Metaphor or Meal: Identifying the Sacrifice of Praise at Hebrews 13:15

Abstract At Heb 13:15, the auctor exhorts his audience to bear up the “sacrifice of praise” (θυσίαν αἰνέσεως). While liturgical scholars commonly cite this term as a reference to the Eucharist, critical biblical scholars restrict the range of possible interpretations too tightly to permit such a reading. This article offers three biblical arguments that would allow taking the θυσίαν αἰνέσεως to refer to an embodied, ritual form of liturgical worship. First, it compares the θυσίαν αἰνέσεως to the thanksgiving offering, a liturgical concept that is called by the same name at Lev 7:12 in the LXX. Second, it suggests that the auctor has already alluded to the thanksgiving offering in his quotation of Ps 22:22 at Heb 2:12. Third, it argues that Hebrews’ epiclesis (13:1–25) does not reject the Levitical world but reconfigures its elements as it develops its own, positive liturgical theology.