MODERN TRANSLATIONS 10-30-16

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

I hate those modern versions of the Bible

I think God should subject them to the laws of libel.

They pander to the shallow rabble

By translating Hebrew with psychobabble.

They try to grab the GenY gang

Translating Greek in GenX slang.

They try to hit the modern spot

By having Paul speak polyglot.

No, it’s not the worst of crimes

To match the Bible to modern times

But still it is a sin most massive

To take Bible action and make it passive.

We no longer say gents and dames

And so we really don’t need old King James

But is it such a noxious task

Is it really too much to ask

To let God’s story tell itself

Without being draped in the pelf

Of shallow adjectives and adverbs

Too many passives and not enough verbs

Not enough verily and too much very

Translated by Moe, and Curly, and Larry.

We’re smart enough to get the drift

Without a translierative shift

Where goats become some genre queer

And shepherds have angst instead of fear.

Yes, we need some words that aren’t old and gray

To use some new ones is okay

But what’s new today will soon be hoary

So please, let the Bible tell its own story.

The Bible story is true as is

No need to add, “By, golly, gee whiz!”

The Bible story is true and great

Just let Word and words tell it straight.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

With apologies to all Bible translators, plus Ogden Nash and Calvin Trillin.

The problem with writing a blog for old people, CHRIST IN WINTER, is an ever-diminishing population, of people who cannot remember to go to the blog site.

I tweet as yooper1721, because when I started, I thought you were supposed to have a “handle,” like CB radio, instead of a name. I was a Yooper, resident of MI’s UP [Upper Peninsula], and my phone ended in 1721, so…

Here I come to save the day! No, not Mighty Mouse. Yuri Strelnikov, the boy genius of Katie McFarland Kennedy’s delightful Learning to Swear in America. Buy it or borrow it, but read this book! [What do you mean, you’re not old enough to remember Mighty Mouse?”

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My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where Helen and I met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…