Did Bugs Bunny Corrupt The Scriptures?

If I called you a Nimrod, how would you feel? If you are like most people you would probably feel insulted. The popular definition for a nimrod is an inept person, an oaf, a maroon, an ignoramus. The original name Nimrod really meant to be a skillful mighty hunter. Its origin is found in Genesis 10:8-9:

“Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD."

How did the mighty hunter become an inept oaf? Well, it’s all Bugs Bunny’s fault.

Ok, maybe not all his fault. You see in the popular cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Bugs often times will refer to Elmer Fudd as a “little Nimrod”, a sarcastic reference to the mighty hunter of the Old Testament. The writers might have gotten the joke but the general public didn’t. They assumed, in their ignorance, the word was an insult and began to use it as such and the new meaning took over.

This doesn't just happen in cartoons, there are numerous examples of people taking Biblical words and concepts and flipping their meaning till the point that more people accept the new definition rather than the Bible one. Words like pastor, grace, and baptism have been corrupted from the biblical meaning to a popular one. Pastors are not the Biblical group of overseers but a single preacher (Acts 20:28). Grace is made into a license to sin (Jude 1:4). Baptism has gone from a complete immersive burial in water to pouring or just sprinkling (Colossians 3:12).

Words have meaning. If we change that meaning we might as well change the word. Don't fool yourself into thinking you are biblical if you still use a Bible word yet have a different definition than the Bible has. If we truly want to biblical we must hunt thru the Scripture to see if the things we are taught are really the things that are in Scriptures (Acts 17:11).

When it comes to what the Bible says, we need to be a Nimrod, not a nimrod.

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

The Other Peter Principle

Simon wasn’t very good at his job. For most folks, fishing is a hobby a good time on the lake even if you get skunked. Not so for the professional fisherman. A day without a catch means no product to sell, no money collected, and nothing to bring home to the wife and kids. Those days seemed to happen a lot to Simon. Maybe I’m wrong but all I can go by is the history we have on him and every time we have it recorded, he caught nothing, at least on his own. You would have to be hard headed to keep at it with all that failure. No wonder he got the nickname of rock. So perhaps, that’s why when he got the chance at a new career he jumped at it. Well, not so much a new career but a different form of the old one. He would still be fishing just going after a different kind of fish. This time he would have a boss, one that had shown him, even in his old job, a better way to do things. And that made all the difference. Simon didn’t al...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog