Introduction

In Hebrews, the central event of salvation's plot pertains to two realms. On the one hand, it involves the death of Jesus Christ, who suffered physically ‘outside the gate’ of the earthly Jerusalem (13:12). This event is arguably part of that to which the author refers when he speaks of the offering of Christ. However, in the rhetoric of Hebrews, the offering of the sacrifice also involves Christ's entrance into the holy of holies in heaven, an event which I believe corresponds in part to Christ's exaltation to the right hand of God. This death/exaltation sequence constitutes the central event of salvation history.

Further, Christ's high priesthood is a heavenly office, at least in terms of the author's main rhetorical purpose. Hebrews 8:4 leads us to this conclusion when it says that Christ could not have served as a priest upon the earth. We have already seen in ch. 2 that the author uses the metaphor of the high priesthood of Christ in order to contrast Christ directly with the Law and the Levitical order as a whole. This contrast, however, is not simply eschatological; it is cosmological as well. The author is able to undermine the primacy of the old order by positing the invisible, heavenly realm over and against the visible world in which the Levitical priests serve the ‘tabernacle’. This distinction between the heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible, pervades especially Heb. 8–10, where the two tabernacles are contrasted.