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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The late Dr W. F. Howard once wrote that in Hebrews ‘we find side by side, without any apparent sense of incongruity, the Judaic conception of the two ages, and the Platonic conception of the two worlds, the real and the phenomenal’. Dr C. H. Dodd was of the opinion that the Author of Hebrews was ‘profoundly influenced by Greek thought of a Platonic type’, and Dr Vincent Taylor declared that the aim of the Author of Hebrews was ‘to present the new faith in terms which have been suggested by the Platonic philosophy’. Dr Taylor went on to express the view that the Author of Hebrews ‘may not have read the writings of Plato, but he is certainly influenced by the Platonic principle of the antithesis between the heavenly Idea, which is the real, and the earthly Copy, which is transient and temporal’. The late Bishop Rawlinson described the Author of Hebrews as ‘a Jew, perhaps, of the Alexandrian school, at once Biblical theologian and Platonist’.
page 415 note 2 The Fourth Gospel in Recent Criticism and Interpretation (3rd ed., 1945), p. 115.Google Scholar
page 415 note 3 A Companion to the Bible, ed. Manson, T. W., p. 410.Google Scholar
page 415 note 4 The Atonement in NT Teaching, pp. 101–2.
page 415 note 5 ibid., p. 102.
page 415 note 6 The New Testament Doctrine of the Christ, p. 177.
page 415 note 7 It is assumed, for the purposes of this article, that the so-called Theory of Ideas (Forms) is the central and characteristic element in Plato's philosophy.
page 416 note 1 The Greek Experience, p. 184.
page 416 note 2 Phaedo, 65b.
page 417 note 1 Republic, 511b.
page 417 note 2 Phaedo, 72e ff.
page 417 note 3 100b.
page 417 note 4 211a (Michael Joyce's translation in Five Dialogues, Everyman's Library).
page 417 note 5 Timacus, 28ff.
page 417 note 6 For further reading see, among many others, G. M. A. Grube, Plato's Thought; Copleston, F. C., History of Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 163–206Google Scholar; A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and His Work; C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience, pp. 184–5.
page 418 note 1 These words do occur elsewhere in the NT, but almost certainly in a non-Platonic sense.
page 418 note 2 For a full treatment of this question see C. Spicq, L'Épître aux Hébreux, vol. I, ch. III; cf. also the discussion of Spicq's arguments in Hanson, R. P. G., Allegory and Event, pp. 83–96.Google Scholar
page 418 note 3 Republic, 509ff.
page 419 note 1 My use of the terms ‘dramatic’ and ‘serene’ is based upon the use made of them by J. V. Langmead Gasserley in The Christian in Philosophy.
page 421 note 1 C. K. Barrett, op. cit., p. 393.
page 422 note 1 Timaeus, 29e.
page 422 note 2 See Grube, G. M. A., Plato's Thought, p. 164.Google Scholar
page 423 note 1 Plato comes nearest to Christian theology, not in the passages in which he gives classic expression to his Theory of Ideas, but in passages such as Phaedo, 110b (the famous description of ‘heaven’).
page 424 note 1 C. K. Barrett seems to go too far when he is prepared to admit that the Author of Hebrews ‘may well have read Plato and other philosophers’, op. cit., p. 393.