My new word of the week is Targum. A friend when I asked explained it is ‘is an Aramaic translation usually in the form of an expanded translation of various books or section so of the Old Testament’. This accounts for the origin of the word but it seems to be used to mean an expanded translation of scripture. This implies a significant hermeneutical element as it will be expanded to make or underscore a contemporary point.
My Targum for today is an exposition of the opening verses of John’s Gospel. Some time ago I read the word logos is usually translated as word but it can equally be translated as conversation. I read this in a Methodist Mission Education publication in 2003, unfortunately I have been unable to track it down. (If anyone can find it I would be grateful to see it again.) If memory serves this article included a Targum based on the same opening verses. So, I suppose this is my attempt to reproduce it of course with my own spin.
Tenuous as this may seem to be, it has been the start of a fruitful line of enquiry, one I intend to pursue further.
‘It all started with a conversation, God was there of course, indeed you could say God was the conversation. God’s conversation was there from the beginning. All things came into being through the conversation and without the conversation not one thing came into being. Life is what came into being through the conversation and life illuminates all people. And so life and God are in conversation and this illuminates the dark places and brings them into the conversation.’
Many years ago I heard the story of the invention of the cloud chamber (used in particle physics to show the tracks of particles, which leave a trail of bubbles in some medium). Apparently, it was invented in the pub, where there was a salt cellar on the table and someone started to drop grains of salt in the beer and observed they left a trail of bubbles.
I suspect many things have been invented during this type of unstructured conversation (and messing about) and so why not the universe? There is something magnificent about the idea of the universe emerging from a pub conversation.
If anyone thinks this is a bit too flippant I am trying to capture something of the feel of the casual way in which things come into being. This is enormously important and I will pick up on it later.
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