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DAVID deSILVA, Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle "to the Hebrews"(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). Pp. xix + 560. Paper $40.
This commentary is an engaging and well-written contribution to the study of Hebrews. It is an outgrowth of deSilva's earlier work, Despising Shame: Honor Discourse and Community Maintenance in the Epistle to the Hebrews (SBLDS 152; Atlanta: Scholars, 1995). DeS. offers a valuable reconstruction of the context for which Hebrews was written. Instead of tying his reconstruction to an event like the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, which is not mentioned in Hebrews, he relies on comments made in Hebrews concerning the history of the community to which the readers belong. The readers' conversion was a response to the proclamation of the gospel message that was accompanied by ecstatic experience (Heb 2:14). The phenomenon was apparently similar to some reported by Paul, and the author of Hebrews may have been connected to Paul's missionary circle. Conversion meant that the readers rejected former values and associations. This, in turn, provoked a negative reaction from non-Christian neighbors, who sought to reinstate conformity by shaming and physically abusing members of the Christian community (10:32-34). By the time Hebrews was written, the most intense phase of the crisis had passed, but the community faced a crisis in which some of its members were drifting away under the...