Legitimation in the Letter to the Hebrews: The Construction and Maintenance of a Symbolic Universe

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 2004 by Mosser, Carl

Legitimation in the Letter to the Hebrews: The Construction and Maintenance of a Symbolic Universe. By Iutisone Salevao. JSNTSup 219. London: Sheffield Academic Press. 2002, viii 448 pp., $145.00.

This is the largest of a recent spate of social-scientific studies of Hebrews. Salevao's goal is to explain and correlate the theology and strategy of the epistle with the readers' social situation by means of the concept of legitimation as developed in the sociology of knowledge. The book consists of five inordinately long chapters. Much space is wasted by consideration of issues only loosely relevant to the argument (e.g. pp. 84-92; 159-65) and discussions attempting to establish accepted facts (e.g. pp. 273-76 argues that baptism was an initiation rite).

Chapter 1 defends the social-scientific study of the NT, introduces the reader to the sociology of knowledge, and elaborates upon legitimation. Legitimation is defined as "the aggregate of ways a social order or social world is explained and justified to its members" (p. 54). Salevao's thesis is that the theology of Hebrews was "designed to explain, justify and sanctify the situation of the community of readers" (p. 69). The discussion of the sociology of knowledge is sufficient for Salevao's purposes, though anyone who has studied epistemology will sometimes cringe. The defense of social-scientific criticism successfully answers many objections, but several times the force of substantive criticism is not appreciated. Some of Salevao's replies are inadequate at points crucial for his thesis. One example is his reply to criticism of the principle of correlation (p. 42-45). Salevao's reasoning is not always clear, and he endorses statements that seem to undermine his claims. At the end of the discussion what Salevao means by correlation remains vague.

Salevao recognizes that theory can be imposed on data if the data is not amenable to analysis by the proposed theory (p. 24). This is unheeded when addressing the difficulty of constructing a social context amenable to social-scientific analysis from a single text. His reply to objections is that it is both legitimate and possible to use inferences from a single writer because the biblical data is all we have (p. 45). Yet the fact that one document contains all the primary data we have does not entail that it is sufficient for the kind of sociological analysis proposed. Asserting that Hebrews is "a text with a story, a set of data that can tell its own story" (p. 45) hardly meets the threshold question. One is not surprised to see theory repeatedly imposed on data in subsequent chapters.

In chapter 2 Salevao places the readers in a house church in Rome sometime between 70-96 CB. They were experiencing political persecution, social alienation, and hostility from pagan outsiders (pp. 133, 137). There was also internal disunity caused by a theological conflict that manifested itself in the separation of some members from the group (p. 133) and an internal power struggle (pp. 331-32). Hebrews 13:9 is cited as evidence for this conflict (p. 142). The root problem causing disunity was the issue of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism (p. 144). The combination of these external and internal pressures made it difficult for some to remain within the Christian symbolic universe as originally constructed, and therefore they were on the verge of "relapsing" into Judaism. Salevao defends the relapse theory at length (pp. 109-14) and seems to think that it is proven if he can show the readers were not Gentiles (pp. 115-18).

The third chapter elaborates this socio-historical situation by arguing that the community was a sect that had long been separated and independent from Judaism. This is set within a discussion of the parting of the ways. According to Salevao, Hebrews was not a transition stage in the parting of the ways but a "methodical, calculated attempt to legitimate the identity of Christianity ... as a religious and social entity independent of and separate from Judaism" (p. 194). This had to be done because the community could not tolerate dual allegiance to Christianity and Judaism, two religions with an "essential distinction" (p. 218). How does he know this? The community is a sect, and sect theory tells us this is the way sects operate (cf. 216). The argument displays vicious circularity.

Chapter 4 focuses on the doctrine of the impossibility of a second repentance in Heb 6:4-6 and the exegesis of this passage. Salevao's goal is to show that this doctrine "was designed to prevent the readers from leaving the Christian community" (p. 252). The exegesis is interspersed with needless explanatory jargon that adds nothing to the basic point: A second repentance was impossible because initiation into the Christian community was an unrepeatable event.

The final chapter attempts to clarify the nature of the confrontation between early Christianity and Judaism and show how the language of superiority and perfection was used in Hebrews to legitimate Christianity vis-a-vis Judaism. The symbolic universe of the Hebrews' community had become problematic because of the challenge of Judaism's competing universe; therefore the author "designed the superiority of Christianity/ inferiority of Judaism dialectic to serve a nihilatory function" (pp. 343,383). This means that the author sought to conceptually liquidate the entirety of the Jewish symbolic universe for his readers. While Hebrews did not set out to directly confront Judaism, a strong anti-Jewish polemic was nonetheless necessary in order to legitimate Christianity (p. 218). Salevao finds this alleged polemic problematic and advises that Christians give up Hebrews' superiority/inferiority construct because "it has the power to breed 'a superior race' of Christians. Such an elitist conceptualization of who and what we are does not fail to conjure up images of the type of social consciousness which gave birth to the Third Reich" (pp. 411-12).