Date of Award
11-21-2024
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Theology
First Advisor
Deirdre Dempsey
Second Advisor
Andrei Orlov
Third Advisor
Joshua Burns
Fourth Advisor
Sharon Pace
Abstract
Ever since Ernst Käsemann’s seminal work The Wandering People of God, the idea of God’s people “on the move” has captured the imagination of students of the Epistle to the Hebrews. For many years, thematic approaches to Hebrews ran along the faultline of emphasizing the high priest theme or emphasizing Christ as a pioneer leading on mission followers to the eschaton. So too, proposals for the historical and religious context(s) of Hebrews were divided for many years along a kind of vertical/horizontal axis, in which so-called vertical imagery, e.g. sanctuary in the heavens, was associated with philosophical paradigms of thought and therefore deemed “spatial and Platonic/Philonic,” while so-called horizontal imagery, e.g. entering into Sabbath rest or the approaching “Day”, was associated with apocalyptic paradigms of thinking and therefore deemed “temporal and eschatological.” This vertical/horizontal divide has been critiqued and now largely been abandoned as studies of Hebrews seek to explain the various integrations of traditions, paradigms, and contexts woven together within the homily. Spatial studies of Hebrews, although still rather few, have aided this quest for explaining the highly synthetic nature of Hebrews, especially in terms of the author’s presentation of movement through both time and space. Yet, in part because of the novelty of critical spatial theory and in part due to the complexity and density of Hebrews’s religious rhetoric, these studies have not yet provided a comprehensive analysis of the way movement is presented and is informed by the author’s dialogical engagement with the Jewish scriptures, specifically the collection of Greek translations known as the Septuagint. This study will seek to apply the spatial theory of religion scholar Thomas A. Tweed to explaining the phenomenon of movement language and metaphors of movement in Hebrews. Tweed’s theory has been affirmed but not used in recent spatial studies of Hebrews, suggesting that there is no better time than now to engage his framework for studying the homily. His work, though not focused on early Christian texts, offers a useful typology (a framework) and a topology (movements in relation) for naming and understanding the phenomenon of movement throughout the entirety of Hebrews.
