What Are They Saying About the Letter to The Hebrews?

What Are They Saying about the Letter to The Hebrews? By Daniel J. Harrington. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005. Pp. v +96. Paper $12.95.

The "What Are They Saying About" series of Paulist Press is a boon to all students of the Bible, and Daniel Harrington's volume on Hebrews well fulfills the purpose of the series. This purpose is of course to make the reader aware of the current state of scholarship on a particular subject: in this case Hebrews. While Harrington's perspectives and personality occasionally peek through, his approach is primarily descriptive. His stated goal is to acquaint the reader with scholarly books in English on Hebrews that have appeared since 1975. He provides references to resources where the reader might find similar discussions of books in French and German.

Harrington's first chapter, "Reading Hebrews Today," is arguably the most helpful for the novice on Hebrews who wishes to move to the next level. He describes the most recent commentaries on Hebrews, as well as recent books aimed at preaching from Hebrews or introducing Hebrews. Three of the books in this chapter end up on his personal list of top five in the last thirty years: Donald Hagner's Encountering the Book of Hebrews, Craig Koester's Anchor Bible commentary, and Thomas Long's preacher oriented exposition of this ancient sermon.

Under the heading "The Mysteries of Hebrews," Harrington deals with various background and contextual issues in the second chapter. We thus find here recent books on the historical, ideological, religious, and sociological background of Hebrews, as well as a discussion of "literary matters." This chapter, as with the remainder of the book, is primarily helpful to the graduate student wishing to fill in any gaps she might have in her knowledge of recent scholarship.

In the third chapter we read of books that relate to Hebrews and the Hebrew Bible. These books vary from overarching studies on the "lenses" through which Hebrews reads the Hebrew Bible to studies of individual characters (e.g., Moses, Melchizedek) and texts (e.g., Psalm 110) in Hebrews. One book Harrington examines looks at Hebrews's use of the LXX in general. Because these books deal with familiar characters and texts from the Hebrew Bible, some of them might be of interest to a more general reader.

The book ends with a chapter on the theology of Hebrews, and one suspects that Harrington's own personality finds this topic most attractive of all. Two of the books from this chapter make his favorite five list: Barnabas Lindars's The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews and David Peterson's study of Hebrews and Perfection. In addition to these, Harrington's chapter discusses books on wandering and rest in Hebrews, books on priesthood and sacrifice, as well as books on other themes like the new covenant, God's discipline, and faith. It is perhaps in this chapter more than any other that the vibrant Roman Catholic faith of Harrington peeks through.

Harrington himself notes that most of the books he treats were at one time doctoral dissertations. We are thus not too surprised to find that many of these books are highly specialized or even idiosyncratic at times. The general reader may occasionally find it difficult to get a good grasp of some of the books Harrington discusses. But we should attribute any difficulty more to the nature of the books themselves than to Harrington, who has performed a great service in summarizing them. One does wonder occasionally if the nature of Harrington's task has resulted at times in a somewhat surface level treatment of some books, especially given how specialized and nuanced such studies usually are.

It seems quite clear that Harrington is a gentleman, for he treats books of varying value with equal respect. The Hebrews specialist will likely find many of these books far wide of the mark. While Harrington does provide evaluations at the end of each chapter, we might wish that he had not been quite so "nice" in them. If I have any significant critique of the book, it is probably in this area. While Harrington helpfully makes us aware of these books, he does not really give us the tools to evaluate them. But this fact speaks to the goals of the series rather than to Harrington's own excellence. This book should be on the shelf of every serious student of Hebrews!

Kenneth Schenck

Indiana Wesleyan University 

704 West Nelson Street

Marion, IN 46952