268 - The Wandering People of Go& An Investigation of the Letter to the Hebrews

The Wandering People of God: An Investigation of the Letter to the Hebrews
By Ernst Käsemann
Minneapolis, Augburg, 1984. 255 pp. $21.95.

This important work, the second edition of which appeared in 1957 and which ever since has exerted a continuing influence on the interpretation of Hebrews, is now at last available to us in English translation. The translators,

269 - The Wandering People of Go& An Investigation of the Letter to the Hebrews

R.A. Harrisville and I.L. Sandberg, deserve our thanks for having undertaken this difficult task.

Naturally, research on Hebrews has not stood still in the meantime, and many of Käemann's judgments of a history of religion nature have been contested and quite rightly corrected. Käsemann seeks after a history of religion background for Hebrews that might serve to clarify in a coherent manner the full breadth of the theology of the book. He finds this in a gnostically stamped, Hellenistic manne of thinking whose central theme, he believes, can be discerned in the "wandering people of God" on its way to its heavenly home. Against Käsemann, one must maintain that he has read Hellenistic elements back into Hebrews that have nothing to do with gnosticism, but were taken up in later gnosticism. This does not, however, mean that Käsemann himself does not see fundamental distinctions between the mythology he presupposes and the Christian proclamation of Hebrews. "The myth is drawn upon to make clear the Christ kerygma in a Hellenistic environment but only within strict limits without its being allowed to define or overrun this proclamation."

Mathias Rissi
Union Theological Seminary
Richmond, Va.