[B-Greek] TA hAGIA in Hebrews
Webb
webb at selftest.net
Thu May 31 11:54:30 EDT 2007
Dear Iver,
In a context where it is not important to distinguish between the two rooms,
TA hAGIA refers to "the sanctuary" meaning the two rooms together seen as a
whole. But the context can narrow the intended reference to either the inner
or outer part of those holy places.
This seems reasonable, but I won't feel 100% confident about it until
someone shows me a similar pattern of usage in Philo or Josephus or in one
of the Greek apocalypses or even the Targums or something. The LXX, after
all, seems never, in two hundred or so references, to blur the distinction
in this way, and I'm assuming without checking that this is because the
distinction is never blurred in the Hebrew Bible. It's pretty simple: if the
author of Hebrews is following a convention, I want to see some other
examples of the convention outside his writing. It wouldn't even have to be
in Greek.
The other option for interpreting this usage of TA hAGIA in Hebrews, it
seems to me, is to understand that in the cosmology and world-view of the
author of Hebrews, there is no division between inner and outer sanctuary in
heaven--it is all one ultimate sanctuary. All of heaven, in other words, is
"behind the veil", and therefore corresponds to the most holy place. Yet on
another level it also corresponds to the entire tent of meeting. And so his
usage regarding the earthly sanctuary may consciously or unconsciously be
conforming itself to this undifferentiated heavenly sanctuary concept. I
don't think this is a particularly likely solution, but I'd like to rule it
out.
Webb Mealy
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