Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Hebrews 8:1-13, Copy and shadow, and a new covenant
The high priest believers have is seated in heaven and serves in the true tabernacle set up by the Lord. The earthly sanctuary was a copy and shadow built to the pattern shown to Moses, and Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant shows that the first was growing old and ready to disappear.
Hebrews 8:1-13, in every translation this tool compares.
The writer sums up his case: the high priest believers have now serves in heaven, in the real sanctuary God himself set up. The tabernacle Moses built was only a copy, made to a pattern shown him on the mountain. To show that the first covenant was always meant to give way, the writer quotes Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant, in which God puts his law within his people and forgets their sins.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/high-priest\/","n":"The high priest","s":"The head of Israel's priests, from Aaron's line, who offered for his own sins and then the people's and alone went into the holy of holies, once a year. By the first century Herod and Rome named and removed him at will.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/new-covenant\/","n":"The new covenant","s":"Jeremiah and Ezekiel promised a day when God would write his law on hearts instead of stone and put his own Spirit within his people. Some Jews of Paul's day believed the promise belonged to their own group.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/jerusalem-destroyed-ad-70\/","n":"The war with Rome and the fall of Jerusalem","s":"In AD 66 Judea rose against Rome. By AD 70 Roman armies had starved and burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and sacrificed to their standards where it had stood.","r":""}
Parallels between heavenly and earthly were common in Judaism and in the older Near East, where Marduk's temple and Baal's had heavenly counterparts; Exodus 25:8-9 was read as pointing to a heavenly model (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Price and House note that the Hebrew word behind pattern, tabnit, can mean "either the original from which a replica is constructed or the actual replica", and list readings from the rabbis' miniature model to the heavenly sanctuary itself. The Dead Sea Scrolls community also saw itself as the people of Jeremiah 31's new covenant, but kept the law of Moses more strictly (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Why the writer speaks of the wilderness tabernacle rather than the temple is read differently: Wright and Bird suggest the temple may have seemed corrupt beyond repair, while Carson, Moo and Morris say the letter "is not so much antitemple" as showing the old worship obsolete in principle. On soon to disappear, Keener writes that in the late 60s many could see that Rome might soon crush Jerusalem; Carson, Moo and Morris argue that 8:13 and 10:1-2 assume the sacrifices were still running, while others answer that Hebrews never names the temple.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Hebrews 8:1-5, on Hebrews 8:1 and 8:2-5, introduction to 8:6-13, and on 8:8-9, 8:10-12 and 8:13
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Hebrews 8:2, 8:5 and 8:13
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 30, The Argument of Hebrews, section 4
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, Ezekiel 43:10-11 Archaeological Examples of Temple Models
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 17, Hebrews, Author and Date
