Literary and Rhetorical Form and Structure in the “Epistle to the Hebrews”

Abstract

The “riddle” of the form and structure of Hebrews cannot be solved with the conventional view that there is one correct principle and outline around which the author constructed the book of Hebrews. This essay suggests that the role of the reader/hearer is central in Hebrews because of the similarity of the book to didactic and propagandistic literature whose purpose is to communicate a confirmation of values already known to readers. With that sort of literature (such as the thesis novel), the reader participates primarily not in the articulation of a specific meaning but in the articulation of the reader's own situation vis-a-vis that meaning. The different affective and cognitive factors in meaning and the role of readers and/or hearers in the completion of meaning allows different sets of relationships to operate in finding and creating meaning in the text of Hebrews. The essay examines (1) the ways that different views of the genre of Hebrews enable productive readings (covenant literature, letter, Christological treatise, sermon) with the sermon form being able to comprehend the other forms and (2) the different ways that the elements of the sermon (Christological exposition of Scripture and exhortation) may be correlated by different sorts of readers and hearers.