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The one lemon verse in the Old Testament is Genesis 3:16. I am going to break-up this lengthy explanation into multiple posts.

Note that the explanation of “Lemon One” (given in post #8) is now permanently accessible from this website’s main menu via the sub item of the “Lemons” tab: “Eight Lemons Turned to Grapes.”

More to come …

A Questionable Message in a Swamp of Words

So, now we come to the explanation of 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, the first lemon passage. (I will be covering all seven New Testament lemon passages in order of their appearance in the Bible.)

Each lemon explanation opens with four subheadings: “The Passage,” “The Misfit,” “The Fit,” and “The De-lemonization.”

“The Passage” is typically a quote from the King James Version. If the quote is from a different Bible version, it is because that version’s translation requires less modification to turn it from a lemon into a grape.

“The Misfit” contains a summary of the way that the passage is commonly understood.

“The Fit” contains a summary of the way that the passage can rightfully be understood and, thereby, fit well in the context of the whole Bible.

“The De-lemonization” provides a detailed explanation of how to change the lemon from a misfit to a fit, or maybe I should say, from a lemon to a grape.

Each explanation also ends with a possible retranslation (typically with  only some minor changes) that turns it from a lemon to a grape.

It is noteworthy that in general, the lemon translations hold two basic messages: Woman must submit to man and woman should be quiet.

Seriously, is this the good news? Is this the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Remember that it was a woman who first proclaimed the good news of Christ’s resurrection, and to a male audience, no less. (I would guess that her delivery was a highly emotional one—after all, she had just been with Jesus!) Continue reading “#7 De-lemonizing the Lemons”

It’s time to tackle the lemon translations. First, we need to consider four basic things about Bible translation. I’ve written about these in A Woman of Chayil, so here is another excerpt:

Continue reading “#6 The MisFit Principle and Some Other Things About Bible Translation”

I am finding that the lemon metaphor I have begun to use makes it easy for me to bring up and talk about (debunk) the bondage-producing verses in the Bible about women–those that have been held front and center in Christian teaching and used to hurt women for centuries in the devil’s war against her.  What is the Lemon metaphor?