For all shall know me,
From the least unto the greatest.
In quoting this the writer to the Hebrews adds: “In that he saith, ‘A new (covenant) he hath made the first old. But that which is becoming old and waxeth aged is near unto vanishing entirely.’” Here is a primitive Quakerism, but more conservative; not like George Fox at once sweeping away priesthood sacraments and ecclesiastical laws before the Inner Light, but pointing to their near vanishing.
The writer of this Epistle is a philosophical conservative; he shudders at the idea of a swift and complete overthrow of the traditional system, and even borrows its old thunders against levitical sin to menace offences against the new moral God. “Our God [also] is a consuming fire.” It is evident by his very warnings that a great anti-sacerdotal and anti-levitical revolution had taken place, and that the free spirit was burgeoning out in excesses. But such is his culture that one may suspect his thunders of being theatrical, and that he thinks some superstition necessary for the masses.
The fatal and subtle character of the detective Holy Spirit is imported into this Epistle from the “Wisdom of Solomon” (i. 6), though not so distinctly personified. The sin afterwards called “unpardonable” is here a sin against Christ for which repentance, not pardon, is impossible. We may perhaps find in some of the expressions germs of the legend of Judas. “As touching those who were once enlightened, and tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age that is come, and fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, seeing they individually impale the Son of God afresh and put him to open shame” (vi. 5, 6). The believers are “not of them that shrink back into perdition” (x. 39); and they are warned to look carefully “whether there be any man that falleth back from the grace of God,... like Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own birthright” (xii. 15, 16). The words “tasted,” “perdition,” “sold,” might start a legend of the betrayal, first alluded to by Paul (if 1 Cor. xi. 23 be genuine, which is doubtful), though had the legend of Judas then existed this writer would naturally have alluded to him along with Esau.
This Epistle is the nursery of the titles of Christ; he is Apostle, Son of God, Son of Man, Great Shepherd, Captain of Salvation, Mediator, Great High Priest; and here alone is found the now familiar endearing phrase “Our Lord.” These titles represent the functions of different beings in the Avesta. The conception of the work of Jesus on earth is largely Zoroastrian. The Majesty on high has a colony and a people on earth, which otherwise is under the supremacy of the Evil One. As we have seen the Avestan definitions of Ahuramazda and Angra Mainyu, “the Living and the Not Living,” are reflected in the phrases of this Epistle,—the “Power of Imperishable Life” (vii. 16) and the “Power of Death” (ii. 14). Ahuramazda, when his “habitable earth” was prepared, brought into it his “first-born,” Yima, and wished him to propagate the divine law which should destroy the power of Angra Mainyu on earth and confine him in the underworld. Yima replied, “I was not born, I was not taught, to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law.” He engaged, however, to enlarge and nourish the garden of God on earth, of which he was king, and entitled “the good shepherd.” He obtained from the Holy Spirit, Anâhita, the powers thus enumerated in Abân Yast 26: “He begged of her a boon, saying, ‘Grant me this, O good, most beneficent Ardvi Sûra Anâhita, that I may become the sovereign lord of all countries, of the dævas [devils] and men, of the Yâtus [sorcerers] and Pairkas [seducing nymphs], of the oppressors [who afflict] the blind and the deaf; and that I may take from the dævas [devils] both riches and welfare, both fatness and flocks, both weal and glory” [hvarenô, “the glory from above which makes the king an earthly god”].[3] This “firstborn” reigned a thousand years, but then, having ascribed his “glory” to the demons from whom he obtained wealth and material benefits, his “glory” was lost, and secured by the Devil, who reigned in his place a thousand years, blighting the world, when Zoroaster was born to undertake the establishment of the divine Law on earth. Yima was ultimately developed into the Jamshid of Persian mythology, whose power over demons, fabulous wealth, and ultimate fall (through declaring himself a god, according to Firdusi) invested the legend of Solomon.
From the legend of Solomon and the Solomonic Psalms the Epistle to the Hebrews brings its exaltation of Christ. From Ps. lxxxix. 26–7, as reproduced in 2 Sam. vii. 14, is quoted (i. 5) the divine promise, “I will be to him (Solomon) a Father and he shall be my Son,” along with the manifesto at Solomon’s enthronement (Ps. ii. 7), “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” Solomon is the “first-born” alluded to in Heb. i. 6: “When of old bringing the first-born into the inhabited earth (οἰκουμένην) he saith, And pay homage to him all angels of God?”
And here we have an interesting example of evolution in the Solomon legend. The term “first-born,” as indicating the relation of a human being to the deity, occurs but once in the Old Testament, namely, in Psalm lxxxix. 27. It occurs in a strange passage that must be quoted:
19. Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones,
And saidst, I have laid help upon a youth;