Let's just start here....

Over the course of however long this blog/website endures, I will be dipping into writings and avenues of concern I have pursued. Let's just start here...for this will be a continuing topic.

I'm back in Denver again, still working at the Tattered Cover Book Store--although that is not really germane--still, we were quite adequately staffed; and during the slow periods we could sample the fares. I worked in the religion section, where we saw every new translation of the Bible that came out. One of my tests was to read Chapter One of the Gospel of John, you know, the one that starts, "In the beginning was the Word...." always looking for a translation that didn't take two-thirds of the page to explain the one-third of text. Why couldn't the translation itself be the explanation of the text?

And so the step was taken. I sat down and "translated" the first 18 verses of that first Chapter. And then I just kept right on going, until some months later I had finished the whole Gospel Of John. As you will see, the translation is not a literal translation. It is rather, quite unabashedly, an interpretation of the text. I would translate it differently today. Somewhere in those verses would be the statement to the effect that "talk about God is God." But I am going to post here what I wrote sometime back in 1989-90--if I can master the intricacies of the scanner.

And if I do that, then I will post the whole gospel eventually--in the forum that this page directs you to. For now, "here is how it began..."

Click here to down load the test document