Tidings

>At first, the $1.50 paperback looks like another inspirational spin-off of the Jesus Revolution. Bearing the title The Life Story of Jesus, its slick cover shows a pastel Jesus in red-polka-dot robes (a poster version is available for another $1.50). But who is the author, Levi Alphaeus? The introduction says he was a Galilean tax collector who "later adopted the name Matthew." He is better known as St. Matthew the Evangelist. A California entrepreneur named Joseph Rank simply took Matthew's Gospel (from the New American Standard Bible, Rank admits), tricked it up in poetic format, big type and plenty of white space, rewrote some passages, and dropped most Old Testament references. The reputable firm of Pocket Books has 100,000 copies of this rip-off in print. A better bargain is Pocket Books' 95-c- Good News for Modern Man, the American Bible Society's brisk translation not only of Levi Alphaeus' Gospel, but all the rest of the New Testament.

>This spring the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of the Old Order Amish of the U.S. to keep their children out of high school (TIME, May 29). Now the Amish have won a battle with the U.S. Department of Labor--a skirmish over hats. Effective in January, a federal regulation required construction workers of all kinds to wear hard hats. The Amish refused to give up their traditional broad-brimmed felt hat, which they wear as part of their religion, and this spring some 400 Amish workers in Indiana were furloughed from their construction jobs. On their behalf, Attorney John Martin Smith of Auburn, Ind., sought and won an exemption from the Labor Department. No soft-hatted Amishman is likely to demand workmen's compensation for a head injury; the Amish do not accept such insurance as a matter of principle.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.