Il Sommo Sacerdote i sacerdoti il popolo sacerdotale (Lettera agli Ebrei)

Abstract

Heb 8:1-2 has all the characteristics of being the thesis (the highpoint) of the Letter (Treatise) to the Hebrews. A series of literary elements and respective contents are employed in its writing; another similar series follow its evolution. Jesus the Christ is the "Great High priest", unique, new and eternal, unlike other high priestly figures; and so are his priests and the priestly pilgrim people in faith (12:18-21, 22-24), in continuation with the generation of the Desert ("Wüstenwanderung": 12:1a). That pilgrimage was initiated by he himself, who had undergone it himself and who brought it to its fulfillment (12:2a). This is the "primary theme" of this Treatise. These data are the precious result of the historical-critical method that requires as priority a concentration on the text and its "Umwelt". An equally critical attention is always in the spotlight, which requires a "post-redactional dialogic-narrative structurality", an evolution of the historical-critical method, a kind of attention to the "psycho-anthropological dynamic" of the text in its nature as a "living organism" with a well-motivated conclusion 'from łexicality to inter-contextuality'. This paper takes note of this movement between exegetes and tries to highlight the harmonic convergence between the two moments: Redactional Literary Structure (from my Commentary 2005) and the post-redactional dialogic structure (necessary attention to the studies from 2005 to the present).