Bully's Blog

Reading the Bible in 3D is now in paperback.
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Chapter 7 of Reading the Bible in 3D:

A book or a movie or a TV show has its own “world,” and this world has its own internal logic. The Bible is a book like every other book in this respect. But the internal logic of the Bible happens to be “fractal” in nature. That is, it’s a lot like a set of Russian dolls.

The best way to get a big handle on the way the Bible is built, and on the way God works in history, is to get an understanding of fractals. Don’t worry, fractals aren’t scary. Fractals are cool. (A lot cooler than Russian dolls.)

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“The promise and the law are the two goats on the Day of Atonement.”

The Blessings of Abraham and the Curses of Moses

This is the fourth cycle within the “Numbers” section of Galatians. Since the next section concerns the Christians’ identity as sons of Abraham (Succession), this cycle seems to correspond to New Covenant Sanctions.  I’ll take a risk and outline the epistle as I see it so far, so you can keep a handle on it. (The headings for the sections we have already covered are links to the relevant blog posts.)

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For most people, reading the Bible is like watching a foreign movie with no subtitles. The keys to understanding the book are hidden in plain sight, but we haven’t been trained to see them.

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There’s a new Press Release and some chapters from the free ebook over at the 3D blog.

“The reason literature, like art, has no hard-and-fast rules, is because authors and artists confer meaning upon things as they go.”

Recently on the hermeneutics exchange, Monica Cellio (one of the bright lights, whose eyes are like lasers) asked,

Do any principles commonly used in the field of hermeneutics have any counterparts in scientific principles? Is there a corollary in hermeneutics to the requirements that science demands as far as the reproducibility of experiments, peer review of results, etc?

This is a fantastic question, not because it will lead us towards a better understanding of the Bible, but because it exposes the reason why modern academics have such a problem with understanding and teaching the Bible.

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The intro to the Reading the Bible in 3D seminar mentions the “jokes” in the Bible. In his book Deep Exegesis, Peter Leithart gives us a rundown on what a joke is to justify using the word to describe some of the allusions in Scripture. One of the reasons jokes are funny is their reliance on inside information.

Here’s my all-time favourite joke in the Bible.

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