An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 234: You remember how God told you to sacrifice animals? Turns out He was wrong (Hebrews 6-10)

Hebrews 6-10
You remember how God told you to sacrifice animals? Turns out He was wrong.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Hebrews 6

“But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.”

Okay, this chapter answers a question that I’m pretty sure I’ve posed before, namely, if becoming a Christian erases sins, what happens to someone who then sins again once they’ve converted. The answer, according to this chapter, is – you’ve had it. It would appear that you get one chance, and in falling away again you get rejected, cursed and burned. Nice. “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost […]If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance”.

The chapter spends several verses explaining this, but then goes on to reassure the Hebrews that once God makes a promise it gets kept. Which I suppose is to mean that the onus is on the worshippers to stick to their side of the bargain.

Hebrews 7

“But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises”

There’s something of an ontological argument going on in this chapter. The author describes previous priests of the Israelites, from Melchisedec to whom Abraham made tithe, to the Levites amongst Moses’ followers. These priests were ordained by God and people gave them tithes, but the author then compares them to Jesus and says that if these people, who were just mortals, deserved tithing, then surely one who is also God deserves more. At least, that’s the gist I get. I had assumed that the tithes for the Levites etc. were supposed to go to God rather than the priests themselves (although, obviously, the priests looked after them for God…).

It’s a bit of a weak argument really, much like the ontological argument for God – if you can imagine something that is greater than everything else, then something that is greater than everything else (i.e. God) must exist. Which doesn’t really work. I can imagine a manticore, but I haven’t seen many around lately. By that argument the square root of -1, which can’t exist as a physically representative value but whose existence is required for certain mathematical functions to equate, has more of a demonstrable existence than God.

The rest of the chapter discusses that Jesus came from the tribe of Judah, which was one tribe without its own priesthood and therefore (?) is somehow … symbolic of being all the priests that might have been … or something? Differences between the old laws and the new ones are highlighted, including “Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, when he offered up himself”, which agrees with something that I postulated way back – that the single blood sacrifice of Jesus is equal to any number of the various burnt offerings required in Leviticus.

Hebrews 8

“Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens”

This chapter is pretty straightforward. God made a covenant with Moses and his followers, but over time (well, pretty much straight away really) they fell away from the covenant. Therefore God is now making a new covenant which supercedes the old – “A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away”.

Once again if we look too closely we are left with the problem of omnipotency for God. “For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah”. It seems strange to me that a perfect being can make an imperfect covenant – surely if the “word of God” is a good and imperfect thing then people, imperfect as they are, ought not to be able to contemplate ignoring or disobeying it? Either that or there’s planned obsolescence in God’s covenant with the Israelites, since He knows that they will eventually break faith and require a new version.

Hebrews 9

“But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building”

The author describes the old tabernacle, and the holy of holies, and the various blood rites conducted by the old Levite priests. He contrasts this with the death of Christ, and how this sacrifice is enough to remove all sins. The argument is that “almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission”. Is that necessarily literally true, though? One could surely say that there ought to be an act of contrition, or of atonement, but this doesn’t have to actually require some kind of gory event, surely?

Regardless, within this particular mythology it does, and so “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”. As I guessed before, Jesus is a sin offering, a blood sacrifice potent enough to cover everyone that wants to partake of the blessing, according to the author.

Hebrews 10

“By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh”

The old ways are made plain here that they do not work – “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” Then, why say originally that it was? How is that meant to be inerrant in any way? For how many hundreds of years were the Levitical priests performing an action that, allegedly, God knew very well was a waste of time? Honestly.

There are some further discussion about sharing the blessings etc. that we’ve seen before, and an exhortation to do good things –“And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works”, which seems fair enough. Here though is what I think is the first mention of some kind of terrible punishment awaiting non-believers –“judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” as opposed to the simple failure to get to the magical sunlit uplands promised to believers. Now we see a development in the theology not only of the difference between a blessing and simply no blessing between believers and non-believers, but a blessing and a curse instead between the two – “But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul”. And to emphasise this, the author compares the new covenant once again with the old – if a terrible punishment happened to people who disobeyed Moses, and that was only the old weak laws, then an even worse one must await those who disobey the new, improved, covenant.