Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Samuel,

You write:

>The Letter to the Hebrews (2.6) introduces a quotation from Psalm 8 with the
>words "Someone has written somewhere that . . . "
>
>One can understand that as the product of a Christian preacher writing in a
>hurry, or with no immediate access to a copy of the scriptures, or of an
>arthritic old man who did not feel it was worth the struggle to get out and
>unroll a hefty copy of the Hebrew Scriptures to search through it just for a
>single quotation, but as a quotation by the Holy Ghost it does seem a bit
>sloppy! Surely the Holy Ghost could have done a bit better than that!

Wait! Who says that the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible by Himself?

Anyway, the idea behind the form of citation might be that the passage was
so well known that there was no need for particular ascription, since Psalm
8 is one of the first ones in the psalter and assigned to David. This may
be a deliberate understatement for effect on the part of the author of
Hebrews, yielding the effect of emphasizing the authority of the words.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard
                                Dallas, TX