Bunny's Burrow: Hopping into Life

Three Ancient Witnesses, One Controversial Passage Before We Decide What It Means, We Need to Know What It Says One of the biggest mistakes we can make when studying the Bible is assuming there is only one ancient text for it. There isn't. When we open our English Bibles, it's easy to imagine we're reading a single, uninterrupted manuscript passed down unchanged for thousands of years. One thing Twitter has shown me people assume everyone speaks English and is from America The reality is both more complicated and, in my opinion, far more fascinating. The Hebrew Bible reached us through generations of scribes who copied, preserved, and transmitted the text with extraordinary care. Along the way, different manuscript traditions emerged. Most of the time, they agree remarkably well.But... Sometimes, however, they don't. Most of those differences are minor. Spelling. Grammar. Word order. To be honest, very few of these things really affect how we understand a passage. Then ...

  Why Does YHWH Introduce Himself as Deliverer? One question has been following us on this blog since we opened Exodus 20.That question is why does YHWH introduce Himself by reminding Israel of the Exodus? Right? What a weird way to introduce ypurself given the time. If His authority rests on being Creator, why not simply begin there? Am I wrong? At first glance, the answer seems obvious. You probably are like because the Exodus had just happened.However, that answer only pushes the question back one step. Why does the covenant choose that event as its foundation?... Pause and keep an open mind. Just think... The more I read the Torah, the more I noticed something. The Exodus isn't just another story. It's the story Israel is told to remember. Again. And again. And again. A Pattern Hidden in Repetition One of the easiest ways to discover what matters in Scripture is to pay attention to repetition. I love patterns to an annoying degree. So ask yourself... What ideas keep return...

  Why Do the Ten Commandments Begin with Egypt Instead of Creation? Or if you ask people what I call: The Introduction We Rarely Notice Ask almost anyone why God has the authority to give the Ten Commandments, and the answer usually comes quickly. "Because He created everything." I think that it's a reasonable answer. If God is the Creator of the universe, then He has every right to establish moral law. ABSOLUTELY! That line of thinking has shaped Jewish and Christian theology for centuries. But that's not the question I want to ask. I want to ask a much simpler one. How does the text itself introduce the covenant? Not how later theology explains it. Not how we summarize it today. But how the covenant actually begins. Sometimes we've read familiar passages so many times that we stop hearing them... We forget to learn and only read. The opening of the Ten Commandments may be one of those passages. Before the first commandment is spoken... Before "You shall hav...

  Was the Ark Israel's Constitution? Rethinking the Center of the Covenant When most people think about the Ark of the Covenant, they picture a sacred object. Some picturethe spooky mystery. Some picture miracles. Miracles are cool. And others picture divine power contained inside a golden box. See we've been asking the wrong question... Instead of asking, "What was the Ark?" , perhaps we should ask, "What role did the Ark play?" That tiny little shift may seem small, but it changes the investigation entirely if you look back with modern eyes. Rather than beginning with supernatural assumptions, or what we have been told, let's begin with the biblical text itself and ask a simple question. What did the Ark actually do? Simple... IKR Looking at Function Before Symbolism Throughout this series, I've tried to follow one principle and will let you do like Peewee Herman and connect the dots. Or do not. That's the great thing about the USA. I have free...