It is immediately clear (whatever we say about the writer's practical application of his theology; above, pp. 73f) that the conception of Jesus as eschatological highpriest involves not only a deeply serious interaction with the scriptures and their presentation of the ways of atonement, but with the traditions about Jesus himself. The writer's hermeneutics, therefore, involve more than an interpretational relationship with texts of the past. We must speak also of an hermeneutic of, or with reference to, Jesus.

It can hardly be accidental that the modern preoccupation with the meaning of interpretation should be discovered also to be deeply involved in questions about Jesus and his accessibility. For each is a facet of the same question: namely, how and to what extent can contingent events of the historical past be for us the vehicles of divine self-disclosure? Alternatively expressed, the question of the historical Jesus simply raises, in another and perhaps more urgent form, the questions of faith and history with which, in his own way, we have said, the writer of our letter has been most deeply engaged.

Hebrews and the quest for the historical Jesus

It is frequently observed that no other document in the New Testament, apart from the gospels, displays more interest in the human Jesus than the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is therefore slightly surprising that this writer has been allowed to contribute so little to the now lengthy debate about Jesus and the relationship of the New Testament church to him.