1Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. 4You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin. 5You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children,
“My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord,
nor faint when you are reproved by him;
6for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
7It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline? 8But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children. 9Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? 10For they indeed for a few days disciplined us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. 11All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. 12Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, 13and make straight paths for your feet, so what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.
14Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord, 15looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and many be defiled by it, 16lest there be any sexually immoral person or profane person, like Esau, who sold his birthright for one meal. 17For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for a change of mind though he sought it diligently with tears.
18For you have not come to a mountain that might be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness, darkness, storm, 19the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them, 20for they could not stand that which was commanded, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned”. 21So fearful was the appearance that Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.”
22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable multitudes of angels, 23to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel.
25See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven, 26whose voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.” 27This phrase, “Yet once more” signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. 28Therefore, receiving a Kingdom that can’t be shaken, let’s have grace, through which we serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe, 29for our God is a consuming fire.
Although the audience of the letter known as Hebrews has been questioned, it is likely the recipients were a majority of Jewish believers. The subject of the Jewish nature of the earliest church is a field of intense debate. However, that the very first Christians were Jewish converts is not widely disputed. What is in dispute is how long this was the case, and what those first Jewish converts believed and how they worshipped. This debate includes archaeological evidence.
Unfortunately, archaeological evidence of the very early church has been very difficult to come by. Due to the often violent history of the holy land, as well as the widespread practice of successively constructing churches over traditional sites of biblical events, identifying Jewish Christian remains has proven exceedingly difficult.
However, there are a few sites that may give a glimpse of Jewish Christian faith. One is the churches of the Annunciation and St. Joseph in Nazareth. Beneath these churches, archaeologists found the remains of a building. Stylistically, the building matched synagogues found in other parts of Galilee around the middle of the third century A.D. [1] The synagogue’s walls had been successively plastered, and graffiti of Christian origin (crosses and intercessory prayers) was carved into this plaster or written on it with charcoal. [2] The conclusion is that this synagogue was repurposed as a Christian church, and was used as such until the early fifth century when a Byzantine church was built on top of the earlier synagogue-church. [3] Excavators theorized that this site was used by the relatives of Jesus who remembered where He and His parents had lived. [4]
Some theorize the area currently known as the Tomb of David and the Upper Room was also an early Christian synagogue belonging to Jewish Christians. [5] Certain literary evidence points to the existence of this synagogue before it was possibly destroyed or integrated into the Byzantine church built there sometime before A.D. 348. In 1951 Joseph Pinkerfield of the Israel Department of Archaeology was tasked with repairing the Tomb of David, damaged by a Jordanian shell in 1948. He was able to conduct an archaeological survey of the site and identified three floor levels, the earliest of which was from the Roman Period, most likely post A.D. 70. He also found a niche in one wall, which he believed identified the direction toward the temple. Thus he identified the building was a synagogue. [6] However, others have proposed that the niche was pointed toward the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, not the temple, and that it would have been virtually impossible for a synagogue to have been built when Jerusalem became the Roman Aelia Capitolina. Thus, the synagogue may have actually been built by Jewish Christians. [7]
Perhaps future finds will further illuminate the earliest history of Christianity and shed light on the Jewish composition of the first Christians.
[1] Bellarmino Bagatti, Excavations at Nazareth, (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1969) 125.
[2] Jack Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992) 49.
[3] Jack Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992) 49-50.
[4] Bellarmino Bagatti, Excavations at Nazareth, (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1969) 173.
[5] Oskar Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002) 190.
[6] Joseph Pinkerfield, “‘David’s Tomb’: Notes on the History of the Building,” Bulletin, 3 (1960):41-43.
[7] Bargil Pixer, “Mount Zion, Jesus, and Archaeology.” in Jesus Research and Archaeology: A New Perspective, edited by James H. Charlesworth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 2006) 314-315.