Cosmic Eschatology in Hebrews

Does Hebrews anticipate the annihilation of the material world or its renewal? This monograph offers a fresh approach to the scholarly impasse on this question by reading Hebrews against presuppositions shared across Jewish, Christian, Platonic, Stoic, Epicurean, Valentinian, and Gnostic backgrounds. Through comparative, philological, and exegetical analysis, this study challenges long-held assumptions—such as that Platonic dualism is “anti-cosmic” or that μετάθεσις means “removal/destruction”—and offers a new synthesis of Hebrews's cosmology and eschatology: Hebrews envisions the final transformation of the cosmos in which God’s people will ultimately dwell on the renewed earth.