also via prodigal kiwi is a link to a web site collating some of brian walsh’s online writings. brian is currently part of the chaplaincy at the university of toronto. brian’s book the transforming vision was a very influential book on my thinking about 16 years ago! and i’ve always enjoyed brian’s writings since…. so it was great to find this link. in particular paul highlights brian and sylvia’s targums (pdf) on colossians article which is simply stunning. in case you are wondering what a targum is, it’s a kind of extended paraphrase on a text. brian and sylvia explain….

What would happen if a letter like this was written to us today, at the
beginning of the new millennium? If we were to take the exact same themes that we
find in this epistle and rewrite them for our own context, what would they say? What
would this text sound like if it were written yesterday morning? Actually this isn’t such
a novel way of approaching an ancient text. In fact, when rabbis read the Torah to the
Jews of the Diaspora, they did precisely this kind of thing. Recognizing that their
congregations did not understand Hebrew, the rabbis would have to translate the text
as they read. But their translations were never “straight” and certainly not literal.
Rather, they would update the text, apply it to the changing context and put it into
contemporary idiom as they read. The result of such interepretive exercises were called
targums. They were, if you will, extended paraphrases on the text.

i can’t just pick a few lines out of their targums – you really need to read the whole things – simply brilliant. it would be a great idea to try and write some of your own, but this may seem a bit daunting after reading brian and sylvia’s!