NOTES for Heb 1:1-2

With these words the apostle affirms the unity of the whole divine revelation handed down to us in Sacred Scripture - the unity of the Old and New Testaments. One and the same God spoke to people through the ancient prophets of the Old Testament and through Jesus Christ; one and the same Word was first given for hearing and then came in the flesh. One and the same Son takes part in the creation of the universe "before all ages," is incarnate through the Virgin Mary for our redemption and union with God "under Pontius Pilate," and brings about the final Transfiguration of the world for the life "of the age to come." This awareness of the divine presence in all human history, and therefore in the life of every person, is an integral component of Christian faith. And it is also important that this presence is not silent, not indifferent. God speaks, which means He reveals His love and His will to people, and therefore our attempts at communion with Him, our prayers, are never barren, even when it appears to us that we do not hear Him. His Word comes to us through Sacred Scripture, through the prayerful and sacramental experience of the Church, through the "inexpressible groanings" of the Holy Spirit in our hearts; it comes and bears fruit: our growth in love for Him and for one another.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews often turns to the theme of angels and the angelic hierarchy, comparing them with Christ. Such a comparison is characteristic precisely of the author of this Letter: no one besides him gives so much attention to the theme of angels. Why did it suddenly become so relevant? Perhaps because the letter was written after the catastrophe of A.D. 70, when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed as a result of another anti-Roman uprising.

Before A.D. 70, during the life of the apostle Paul, the most widespread form of messianism among the Jews was political messianism. The Messiah was expected as King and liberator, crushing Roman power and restoring an independent and strong Jewish state. But now, after this monstrous catastrophe, mystical messianism came to the foreground. Many people, and no doubt even some Christians, began to see in the Messiah not the Man who contained in Himself the fullness of God, but someone like an angel, a mediator between God and human beings. In that case the Kingdom was viewed as something mystical, having no relation to our world. This is how some understood the Savior's words about the Kingdom that is "not of this world."

Many were also troubled by the fact that Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed, everything the Savior had spoken of as signs of the end times had happened, and yet He Himself was not returning. Perhaps, these people thought, He was not going to return in the way His followers expected. Perhaps He had already come, had come in another world, in His otherworldly Kingdom, while here, in the fallen world, waiting for Him was useless. Then perhaps He would send angels to notify those whom He wished to save and take with Himself.

Meanwhile, in reality, the person of Christ as Savior and mediator between God and the faithful was pushed into the background, while certain "angels," "powers," "principalities," and other real or, more often, imagined entities that replaced and obscured Him moved to the foreground. And the author of the Letter, one of the disciples of the apostle Paul, reminds his readers that, having the Messiah as their Teacher and Savior, the faithful need no one and nothing else. Otherwise, instead of Christ and the Kingdom, there are endless mediators and hierarchies, first "heavenly" ones and then earthly ones. Christianity as life with Christ in His Kingdom disappears. In its place comes a certain religion that promises everything but gives nothing. At least, nothing that Christ can give.

For a correct understanding of the meaning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is important to remember by whom and when it was written. According to the view commonly accepted today among biblical scholars, the author of the epistle was not Paul himself, but one of his disciples, and it was written after the apostle's martyrdom. He was apparently executed in the second half of the 60s. Most likely, the Epistle to the Hebrews came into being after A.D. 70, which became a turning point in Jewish history, and in many ways in world history as well. In that very year, after the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots, Judea was crushed, and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed to the ground in the literal sense of the word.

In scale this catastrophe was comparable to the catastrophe of 587 B.C., when the city and the Temple were destroyed by the Babylonian army and the period of the seventy-year Babylonian captivity began for the Jewish people. Such events inevitably produce a crisis: social and political, as well as religious. And the crisis experienced in the 70s by the Jewish people and the Synagogue could not help affecting the Church, which at that time was still predominantly Judeo-Christian both in composition and, more importantly, in worldview: Judeo-Christian views and traditions shaped the mentality of both the earliest Christian Church and, in part, the early Christian Church.

Meanwhile, one of the signs of the religious crisis was mystical messianism, which was rapidly replacing political messianism both in circles around the synagogue and in circles around the church. Later this messianism gave rise to numerous gnostic schools and movements. And if political messianism saw the Messiah as an ordinary man, an earthly ruler acting according to God's will, mystical messianism was more ready to see in him some superhuman being, more like an angel than a man. But the author of the epistle, whose name is unknown to us, never tires of reminding his readers that the Messiah is greater than any angel (vv. 1-4), that the way into the Kingdom was not opened to humanity by angels at all (vv. 5-12), and that angels are merely created spirits performing strictly service functions for God (vv. 13-14). He reminds his readers that the meaning of Christianity is not mysticism, but entering the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world and becoming rooted in it, finding there what no mysticism and no angels can give a human being.