Today we begin Deuteronomy Chapter 27.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James version, click here.
Deuteronomy Chapter 27 is one of those parts of Scripture that gets Torah scholars all hot and bothered.
Why?
Because it’s a chapter that seems out of place.
Some folks claim this happened because in the process of handing down the Bible, various revisions and redactions took place over the centuries.
You know what?
That’s not entirely impossible but my response is…
…who cares?
It changes nothing in terms of the truth and the principles being communicated here.
Basically the major problem scholars with this chapter is its form as compared to the other chapters in the Book of Deuteronomy.
Here’s what I mean.
Upon close examination, one will notice from the very beginning of Deuteronomy that Moses delivers his sermon on the mount in the present tense with the narrative containing a whole bunch of “I”s and “we”s.
However, from this chapter, the narrative suddenly changes into the 3rd person.
In other words, it is not Moses speaking anymore but someone speaking about what Moses said and did in the past tense.
And later on in this chapter, a discussion will begin concerning multiple covenant renewal ceremonies that actually occur in different locations and at different times.
Yet the way it will be presented will make things appear as if these ceremonies took place simultaneously.
All of this skepticism originates from a fairly new academic discipline known as “literary criticism”.
How it works is that we have these literary critics who nitpick at the grammar and form of Scripture and when they find a “discrepancy”, they accuse the content as being suspect.
Personally, I don’t see any problem whatsoever about the minor issues these scholars bring up because it has absolutely zero bearing on the content.
They’re interesting to examine as a curiosity and we’ll be going over some of these when we run into them but that’s about it.
See you all next time.
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