Lee Harmon's Blog, page 35

1 Corinthians 16:22, Anathema Maranatha — Come, Lord!

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.



// Unless you routinely read the King James Version, you may have never paid much attention this verse. What on earth does Anathema Maranatha mean?

It’s actually two separate statements. Anathema means cursed, while Maranatha means … well, we’re not sure. Our various Bible translations differ. Some read it as a plea: “Come, Lord!” Others as a promise or exclamation: “The Lord is coming.” Still others render it as a creeda...

Matthew 27:59-60, Boy, Was Jesus Lucky!

And when Joseph had taken the body [of Jesus], he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

//In all accounts of Jesus’ burial, he is laid in a tomb, not buried in the ground. During the short period between 20 BC and 70 AD (when Jerusalem was destroyed), Judean Jews observed a strange burial practice of laying the body out on a slab in a tomb to let it decompose...

Book review: Thought in the Absence of Certainty

by Gordon Dye

★★★★

Gordon Dye’s new book (which is only part 1 of a 4-part series) is meant to help us think humbly but responsibly. Some questions we have no justification to pretend certainty about. His playground for the topic is religion, which is a perfect arena, since we all think we know all about God.

Dye’s point is that we don’t. Not really. And suppositions compound, so that as we add assumptions on top of assumptions, the probability of accuracy continues to decrease. Yet religious pe...

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Daniel 12:2, Everlasting Contempt

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.



//This verse has the dubious distinction of being the one verse in the Old Testament that speaks of eternal punishment, or so we are often told. Actually, it depends upon the interpretation, and there are two problems:

Problem 1: Does “everlasting contempt” mean eternal conscious torment? The word “contempt” in this passage is the same Hebrew word as is transla...

Galatians 1:4, What Are We Saved From?

[W]ho gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father

//The Bible speaks often of salvation. But what exactly is it that we are saved from? Most Christians imagine that salvation means being tucked away up in heaven, and that what they are saved from is a lost eternity. But in the Bible, almost every instance of salvation is this-worldly. In fact, some scholars insist that every instance is this-worldly. That the word...

Genesis 2:21-22, Adam, Eve, and Panentheism

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.



//What a brilliant idea! If you want to make something like something else, make it out of that something else. If you want to make something like yourself, make it out of yourself.

God took of piece of Adam to make Eve. Adam, he formed out of the dust of the...

Book review: Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Greatest Physicists

by Ken Wilber

★★★★

In case you misread the subtitle, that’s physicists, not psychics!

I’ve seen them myself: arguments from modern physics that prove the existence of the Spirit (or some metaphysical phenomenon that justifies our spirituality or transcendentalism). I’ve seen the opposite, too: arguments from modern physics that debunk spirituality.

So Wilber’s book should be a hit. What do our best minds—the people who actually understand the physics of Quantum Theory, Relativity, and more—have t...

Matthew 1:18, More on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.



//A couple of days ago, I mentioned a verse that seemed to indicate that Mary, the mother of Jesus, felt required to go through the purification period after the birth of Jesus. This seems to imply that she did not have a miracle birth, and that the Catholic doctrine of perpetual virginity was in error....

Product Review: Logos Bible Software

I promised to get the word out about Logos Bible Software, as they provided me several books for review. The books were provided in electronic form, readable on various platforms including mobile apps. Head over to www.logos.com to get started with free software downloads, multiple Bible translations, and a starting library. The software is free, but from there, you may purchase access to individual books and to entire libraries for deeper research.

I discovered I loved the software! This will...