Suffering in the Face of Death: The Epistle to the Hebrews and Its Context of Situation by Bryan R. Dyer (review)

Bryan R. Dyer is acquisitions editor at Baker Press, adjunct professor of religion at Calvin College and co-editor of the publications The Bible and Social Justice(2015) and Paul and Ancient Rhetoric(2016). He completed his Ph.D. at McMaster Divinity College under the guidance of Cynthia L. Westfall and Stanley E. Porter. This book is an edited revision of that thesis. The book starts with a word of recognition that provides information about all the contributors, as well as the stages through which the book passed before its publication. A very short introduction follows, where Dyer addresses the main topic of his book, which, in his words, is to identify and analyse "the wealth of terms and references to suffering and death in Hebrews" (2).

Chapter one is titled "Previous Studies on the Topics of Suffering and Death in Hebrews." It comprises fifteen pages in which Dyer considers ten authors, who, in some way, have dealt with the topic under discussion. His conclusion, after this literature review, is that "the author of Hebrews wrote to an audience presently facing some form of suffering and felt a substantial fear that death was likely on the horizon" (20). It is noteworthy that the book concludes with basically similar expressions: "The audience was experiencing actual suffering and were being confronted with the reality of their deaths" (181). It follows that at least in this respect the book serves to confirm the conclusions of various previous authors, even though Dyer treats the topic in a more comprehensive and systematic way.

Chapter two is titled "History of Research on the Situation Addressed in Hebrews." It consists of twenty-six pages in which Dyer considers the situation addressed in Hebrews from different perspectives. According to Dyer, the initial audience of Hebrews could be "a group of Jewish Christians who were on the verge of relapsing to Judaism" (25) or perhaps a group of gentile Christians who were reverting to paganism. Essene Christians and former Qumran members have also been proposed. Alternatively, Dyer lists a number of social conditions that could be present in any community as possibly being representative of the situation in Hebrews. These situations are reflected in the letter's views of a "realized eschatology," of a response to the destruction of the temple, of loss of honour and social status and of persecution. However, it is important to note that there is no clear separation between communities, social conditions and philosophical conditions in the book. According to Dyer, each of the proposed situations address some element present in the text of Hebrews, which means that the author of Hebrews "seems to be addressing numerous issues in his epistle," which "is not limited to addressing just one particular concern." What seems an oversight in the book is that it does not grapple with the proposal made by Alexander Nairne, who argues that "the epistle is better understood as a theological treatise than a letter addressing a specific situation" (paraphrase of Nairne's argument in Dyer, 22). Dyer ends this chapter by asserting that it "is difficult to identify with any certainty the reality of the audience" (46), which means that perhaps there was not one specific audience, but rather an unspecified audience constituted by different populations, who grappled with some or all of the problems listed in the chapter.

Chapter three is titled "Methodology: Moving from a Text to its Context." It comprises twenty-eight pages. In Dyer's own words, "the purpose of this chapter is to present the groundwork for a study of suffering and death in Hebrews." This seems to be an error, for, at the end of the first part of this chapter, Dyer writes: "With these concerns in mind, I present five linguistic principles...