Hebrews holds a unique place in the literature of the New Testament. It presents interpretations of Jesus and of the entire Christian movement that are decidedly different from those found in other writings. The letter's author sees Jesus as the great high priest of the Christian religion performing services analogous to the ones carried out by the Levitical priests of the Old Testament. In other portions of the New Testament, Jesus is regarded as a prophet, but only in this letter is he considered a priest. This designation is significant: The prophets usually represented a point of view that in many respects was the very opposite of that of the priests. The prophets were the great social reformers; the priests, whose work occupied a very prominent place in the lives of people whose religious heritage was in Judaism, attended to the offering of sacrifices and the performing of ritualistic requirements that were necessary in order to obtain forgiveness of sins. With the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the cessation of priestly activities, it seems probable that some individuals felt the need for something to be substituted for the priests' activities. Perhaps considerations of this kind influenced the author of this letter. At any rate, he interprets Jesus' death on the cross in a manner that not only meets the requirements of Judaism but goes beyond them.
The use of the Old Testament in Hebrews has led some people to refer to the letter as the classical example of the New Testament interpretation of the Old Testament. Such a reference illustrates the tendency on the part of some Christians to read their own ideas back into the literature of the ancient people of Israel. Having arrived at certain convictions concerning the meaning and significance of the life of Jesus, they assume that these same ideas were present in the minds of those who wrote the Old Testament, for it becomes a fairly easy task to find in the Old Testament writings the very ideas for which they are looking, which the author of Hebrews apparently did in many instances in his writing, and especially in his references to the sacrificial system of the Levitical priests and in the passages that refer to the priesthood of Melchizedek.
