Jim Taylor’s Weblog

In response to my comment about the pressures women are under to conform to a particular style of bodily beauty, Robert Caughill suggested I view photos of Miss California, who apparently, despite being stunning already, “had breast implants done to enhance her modeling career.”

Margaret Mackenzie-Leighton sent me a joke that – nope, sorry, I\’m not going to pass it on!

Dave de Bourcier described our genital obsessions as “a disease in our society.” He also wrote, “Now in the fifty-second of our marriage I think I can attest to the un-importance of sex. The gentling of one another, empathy, caring, concern, and listening, lots of listening are, in the long haul, much more important.
        “Passion, an emotion of the young child-bearing couple, evolved in early human development, and still does, into endearment and commitment, and much more that draw and keep us together. But there are always renegades that see opportunity to score from our baser passions. And if we succumb to their advertising and promises we go against our own better judgement and our genetic evolution. We are and can be so much more than a romp in the sack would suggest.”

Spam filters did get in the way of some people receiving that column. Four people wrote me to ask for the expurgated edition that could get through to them. If others still want to get that column, and didn\’t, I can still send it along individually.

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About My Paraphrases



Occasionally, I get frustrated by the Bible. Not usually by the message, which is timeless, but by the language and metaphor. Contemporary translations update the language, but not the metaphor, so the text still expects us to respond to images of deserts and tents, camels and droughts, kings and concubines. What we\’ve learned since the Bible was written — about psychology and evolution, about quantum physics and astronomy, computers and fossil fuels – is simply left out.
        At such times, I start paraphrasing. I don\’t pretend that these paraphrases rely on new translations of original texts. They are, rather, my way of writing what I think the original writers might have said IF they lived today. Sometimes I stick close to the traditional versification; sometimes I take liberties.
        My paraphrase of Paul\’s letter to the Romans attempts to put Paul\’s sometimes convoluted words — and argument — into a contemporary setting. If Paul were writing today, to the Christian church, I\’m not sure he\’d worry as much about the failure of the Jews to follow Christ as about the failure of Christians to follow Christ, so I have rephrased in those terms. I suspect he would also make use of quotations from the Gospels — which of course didn\’t exist when he wrote his letters — rather than using quotations from the only scriptures he had available, which we call the Old Testament.
        About 200 people have requested the paraphrase of Romans, as an electronic file.
        I now have two new paraphrases available, for Ecclesiastes and Job. Ecclesiastes sticks pretty much to the biblical flow of verses – though with, I hope, some sense of humour. Job cuts 42 chapters down to about three pages. I found the speeches in Job interminable; the only way I could make sense of the various characters\’ verbal meanderings was to turn them into television sound-bites.
        I\’m making these available the same way as Romans – on the honor system. You send me an e-mail and request the file you want. I\’ll send it. If you like it, and want to keep it, you send me a cheque for $5 by snail mail. If you don\’t like it, simply erase it from your hard disk and send nothing.