A brief note on Hebrews 13.11-13 (camp and gate).

[Ben C. Smith]

Hebrews 13.11-13 reads:

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest, as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp [εξω της παρεμβολης]. Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate [εξω της πυλης]. Hence, let us go out to him outside the camp [εξω της παρεμβολης], bearing his reproach.

In doing some studying of the conception of Jesus in this epistle, and in the course of that searching out old threads on this board having to do with the epistle, I found the following statements:

It even says specifically his blood was shed outside the city gate, a place where slaughtered animal carcasses were dumped.

Later on in Hebrews it says he suffered outside the city gate (13:11-12).

I think the intention here is to find a detail from the passion of Jesus in Hebrews, since the gospels report that Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem. But, while I think it is certainly possible that the author of Hebrews knew that Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem and therefore included this detail, I do not think that we are entitled to assume without argument that a city gate is what is in mind in this passage. It may seem weird to us, but the Pentateuch describes the Israelite camp in the wilderness as having gates. Exodus 32.26-27 (the Greek words are from the LXX):

...then Moses stood at the gate [επι της πυλης] of the camp [της παρεμβολης], and said: Whoever is for the Lord, come to me! And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him. And he said to them: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.'

The camp appears to be fortified; it has gates. The detail in Hebrews 13.11 about animal carcasses being burned outside the camp comes from passages such as Exodus 29.14:

But the flesh of the bull and its hide and its refuse you shall burn with fire outside the camp [εξω της παρεμβολης]; it is a sin offering.

Refer also to Leviticus 4.12, 21; 9.11; 16.27; Numbers 19.3.

Why, therefore, must the reference to Jesus suffering outside the gate in Hebrews 13.12 be taken any more literally than the injunction to go suffer with Jesus outside the camp in Hebrews 13.13?

Ben.

[Secret Alias]

If the story in the gospel is not historical one to begin with could argue that the detail was made to conform to the description of the proper place to make sacrifices rather than a historical detail.

[Clive]

Some fascinating stuff went on outside the gates!

Burial with the Romans

The Romans normally respected the dead. But not always. Alison Taylor reports on mutilation, child sacrifice, burial alive and other such practices

For most of us, Roman culture is a byword for civilisation in an otherwise 'barbarian' ancient world. When we think of the Romans, what springs to mind are their achievements in art and literature, architecture, engineering, law - and all the rest.

Yet the undeniable sophistication of the Romans has led many archaeologists to expect civilised treatment of the dead. When excavating cemeteries in Roman Britain, we go to huge lengths to explain away graves that suggest violence and mistreatment of dead bodies. We avoid any suggestion of Roman practices that would be regarded as abhorrent today.

Evidence, however, tells a different story. It points to religious and ritual killings in Roman Britain, infanticide, punishment burials and mutilation of bodies after death. Some of the evidence is very strange; and not all of it can be explained with certainty. But one thing is clear. The Romans in Britain did not always treat the dead as we would wish to be treated now.

Human sacrifice is often regarded as a defining feature of 'barbaric' societies - and it took place in Roman Britain. Miranda Aldhouse-Green, of the University of Wales, Newport, has written extensively on human sacrifice in Iron Age Europe (ba, October 1998). Speaking at a recent conference on Roman burial, held at Oxford in October, she pointed out that her own study of bog bodies in Europe has shown that the practice continued well into the Roman era.

Victims of every age, social class and sex were chosen. An exceptional proportion had a physical impairment of some kind. 'Overkill' was normal - a single individual might, for example, be garotted, bludgeoned, drowned and have his or her throat cut before being cast into the bog. In Britain this prehistoric practice, although always a rare event, was apparently unaffected by the Roman conquest.

Augustus, Rome's first emperor, found it necessary to ban the killing of adults for religious reasons across the Empire. Yet the ritual killings of prisoners of war, sent to Rome to be paraded around the streets and executed in public, carried on. And in Britain, the use of human body parts as religious offerings seems to have continued in spite of Augustus's ruling. Human bones are often found in rubbish pits or in ditches - especially around temple complexes - and, most revealingly, in ritual shafts or wells.

The defleshed skull found in 1995 at the base of a late 2nd century shaft outside a temple in St Albans is a good example (ba, February 1996). A teenage boy had been battered to death and decapitated. His skull was then skinned and displayed on a pole in the temple, before being consigned to the pit along with puppy bones and a small iron knife. This strong evidence that a head-cult survived in Roman Britain, as it did in Gaul, is supported by finds elsewhere, including a 3rd-4th century scalped skull fragment from Wroxeter and parts of two human skulls built into a temple wall at Cosgrove, Northamptonshire.



Infanticide is another aspect of Roman behaviour that some archaeologists find hard to accept. But its historical reality is well attested by documents. An imperial edict against infanticide was issued by Valentinian in 374 - making an exception for the very poor. The church fathers had been preaching against the practice, which was normally carried out by exposure.

Archaeological evidence is also highly suggestive. Simon Mays, a human bones specialist at English Heritage, has carried out thorough research into infanticide (ba, March 1995). In one study of the skeletons of 164 children of late Roman date who died at or around birth, measurement of the long bones established that a significant proportion died at around full term - the pattern expected for infanticide. In modern societies, by contrast, perinatal deaths (such as stillbirths and natural deaths in the immediate post-natal period) have a fairly flat age distribution, with no marked peak at full term.



In Britain, there are numerous Roman-period cemeteries in which men greatly outnumber women. This phenomenon is most striking in urban cemeteries for the poorer classes, pointing to an economic motive for the killing of baby girls and also to the effects of Romanisation in towns. Excavations this year at a large Roman cemetery in Southwark (ba, October) found twice as many men as women. Earlier excavations at Bath Gate cemetery in Cirencester found a ratio of men to women of more than two to one, and at Trentholme Drive in York, more than four to one.

In a few cases, evidence seems to point towards child sacrifice. At the temple at Springfield, Kent, excavated in the 1960s, foundation sacrifices of paired babies were found at all four corners of the temple. The burials took place at different times, indicating that the practice was repeated as the temple was extended. Similarly, excavations in the 1970s in the centre of Cambridge included a subterranean shrine and ritual shafts, of which no fewer than 12 contained newborn babies in baskets, several of them buried with small dogs. The shafts seem to have been left open for about 200-300 years.

The Roman Empire was a truly multicultural society, in which great individuality was tolerated. Practices of eastern origin were found as far west as Britain. Child sacrifice probably occurred far more often than we think - but few cases will ever be proven.

http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba69/feat2.shtml

[Bernard Muller]

If the story in the gospel is not historical one to begin with could argue that the detail was made to conform to the description of the proper place to make sacrifices rather than a historical detail.

Actually, in Exodus, the sacrificed animals were killed inside the camp, but nevertheless Hebrews has Jesus' suffering death "outside the gate".
I would be suspicious if the relative location of Jesus' execution fits exactly the one of the OT parallel, which would mean the author might have invented "outside the gate" to have a good match with Exodus. But it does not.
It looks to me the author of Hebrews is using an imperfect parallel from the OT for exhorting his Christian audience to go "outside the camp" "For here have we no continuing city [Jerusalem of the Jews], but we seek one to come [the heavenly Jerusalem]", even if it does not fit the fact Jesus was killed outside Jerusalem city walls.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

I for one would like to see mythicist responses to what Bernard is saying, which I understand to encompass the following points:

• Sacrificial animals were slain at the tabernacle (Exodus 29.11), inside the camp (Numbers 2.17), before their carcasses were taken outside the camp to be burned (Exodus 29.14).
• Hebrews has Jesus suffering (by crucifixion, as per Hebrews 6.6) and presumably dying outside the gate (Hebrews 13.12).
• This parallel does not match up perfectly; if the author were composing freely, why not make Jesus die inside the gate like the sacrificial animals?
• The imperfect parallel suggests that the author is working with what he or she is given; the author must have been given a crucifixion outside the gate, and is making the most of it by identifying it with the only part of the sacrificial process that takes place outside the gate: the burning of the carcasses.

Can the outside the gate bit be a bit of guesswork based on the tradition of crucifixion, since crucifixions so frequently happened outside the gates of cities? IOW, if our author was given the crucifixion, perhaps he or she did not have to be given the location outside the gate, but rather just assumed it.

Ben.

[Bernard Muller]

To Ben,

Can the outside the gate bit be a bit of guesswork based on the tradition of crucifixion, since crucifixions so frequently happened outside the gates of cities? IOW, if our author was given the crucifixion, perhaps he or she did not have to be given the location outside the gate, but rather just assumed it.

Even if it is as such, we would still have the author taking the crucifixion as real and on earth, inside or outside a place with at least one gate (suggested to be Jerusalem in Heb 13:14).

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

Carrier in OHJ has an explanation on pages 544 & 545: essentially, he said the passage is all about some double metaphors and the gate is in heaven. Carrier's main evidence for his interpretation comes from the Ascension of Isaiah.

Cordially, Bernard

[Tenorikuma]

Very interesting observation, Ben.

There is one specific, very important sacrifice that takes place outside the camp in the Torah (Numbers 19): the slaughter of the red heifer. This sacrifices removes uncleanliness due to contact with death (i.e. a corpse).

The red heifer became a symbol for the eschatological Messiah as per Daniel 12:10. The Epistle of Barnabas equates Jesus with the Red Heifer.

It is quite plausible that the Gospel traditions have Jesus slaughtered outside the gate as a symbolic reenactment of this ritual. Hebrews seems to contain this theology in a more primitive form.

[Ben C. Smith]

The following is a good example of exactly the sort of thing this brief note of mine was meant to put into perspective:

The historical tradition that is being "forced" to fit into the sacrificial system of Leviticus 16 is that Jesus was executed outside the city. That is why the author refers to "gate" instead of "camp." In fact, according to Thayer's Lexicon, the Greek term that the author of Hebrews uses for "gate", pule generally means "a gate of a larger sort", such as to a city, town, or large structure. The same term is used elsewhere in the New Testament to refer to a gate to a city or town (Acts 3:10; 9:24: 12:10; Luke 7:12).

This comes from http://www.bede.org.uk/price3.htm.

As I have shown, the Greek term for gate in Hebrews 13.12 is exactly the term used for the entrance/exit to the Israelite camp in the LXX (Exodus 32.26, for instance). Therefore, any presumption that this particular word should apply to the gate specifically of a city or town is misguided. Outside the gate probably means no more than outside the camp.

Ben.

[Bernard Muller]

But what would be that camp in the early first century?

Cordially, Bernard