(In a convoluted sort of way, seeing that they wanted to turn back to a Judaism that was never their own to begin with)

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

I enjoyed your comments and I had not thought of many of the things you brought up. Thank you for taking the time to make your comments, it gives me a lot to think about.

One additional thought is concerning the harshness of the illustration the Author of Hebrews uses: Crucifying once again the Son of God and holding him up to contempt. While most of Hebrews views the crucifixion in light of the Old Testament sacrificial system purging sins definitively for his people and purifying the heavenly copies, from the human perspective, when Jesus was crucified it was on the ground that he was a false Messiah and a blasphemer.

If Jesus really were a false Messiah, there would have been valid grounds to crucify him as others were and their movements came to nothing. Just as Gamaliel recognized in Acts 5:36-37, people who falsely exalted themselves had their movements squashed by their executions. The Sanhedrin called for Jesus to be crucified specifically because of their unbelief. They thought that their position would be vindicated by the death of Jesus being the end. So to revert course and return to the Old Covenant is to judge Jesus as a false Messiah and blasphemer, which in essence renders the exact same judgment against him that his enemies did when they crucified him. This explains not only the crucifixion side of Hebrews 6:6, but also the “contempt”.

It is likely that the primary reason that these Hebrew Christians were tempted to revert to Judaism is because of the influence of the Judaizer parties who were dividing the church. They had already endured persecution (Hebrews 10:32-34), which, whether from Jews or Romans, would have ended if they reverted to the Old Covenant. So then, the author probably wants to establish firm theological, biblical grounds for being certain that the Old Covenant must be abandoned in favor of the New Covenant.

So then the Hebrews 6 warnings can integrate very naturally into the thrust of the whole letter. Likewise for us modern, primarily Gentile believers who are not often tempted to revert to Judaism, we can gain helpful warnings about reverting to any regressive soteriological views of all types (Roman Catholicism, Pelagianism, Universalism) as similarly holding the crucified Christ in contempt by rejecting the once-for-all atoing sacrifice of Jesus for our sins.

If in fact the point of the letter is to teach about the relationship of the testaments so that these Christians not be led astray back into the Old Covenant, then the Hebrews 6 warning can be warning those who experience the illumination of the Holy Spirit testifying to them the truthfulness of the gospel and deliberately reject it, just like we see in blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

In all seriousness, this was helpful. I think I may need to listen to it over again to better think through some of these things.