus followers that you no longer need to feel a need to attend the Jerusalem temple. You don’t need to go to the living standing temple in Jerusalem any longer. It’s still there, but you don’t need to feel drawn to it anymore because now you have Jesus.

  18:32 Jesus fulfilled the sacrifices. Jesus is the ultimate high priest, so you don’t need to feel drawn to that standing institution of the Jerusalem temple. However, if you think that the book was written after 70, after the temple was destroyed, then that’s a bit of a different argument that the author is making. Now, the author would be saying to that audience, you don’t need to feel like you need to rebuild the Jerusalem temple because you have Jesus. Post 70 Judaism is characterized by different voices in different groups wondering, what do we do now that the temple is destroyed? Do we rebuild? Do we move on without the temple? If you think this book was written after 70, then this would be one of those voices that would argue, you don’t need to rebuild the Jerusalem temple because we have Jesus. He’s your ultimate high priest making intercession for you right now. He’s your ultimate sacrifice making atonement.

  19:20 I think the question mark by the date actually is a really interesting thing. It’s kind of fun to read the letter, read the text through both possibilities. Is the temple still standing or is it not? But either way, the argumentation of the text, the logic of the text clearly is trying to convince this group of what seems to be Jewish Christians that they no longer need to rely on those previous institutions because Jesus supersedes them.

  19:45 Jesus is our ultimate priest. He’s our ultimate sacrifice, which then itself speaks to who is this audience and we just traditionally say the Hebrews because whoever’s reading this thing is just immersed in Jewish scripture, Jewish thought, Jewish symbolism. But at the end of the day, we actually don’t know exactly who this audience is either.

  20:03 There’s one passage in chapter 13 that says, “Those of Italy say hi.” The greetings of those from Italy, which means that either the book is written from Italy, may be Rome and being sent somewhere else, or it’s being written from somewhere else to Rome that we don’t even know geographically where this thing exactly is located. It does seem based on the logic of the book and the structure of the book, that whoever this audience is, they are still feeling drawn to the institutions of the law of Moses. They’re institutions of the Levitical priesthood, the institution of the sacrificial system of the Jerusalem temple.

  20:40 This is an audience that clearly feels pulled in that direction and this author is trying to convince them to let it go and to move on. You don’t need to rely on those things anymore because you have Jesus. And then I think the final thing just to note by way of background is the genre of this book. We often call it a letter. It doesn’t really read like a letter. We’ve now read a lot of letters of Paul and we’ll read more letters going forward.

  21:03 Letters start in a very formulaic way. They’re usually written as letters. This one’s not. This one really does seem to be more of a sermon. It’s almost more of a homily, maybe a sermon that was given in house churches or maybe in a synagogue where there were lots of Jewish Christians present. We don’t really know that setting, but it does seem to be more of a sermon that was delivered sometime in the first century, and then right at the very end, that sermon may have been written down and then later circulated like a letter.

  21:32 There’s a few notes at the very end in chapter 13 that suggest that it could be circulated, but it’s not composed as a letter. It seems to be a sermon or a homily given by a well-educated Jewish Christian who’s immersed in Jewish scripture and who is trying to convince an audience to no longer rely on those previous institutions because now we have Jesus, our ultimate high priest and our ultimate sacrifice.

Hank Smith: 21:56 Matt, as I read more about the law of Moses in the Bible dictionary, there’s three paragraphs here. I won’t read the whole thing, but talks about the law of Moses and the ceremonies, rituals, symbols that were part of that. And then this sentence, the law of carnal commandments and much of the ceremonial law were fulfilled at the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then it gives us a bunch of references there, and among those are a lot from Hebrews. Would we line up with that in our Latter-day Saint thinking of the law of Moses that yeah, a lot of this was done away with, with Jesus?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 22:33 Yeah, that’s a really great question. That’s definitely how we often think about it. I think the realities in the first century church were a little bit more complicated than that. As Latter-day Saints, we’re used to reading the Book of Mormon where in third Nephi, this community on the other side of the world gets a heavenly voice saying that with the death of Jesus, the law of Moses is fulfilled. I will no longer accept your sacrifices. As a very Book of Mormon literate culture,

  22:58 we’re used to that moment where it’s a clear divide, it’s a clear cut. One day they’re keeping the law of Moses and the next day they’re not. And so I think as Latter-day Saints, we just often see the history of the early Christian Church in that way. But if you go back to the old world in the world of the Biblical Community, I think the process was a lot more gradual.

  23:19 The Book of Acts is clear that early Christians were continuing to go to the temple offering their prayer services and participating in the sacrificial services. Paul himself continues to go to the Jerusalem temple and take oaths that were part of the law of Moses, so I think that in the earliest church they did not have that voice. I think they had to work through it in a way that maybe Nephites did not, but in the old world, those early followers of Jesus probably continued in the law of Moses way of life. They’re still keeping kosher, they’re still circumcising their children, they’re still going to the temple. In fact, that’s going to be one of the issues in Paul’s mission is do we actually need to keep doing that stuff? And Paul’s answer in the 30s, 40s, 50s and even 60s is I don’t think we do. And there’s a bit of a debate. Not all Christians agree that it’s a clean cut like that.

Hank Smith: 24:08 We’ve seen that in Paul’s letters because many of the Jewish Christians are thinking that the Gentile Christians need to take part.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 24:14 Need to, meaning that’s how it seems to have been in the earliest generation. Paul then seems to be the radical innovator by saying, “No, I don’t think we do.” It just shows that it was a much more complex, gradual process in the old world than it might’ve been in the new world. When we get to the author of Hebrews, then now we are talking about a book that does try to make that clear cut.

  24:34 Usually our assumptions that there was that clean cut, those are informed by the book of Hebrews. In fact, that’s the extent to which Hebrews has just sunk into the psychology of Christians, the theology of Christianity, because that’s the argument that Hebrews will make is that those old institutions were done away with in Jesus. That’s the emphasis of the book.

Hank Smith: 24:54 Fantastic.

John Bytheway: 24:55 I want to make sure our listeners aren’t confused about because that’s what some of our critics say. Then why do you have temples now? Maybe it’s important to point out this was … The high priest then was an Aaronic priesthood office and temples today administer Melchizedek priesthood ordinances.

  25:14 What do you guys think about that? People might’ve heard that before, we don’t need temples anymore because we have Jesus. Well, we’re still building temples. Why are we doing that then? We might want to answer.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 25:25 That’s a great question. I think Hebrews will anticipate some of that by saying, yes, Jesus is our great high priest, but he’s not going to be a high priest after the order of Levi. He’s going to be the high priest after a different order entirely called the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews actually, at least in the early Christian generations, gives us that vocabulary of there actually are different orders of priesthood and the type of order that Jesus is part of as our high priest is not the previous Levitical order from the Pentateuch. This is an order that’s entirely different and later on in the chapter in the book, later on in our conversation today, we’ll actually look at how this author would articulate the difference between those priesthood orders.

  26:04 But John, I think that’s a really helpful way to articulate the difference between ancient Israelite temples in a Levitical system, and modern Latter-day Saint Temples, which definitely frame themselves after this higher order of Melchizedek that this author introduces us to.

  26:18 If you read through some of the really important priesthood revelations of Joseph Smith, section 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants or section 107 of the Doctrine & Covenants might not be surprised. There’s a lot of Hebrews worked into the language of those revelations because he’s definitely drawing upon and probably building upon the language of a higher priesthood that can bring one to perfection as opposed to a lower priesthood which never did have the power to save anyway. That’s all the rhetoric of Hebrews. I think Joseph Smith’s revelations are going to tap into that concept and then continue to flesh them out as Latter-day Saint temples are being unfolded.

Hank Smith: 26:55 Wow.

John Bytheway: 26:55 Beautiful.

Hank Smith: 26:56 This has been a fun summary. I kind of feel like we’re heading into the book now knowing what we’re looking for.

John Bytheway: 27:02 One of the first things I noticed was that all of the other epistles, like you said, Matt, started out with Paul and so-and-so writing to, and greetings and grace to you from God and his son Jesus Christ. And this one just starts out with these doctrinally packed three verses right at the beginning, but it ends like an epistle. I just thought, wow, look. This starts like a doctrinal exposition and ends like an epistle. It is kind of unique that way.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 27:30 That’s a great observation that a lot of Hebrew scholars have made as well. It does seem that this is a sermon. It’s the homily of sorts. It’s something that was delivered to an audience in a house church somewhere, and then eventually someone wrote it down and tacked on a few verses at the end to send it around like a letter perhaps. Maybe that’s a way to put it. A sermon that was eventually circulated like a letter would be a good way to understand this.

  27:51 One of the things that I think is really helpful to navigate Hebrews, as we said earlier, this is a very complex text. To read through it from cover to cover without any resources can be very daunting, but understanding the way in which the author structures the argument lays out the logic of his message itself is really worth keeping our eye on.

  28:14 For example, the way that this author chose to begin the sermon or the text is actually with what seems to be an early Christian hymn. Most scholars who look at this book suggest that the first three or four verses of this book may have been a song that early Christians sung about Jesus and kind of like we might today in a sacrament meeting talk or something else. We might say, oh, that hymn really sets the tone for what we want to say. We might quote the hymn and then give a sermon or a talk that might be based on the themes of that hymn, but that hymn so well embodied what I’m trying to get across.

  28:48 Well, that’s what some New Testament writers do as well. In the letters of Paul, for example, we occasionally do see things that look like hymn. Songs that were circulating sung in these house churches, usually songs about Jesus and about his divine nature that Paul or other authors will then incorporate into their writing. Knowing that it’s a hymn actually might be a really interesting way to start the book.

  29:09 Looking at that, chapter one verses one through three, or maybe one through four seems to be a hymn that sets some of the major themes of Hebrews. It’s like an opening statement that sets off a thesis statement of sorts. Let’s go ahead and read the hymn first and then we’ll unpack it. Here’s how the hymn reads. Chapter 1:1. God who at various times and in various ways spoke long ago in past ages unto our fathers, unto our ancestors by the prophets. But in these last days he spoke to us by his Son whom he has appointed heir of all things by whom he made the world. Who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power. When he had purged our sins, he then sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.

  30:00 That’s the first three verses. Really a powerful opening statement that if we imagine it being sung by Christians in a house church, it seems to be that the people who wrote and sung this hymn were definitely extolling the divinity of Christ, the powers of who Jesus is. And this author decided to use that hymn as the opening statement. Probably because this hymn does three really cool things. Number one is it does set up this theme of Jesus superseding the things of the past.

  30:31 Long ago in earlier days, God spoke to us through these earlier institutions. He used these earlier features, but today going forward now God speaks to us through his Son. The first line of that hymn sets up a major theme of this book, which is that previous institutions are going to be superseded by Jesus. I think that’s theme number one that this hymn establishes for the book very, very well.

  30:57 Theme number two is simply the high Christology of this book. And by Christology we mean what do we think of the nature of Jesus? The author of this book and the writer of this hymn clearly had a very high Christology. If you look at just the teachings of who this author thinks Jesus is. Jesus is the heir of all things. He’s the one who created the world. Jesus is in the very image and the very glory and likeness of God and upholds all things by his word. I think that’s point number two is this is a hymn of a very high Christology emphasizing the divinity of Jesus.

  31:29 That’ll probably play into the message of the book later on because this author is going to try to convince his audience that you just don’t need to rely on previous structures and institutions because our trust is in Jesus. If you see Jesus as the one who created all things and is the heir and who is in the likeness of God, then that’s where we can place our trust. I think the idea of Jesus superseding previous institutions, a very high Christology highlighting the divine power of Jesus.

  31:55 And then finally, the last thing that this hymn sings about that will be very important to this book is the idea that Jesus purged our sins and then sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. And that language of purging our sins, that’s language that comes right from the Jerusalem temple. The ancient Israelite framework of the temple and the framework of the Levitical priesthood was that the Levites offered sacrifices, or Levitical priests offered sacrifices to purge you of your sins. To reconcile you to God.

  32:30 This author and this hymn is saying actually, Jesus is the one who purged you of your sins, and that’s going to be a major theme of this book is that you don’t need to rely on the animal sacrifices of the temple anymore because Jesus is the one who ultimately purged your sins. Provided that ultimate atonement and reconciliation through his death and after that atoning act fulfilling or superseding the temple sacrifices, he then took his place as exalted on the right hand of God.

  32:58 A beautiful hymn to start off this book and a really powerful way to establish the tone and set the themes of the text as it continues to unfold. Jesus supersedes old traditions, old institutions. Jesus has divine power, and Jesus is the one who purged us of our sins and provided atonement. And with that opening statement, we’re now ready to follow this author on a journey trying to establish that, trying to make a case for the superiority of Jesus over the things that went before.

John Bytheway: 33:27 They used it as a hymn, and so do we. Rejoice, the Lord is king. When he had purged our sins, he took his seat above. That’s right there at the end of verse three.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 33:37 Oh, that’s great.

John Bytheway: 33:37 If memory serves, that’s Isaac Watt who also wrote Joy to the World, I think wrote Rejoice, The Lord is King, the lyrics. Lift up your heart, lift up your voice, so that’s right there.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 33:48 Oh, that’s great.

John Bytheway: 33:48 That still is a hymn. We still sing that.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 33:51 Isaac Watts is probably drawing on Hebrews there.

John Bytheway: 33:54 What translation did you read just then when you read verses one, two and three? That wasn’t King James.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 33:59 Well, I do have the King James in front of me, but I’m doing my own paraphrase. But yeah, I would suggest in the case of Hebrews, because the text is complicated enough.

John Bytheway: 34:07 Wow. It is thick.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 34:08 Just by way of its rhetoric in its organization and then trying to read it in a 400-year-old English can be even extra challenging. I strongly recommend to my students that they have the King James in front of them. That’s the Bible we’ve chosen to use as a church, but then also have more modern accessible English translations in front of you as well, like the New Revised Standard Version or something else just to help you with the flow of the language. Because the beauty of the King James is there, but for comprehension sometimes it’s very helpful to read it in a dialect of English that we understand.

John Bytheway: 34:38 I felt like as I was trying to read this in preparation for today, I thought this is requiring me to slow down even more. This book. Some of the other, I’m like, wait. What? Because it’s pretty thick.

Hank Smith: 34:53 Matt, I encourage my students to do the exact same thing. When you read something in the KJV, it really doesn’t help you if you don’t understand. Go to a more modern translation, read it, then come back to the KJV and you’ll see things you didn’t see.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 35:06 Exactly. Exactly. I think a good study Bible helps with that as well. I always encourage my students to get a good study Bible, get some good resources that will help you walk through it. And not that one needs to replace the other, just have a desk full of great resources that you’re working through. With a text like Hebrews, which is especially dense and compact and complex, those types of resources are so important. Without them you can feel quite lost in this book. But with them you can actually make sense of otherwise complicated rhetoric. There’s really great stuff in here and I think it’s important to walk through it.

Hank Smith: 35:36 There’s also a few apps you can get that will do this. I use one in particular called Bible Hub. It gives you all sorts of resources to read different English translations that are really helpful.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 35:47 No, that’s great. Yeah, that shows how old school I am. I’m thinking of having paper texts all over the desk and you’re like, oh, there’s an app for that.

Hank Smith: 35:53 There’s an app for that.

John Bytheway: 35:56 See, I have on my shelf, I’m looking at it. The contemporary parallel New Testament has eight translations, four on one page, four on the other of five or six verses, and you can see them all at once. But Hank’s just using the app.

Hank Smith: 36:12 [inaudible 00:36:11] in your books.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 36:14 Right? Old school.

John Bytheway: 36:15 This ancient device called a book with pages and stuff. Right?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 36:18 Exactly. That’s great. If we were to move on, I think we’ll see that the very next section of the book definitely requires some unpacking. The way the book then starts is with this hymn that sets up these three main themes of the book, but then it immediately starts moving towards a way of presenting Jesus that is pretty systematic.

  36:37 The first argument is that Jesus, now that we’ve established his superiority over things that have gone before, the author will proceed to talk about how Jesus is superior to the angels. Jesus is superior to Moses, and Jesus is superior to the Levitical priesthood. Those are kind of the next main sections of the book. It might be helpful just to walk through each one of those sections in turn following the logic of the author.

  37:02 If we now go to chapter one verse four, we now see the first real claim of the book, which is Jesus is superior to the angels. It’s interesting because scholars debate if there’s a social reality behind this. Why would he start with this one? Is this community somehow drawn to angelic veneration of some kind? We know that some Jewish groups like the Essenes, the Dead Sea Scroll Community, definitely saw themselves as interacting with the angels of the heavenly temple. It’s not impossible that this group felt as part of their draw to the older institutions of Israel that maybe some of them felt drawn to angel veneration of some kind.

  37:39 We don’t know that for sure or is this simply a rhetorical first move to say, look in showing you how Jesus is superior to everything that went before, let’s start with the angels. And maybe it’s just a rhetorical way of saying, let’s show you the superiority of Jesus. The way that the author does this is really fascinating. He first starts in verse four by saying, so, being made so much better than the angels, asserting Jesus’s superiority, he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than the angels have. With that assertion, the way the author supports the argument is really interesting. He gives a list of seven verses from the Old Testament. It’s almost like a list of proof texts.

  38:21 If chapter one is confusing to a modern reader, it’s probably because you don’t recognize that that’s what the author is doing. The next few verses, verses five through the end of chapter one, lists seven passages from the Old Testament. And once you can identify which passages the author is quoting from, you can kind of follow the logic of how the author is arranging those verses, putting them into a list as a way to support his opening argument. Jesus is superior to the angels.

  38:47 Of course, we’re always talking to our students about don’t proof text, don’t take verses out of context. Context matters. You got to read them in their original context, and at this point, by the time you’re reading Hebrews, the students should be well-trained and not taking verses out of context. And then you get to this passage and you’re like, yeah, that’s exactly what this author does here. This author will take seven verses out of their original context, and those contexts are valuable and important, then they’re worth reading, but this author is more concerned about, let’s take the language of these seven verses, line them up just right in a row and you’ll get the point that I’m trying to make.

  39:18 I would encourage readers to slow down and do check out the context of all seven of these passages. But for the sake of simplicity here, let’s just go ahead and let’s just read the list that the author gives us as a way to support that argument that Jesus is superior to the angels. In verse five, it starts with quoting Psalm 2:7. If you have the old paper version, get a pencil and actually in the margins write in which of these seven passages are being quoted.

  39:43 The first one is Psalm 2:7. And here’s how the argument seems to go. Verse 5, so unto which of the angels did God ever say, quoting Psalm 2:7, you are my son. Today, I have begotten you. That was an old kingship hymn from the Old Testament. That was a hymn that was sung at the coronation of Israelite kings. The adoption of the king is the Son of God, was a powerful idea of Israelite kingship. That’s the first passage that this author starts with.

  40:09 Did God ever say that to any of the angels? You are my Son, today, I’ve begotten you. Well, no, but Jesus is that Davidic king, so he did say it to Jesus. That’s number one. Number two is 2 Samuel 7:14. I will be to him a father and he will be to me a son. That’s a passage that is referring to divine sonship in the Davidic kings. 2 Samuel 7:14.

John Bytheway: 40:33 That is in the footnote, Hank. For those of us with paper scriptures, we’re already looking at it.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 40:38 That’s great guys. I know. The old ways, man. That’s how this list begins with two kingship passages from the Old Testament. Psalm 2 and 2 Samuel 7. Did God ever say that to the angels? No, but he did say that to the king. And if Jesus is the king, then that makes Jesus superior. Verse 6 is our third passage, and you’ll notice, by the way, at least in the King James, the agains tend to signify when you’re getting another verse. And again, now he’ll quote another verse.

  41:09 This third verse is actually going to be the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy 32:43. The Septuagint, of course, is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Every time this author quotes the Old Testament, he’s quoting the Septuagint, the Greek version of that. Our third passage in verse six is, and again now he’s quoting Deuteronomy 32:43, when he brings in the first begotten into the world quote, he says, “And let all of the angels of God worship Him.” That’s his passage in Deuteronomy 32 where all of the heavenly hosts are worshiping Jehovah.

  41:44 The author chose that as a third verse to support the arguments of Jesus’s superior to the angels because in the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 32, it says that the angels will actually worship the divine Son. Worship Jehovah. That’s number three. Number four starts in verse seven. “And of the angels,” he said. And now he’s quoting Psalm 104:4. He makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire.” That passage from Psalm 104 I think just simply is just the idea that angels are ministers. Angels are ministering spirits.

  42:19 We’re setting up what does the Son do versus what do angels do in verse seven as well. Well, the angels in verse Psalm 104, they’re made ministering spirits in a flame of fire. Now, here he’s going to quote Psalm 45:7,8. “To the Son,” he said, “Your throne, oh God is forever and ever. The scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom.” And then he goes on in verse nine. That fifth Old Testament passage from Psalm 45 is meant to again juxtapose Jesus with the angels.

  42:48 Psalm 104 says angels are ministers, which is great. We’re not dismissing angels. But the Son in Psalm 45 has the scepter of eternal righteousness. The eternal kingdom has been given to the Son, so therefore Jesus is superior to the angels. Well, and the list keeps going. We’ve done five of the verses. I’ll just mention quickly the last two passages. We’re still in Hebrews chapter one, but in verse 10 we get another and. And now he’s going to quote Psalm 102:25-27. “And thou Lord, in the beginning has laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the works of your hands.” Recalling back to that opening hymn of the chapter one, which is that Jesus is the creator.

  43:30 This author is reading Psalm 102 as a reference to Jesus as the creator. Angels weren’t the creator, but Jesus was the creator. That’s how this author reads that Psalm. And then he concludes at the very end of chapter one. He concludes with one final verse from Psalms. We’re now in chapter 1:13. “And to which of the angels did he ever say,” and now we’re quoting Psalm 110:1, “sit on my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool.” And that’s it. That’s the list of seven passages.

  44:03 Quick review. It’s Psalm 2, 2 Samuel 7, Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 104, Psalm 45, Psalm 102, and now we’re concluding with Psalm 110. Did God ever say to the angels, sit here at my right hand and I’m going to exalt you on this throne and make your enemies your footstool? And the answer of course would be, well, no. God never said that to an angel, but he did say it to this eternal Davidic king who the author identifies as Jesus. That’s chapter one.

Hank Smith: 44:32 Matt, it seems the author is intending an audience that is very well versed in the Old Testament. I wouldn’t have picked up those references. I wouldn’t consider myself well versed in the Old Testament, but that seems to be the case. Right? Almost like the book of Matthew, because Matthew does a very similar thing.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 44:50 Yeah, exactly. If we think back on the social setting of these early Christians in these house churches, there is no New Testament yet. They might have a few letters of Paul that are circulating. They might have some of those, depending on when you think Hebrews is written, there might be one gospel in circulation. If you think it’s as written as early as the 60s, Mark might be floating around, but the others have not yet been written down. And so we’re talking about a very limited New Testament collection of writings that these early Christians would’ve had. Instead, when they gather and read scripture together, they are reading the Old Testament.

Hank Smith: 45:23 Yeah.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 45:24 The Hebrew Bible, actually probably the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. That is their book of scripture. That is a book that they’re going to be so much more familiar with than we tend to be, certainly as modern Christians, as modern Latter-day Saints. We just don’t spend a lot of time with that material. That’s where they spent all of their time. These phrases and these allusions and these quotations certainly would’ve resonated more with this author and audience than it might with a modern audience, which is why sitting down and carefully unpacking it as a modern reader is key. Is essential to really understanding how this book works.

Hank Smith: 45:58 Fantastic.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 45:59 Let’s move on to chapter two. Although, this is a really important moment to remember that our modern chapter divisions are just that, they are modern. They are not part of the original text. A good study Bible will often help you to see the divisions of the text, meaning the flow of the logic of the author better, sometimes, in our modern artificial chapter divisions. These modern artificial chapter divisions are really helpful so we can all quickly refer to the same passage, but sometimes they get in the way of the flow of the argument.

  46:29 This happens in the Book of Mormon all the time. King Benjamin’s sermon in the Book of Mormon. You’ve got to sit down and read chapters one through six in one sitting to really follow the flow of the logic. It’s the artificial chapter division to sometimes chop that up and make it feel clunky, or this is going to be one of those books where you really have to follow the argument rather than the modern chapters. Yes, we are moving into what we call chapter two, but we’re still in the same argument.

Hank Smith: 46:54 That’s interesting because I often do that. I do almost a memory wipe from the previous chapter when you jump into a new chapter. Or it’s a different day, you’ll read a chapter a day, and so you really don’t remember what was being previously said and you think, oh, this is brand new. But it’s a flow from the previous chapter.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 47:13 It is, exactly. I think at some point in our scriptural literacy, we need to mature enough to be able to say, well, no, we’re going to keep reading until the argument’s over, until the author shifts gears so that we can maintain the flow of how this author is trying to make his statement or send his message. In this case, that would be another moment where yes, we are entering chapter 2 of Hebrews, but the argument is continuing.

  47:34 Okay, so we’ve just established that Jesus is superior to the angels, but why does that matter? And it seems like the first few verses of chapter two have the message that, well, so if angels are cool, that’s a loose translation from the Greek. Well, if angels are great and if we should listen to angels, if an angel shows up, we want to listen to that angel. How much more important would it be, then to listen to the Son? Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard through the Son. And then he goes on to say, how could we escape in verse three if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord? But that seems to be the theme here of chapter two so far.

Hank Smith: 48:10 The NIV says, we must pay the most careful attention, therefore to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. The most careful attention. I imagine if an angel was there, I would be paying careful attention.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 48:25 And that’s going to be part of the logic of this author again, is that there are little hints throughout Hebrews that the audience might be, I don’t know if we’d use the word backsliding, but certainly flailing a little bit in their Christian faith, their commitment to the community. Maybe because they’re feeling drawn back to the previous community where they had originally come from or something they’re used to.

  48:45 But the author does seem to occasionally say things like that, which is how much more earnest heed do we need to give to the Son. We need to stick with this rather than go back to a previous institution. We are going to see little hints of that throughout the text. But I love the way that chapter two concludes, because now that we’ve shown that Jesus is superior to the angels and that we therefore need to give even more attention to the words of the Son, chapter two ends this unit by almost anticipating a question that the audience might have.

  49:17 The audience might ask the question, for example of, well, if Jesus is superior to the angels, then how was it that he suffered, was tempted, died in a human body? Because humans aren’t quite as powerful as the angels. And if Jesus is superior to the angels, how is it that Jesus was human? How was it that Jesus had a human experience and he’s suffered like a human? He was tempted like a human. He cried out in prayer like a human.

  49:44 It’s almost like the author is trying to anticipate that pushback because the way that the author then proceeds is to say, yes, Jesus is superior to the angels, but for a brief time he had to make himself a little lower than the angels to become a human being so that, and then he’s going to list three or four really important things that the human experience of Jesus allowed Jesus to do as the captain of our salvation.

  50:10 By the way, this is going to be itself based on a verse. This is going to be based on Psalm 8:5-7. That humans are just a little bit lower than the angels. Based on that idea from Psalm 8, the rest of chapter two is all describing why it was that Jesus had to briefly become lower than the angels, become a human, and the reasons why here I think are pretty powerful.

  50:31 Basically, this is concluding this section by reflecting on what we might call the condescension of Jesus. Someone who is inherently superior to the angels, but who came down to earth and had a human experience. Why is that, then? Why did Jesus have to briefly become lower than the angels? Well, in chapter 2:9, he begins to explain this. There’s probably four or five really cool things here.

  50:50 Number one in verse nine. We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels so that he could suffer death, and then eventually after that be crowned with glory and honor that he might, by the grace of God, taste death for all humanity. Step one is he had to become a human so he could die for humans. Seems to be the logic. Yeah, he became briefly lower than the angels, but he did it so that his death could save humanity.

  51:19 If he retained his higher than the angel status, he couldn’t have died, but he became a human, did die so that humans could be saved through the work of Jesus. That’s one reason why Jesus became slightly lower than the angels for a brief time. Verse 10 continues with this. For it became him for whom all things and by whom all things are created. He’s still asserting that divine power of Jesus, but it was important for him to become a human so that he could bring many of God’s children unto glory. To become the captain of their salvation, made perfect through suffering. He had to become a human so he could suffer, so he could die, so that he could then become the captain of human salvation. He could be the one to lead the way, not only die for humans, but lead the way for humans to go through that ultimate perfection process like he did.

  52:09 That seems to be kind of a second major reason for this author, why Jesus had to become human, had to become lower than the angels. And then at this point, he’ll give a few more quotes. I mean, he’s still quoting Psalms, quoting Isaiah. He’s quoting Psalm 22. He’s quoting Isaiah 8. I mean, it’s just the richness of Old Testament intertextuality here is pretty staggering, actually. It’s a text you cannot fly through. You have to slow down, carefully unpack it. But once you do, the rewards are great, and this is a really fun text to read.

  52:38 He concludes this whole thing then by saying, if we go down to verse 14 and 15, I’m paraphrasing a little bit. But basically again, he had to become human so that he could die in verse 14, through death, he might destroy him who had the power of death, even the devil. He had to have that condescension becoming lower than the angels so he could die, and in the process defeat the power of death, defeat the devil. And then at the very end, I love these last few verses. And deliver those through his death, through whom the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

  53:09 Verse 17 is great. Wherefore in all things, it behooved him to be made like his brothers and sisters. He needed to become lower than the angels so he could become the rest of God’s children so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of his people. For in that he himself suffered being tempted, he is now able to succor those who are tempted. And that’s the conclusion of that first segment. Jesus is superior to the angels, he became lower than the angels so he could experience the human condition, so that he could suffer like a human, so that he could even experience temptations like a human and ultimately die like a human. All so that he could become our merciful and faithful high priest.

  54:00 The idea of him becoming a high priest is a theme that we’ll return to in a few chapters, but for right now, in this part of the book, that’s just his way of saying Jesus needed to become human so he would know what it’s like to be you and me. Once he knows what it’s like to be tempted like you and I are, or to suffer like you and I suffer, and to die like you and I will die, that’s what allows him to be the captain of our salvation. That’s what allows him to be a faithful and merciful high priest who really can understand what it is that we experience and what it is that we go through.

  54:30 As Latter-day Saints, this is a huge part of how we view the Atonement. This idea that Jesus had to suffer, had to even be tempted so he could walk with us on our journey, so he could be with us on our path of discipleship where we stumble and fall and experience pain. This is established by the author of Hebrews, and it’s at the very conclusion of this section of Jesus as superior to the angels.

Hank Smith: 54:52 Fantastic. Matt, what you’ve been talking about here brought to mind for me 1 Nephi 11, where Nephi is hoping to have a vision similar to his father, the Tree of Life. And there’s this moment where the angel, he’s showing him Nazareth and Mary, and he says in 1 Nephi 11:16, “He said unto me, knowest thou the condescension of God?” I’ve read that and I wonder if the angel is saying something like, “Nephi, do you have any idea who that is? Do you really grasp who that is?” And Nephi has this great response. “I said unto him, I know that he loveth his children. Nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” I guess I don’t know exactly who that is, and it seems like the author of Hebrews is saying something similar. He is much more glorious than you can imagine, but he’s condescending to become mortal because of what he’s going to do for us.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 55:51 I think that’s a really great parallel. Just comprehending a being that is superior to the angels, but who became lower than the angels so that he could experience these things and really become our Savior in the most meaningful profound sense. Not just over death, but over sufferings and temptations. There’s several fascinating points of contact between the letter to the Hebrews, or the book of Hebrews, and various Book of Mormon passages.

  56:18 This might be one that you’d articulated. Another one that I think of is in Alma 7. Right? Latter-day Saints are very familiar with the Alma 7, maybe not as much with Hebrews 2, but in Alma 7, of course, we get this idea that Jesus suffered pain and temptation and affliction of every kind so that he might be able to walk with them and succor them according to their infirmities and be with them in their sufferings and temptation.

  56:43 I mean, it’s a really beautiful insight into Jesus’s role as our Savior. And that concept that we tend to resonate with in Alma 7 from a New Testament perspective is I think first articulated here in Hebrews 2. I don’t know of any other passage in the New Testament that quite explores that aspect of Jesus’s Messiahship quite like Hebrews 2 does.

John Bytheway: 57:05 You’ll see that footnote 18B on the word succor takes you to Alma 7:12. Alma 5, Alma goes to Zarahemla, gives them that spiritual midterm, and then he goes to Alma, to Gideon is like you. You’re different. You’re walking in paths of righteousness, and he gives them this stuff that has that beautiful Alma 7:11,12 in it. And you can go to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary and on the word succor, it is so beautiful. It says literally to run to, to come to aid in time of need. You can say he is able to run to them in their time of need. He’ll know according to the flesh how to run to his people according to their infirmities, which is a nice image.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 57:51 It is. That’s a powerful concept. Isn’t it? And as I said in Hebrews, this is I think the earliest New Testament articulation of that part of Jesus as our Savior.

John Bytheway: 57:59 I don’t mean to apply this too strongly to us, but when we go through hard times, we are able to help each other in ways that, oh, our family went through that, too. And somehow that knowing that the Savior’s been through everything we have, and now none of us can say, you don’t know what this is like. Oh, no. He knows what it’s like. He went through it all so that he would be able to succor us.

Hank Smith: 58:26 Matt, wouldn’t it be great if as Latter-day Saints, those of us who love that Alma 7 passage to add to our scriptural repertoire, our scriptural knowledge, Hebrews 2.

John Bytheway: 58:37 This one right there.

Hank Smith: 58:39 Which articulates a similar thing but differently adds a little bit more. I love the part that he said he became mortal so he could destroy the power of death, that is the devil. That’s a great addition.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 58:50 Yeah, it sure is. No, I agree. And I think, again, if we go back to that earliest generation or two of Jesus followers as they’re slowly collecting texts that are now our New Testament, that passage in chapter two might have been the first time they ever even thought about the idea that Jesus had to become a human so he could suffer, be tempted, and die as a way to walk with us, as a way to succor us, or as you said, John, to run to us …

John Bytheway: 59:12 To run to us.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 59:13 … in our time of need.

John Bytheway: 59:17 Please join us for part two of this podcast.