He has written previously on “the code metaphor”, giving the example of encoding a military message that can be deciphered unambiguously. “When you go from one language to another, that’s not what happens at all. There’s no secret message that I’m seeing in Greek or Hebrew or French or German such that, if you do it right, there’s the exact meaning brought over into English. . . What makes a translation a good or great translation is its success in people who know both languages saying ‘That’s a darn’ good job!’ . . . Not capturing exactly every word, not revealing the hidden truth — there is no hidden truth — the expression is the expression and we make of it what we can, what we will. . . A translation is always a compromise between shadows cast and highlights illuminated.” She doesn’t produce these objections from an “anti-religious” position, she emphasises. “In fact, I don’t think there is anything more dangerous to our morals, our politics, our spiritual health than the prevailing malleability of sacred literature and translation. If you read these documents in the original languages, nothing will come across more strongly than their vivid realities. To the authors, and to those who inspired the authors, what we call the unseen world was not only real: it was seen. There was no division between the natural and supernature. There is just one universe to enjoy or to try to destroy.” Like Dr Ruden, he provides extensive notes on several of his key choices, in which he explains that he has allowed his thinking to be shaped by both the studies of modern biblical scholars and those of “ancient authorities”: Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Anyone who has read his apologia for universal salvation, That All Shall Be Saved ( Books, 13 December 2019) will be unsurprised to see extended discussions concerning translations of what is typically rendered as “eternal” and “hell”. He has been taking his Greek New Testament and Hebrew Bible to Morning and Evening Prayer in the chapel — “I love the way that it changes the kind of attention I pay to God in prayer, without losing intensity or prayerfulness” — and, having started to preach, has come to question the “received wisdom” that “they’ll switch off if you mention the original Greek in the pews.”

It is notable that the Jacobean translators of the Authorised Version were clear that a literal translation had not been attempted, writing in their preface: “we thinke good to admonish thee of (gentle Reader) that wee have not tyed our selves to an uniformitie of phrasing, or to an identitie of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done. . .” One of the most striking features of the record is just how pure and modest Wright is in her presentation. There is virtually no flash and glitter to her music, enabling the success of the material to be based solely on the strength of her voice and writing. Vocally, Wright is mysterious, sultry, defiant and proud all at once, exhibiting both confidence and vulnerability. Active yet moody piano accompaniment. cleanly played electric guitars, and steady yet unobtrusive percussion guide many of the album’s arrangements, contributing to — and causing, in many instances — the unrefined, natural feel of the music. IN HER introduction, Dr Ruden explains that she has “often turned to a word’s basic imagery as a defence against anachronism, obfuscation, and lethargy, which drain communications of their primordial electricity”. Reading her translation during Advent I enjoyed reading that the baby " capered" in Elizabeth's womb. The rendering of "crucified" as "hung on the stakes" is a powerfully vivid. Her choices undoubtedly have the ability to unnerve. In her introduction, she seeks to convey the sheer strangeness of the text, which “speaks to itself and not to me; there is no author in his familiar role, reaching out to me across the centuries and using all his training and ingenuity. The Gospels are an inward-looking, self-confirming set of writings, containing some elements of conventional rhetoric and poetics, but not constructed to make a logical or aesthetic case for themselves; the case IS Jesus; so the words don’t stoop to argue or entice with any great effort . . .”She speaks of their “very disturbing” anti-Semitism, and the Gnosticism in John (“This is Gnostics getting in there and claiming a very privileged authority to say what the truth is, to shut other people up, and to be the ‘we say so’ corporation”). He is sympathetic to concerns that biblical languages are being squeezed from the curriculum. “One part of that formation involves helping to sensitise ordinands to a different world, a world populated by leaders and ministries and forces and presences that people do not generally contemplate most of the time,” he says. I really would like believers to come to terms with the fact that being Christian does not defeat human nature,” she says. “It doesn’t. It properly, I think, should be an acceptance that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that we need self-examination, we need repentance . . . It sounds weird, but I think it’s appropriate to this political era that the Gospels translation is in part a protest against political and religious extremism.” Donald Trump could not have the poisonous influence he continues to have without the support of conservative and even mainstream Christians. And part of their intellectual operations is an idolatry of the text . . . I was really interested in taking a more critical look at the Gospels and starting to deconstruct them as an idol.” I had long long talks with my editor about how I could possibly handle this word, and she was very much for the consideration that the translators generally call dignity,” she recalls. “They make this judgement, this decree, about what’s appropriate for the author to have said. I’m sure they wouldn’t want anybody handling their work that way. But they feel justified in doing it when they translate sacred literature.

The project challenged Chisenhale gallery to think about commissioning and understand that idea of value and how we value people. James led with a volley of questions that permeated throughout the organisation, making its staff think very differently about how they approach the commissioning process: The Bible Society has estimated that five million people around the world speak Jamaican Patois, and Ms Jones notes that it has “found its way into young people’s language”, including that of white children. She describes switching between “pure English” in some contexts and Patois among her friends.James sees himself as an animateur , activating creativity and encouraging the young people to see themselves as artists. Both the environment of the CAMHS unit and the subject-matter the young people were asked to focus on was very difficult – exploring these experiences in an arts context was a challenge. James wanted the young people to understand the rigour of creating art without falling for stereotypical expectations of what an artist is or how they make art. Predictably, Hart’s attempt to produce a translation “not shaped by later theological and doctrinal history” has come in for criticism. “Part of the churches’ understanding of creeds, catechisms and confessions and the doctrines they promulgate — doctrines like the deity of the Holy Spirit or the eternal pre-existence of the Son of God — is that they are meant to aid in the reading of Scripture,” wrote Wesley Hill, associate professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry, Pennysylvania, in a review for ABC Religion and Ethics. The contemporary debates around care were also being dissected and scrutinised to go beyond the usual ableist approaches which are either patronising and paternalistic or feats of virtue signalling. James developed a conversation of the aesthetics of care and safety which are crucial for working with vulnerable young people that challenged and catalysed Chisenhale Gallery’s praxis of ‘radical commissioning’: “to their credit, they rose to that challenge although not without problems on both sides. But like, you know, they took a punt on something”. James and Chisenhale Gallery saw For they let in the Light, not as just another project for young people, but an opportunity for those who have faced mental health challenges to work with world-class artists and to create artworks which find their way into galleries – not as part of an education or engagement programme but as part of the gallery programme. As a result, Chisenhale has been building a team around their new Curator of Social Practice, Seth Pimlott, who oversaw the presentation of For They Let In the Light .

Today, Dr Paula Gooder, Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s and a popular author on the New Testament, has reassuring words for those who worry that they are at a disadvantage at only being able to read the Bible in translation. James’ work is situational, it reacts or works within a situation and there is a sense of performance within that process. As James put it: One can do some work toward equipping ordinands to inhabit the world of principalities and powers, of angels and demons, of spirit and soul and flesh, without acquainting oneself with the languages in which the people of God began to articulate their and our relation to that world; but one can travel more rapidly, deeper, more readily into that world by learning those languages, than by standing outwith those worlds and interacting only through the mediation of translators.” While she isn’t chary of criticising the language of the Greek, which can tend towards “dutifulness and dullness”, she is also utterly convinced of the importance of her task. The Bible is a book that matters, she writes. “We all to some degree define ourselves in relation to it, whether we mean to or not.” James ensured that no one was recording the presentation but also not forcing anyone to be there. Audience, staff and artists were allowed to step out to process what they were seeing without being judged:

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THE result, The Gospels, is not Dr Ruden’s first translation of the Bible. In her 2017 book The Face of Water: A translator on beauty and meaning in the Bible (Pantheon, 2017), she offered translations of passages from both the Old and New Testament after first setting out some of the inherent “impossibilities”.

The Patois translation allows the Bible’s humour to come through, such as in Jesus’s words about the log in one’s eye, she says: “the way he says it would be like how my Dad would have said it.” Patois is a “very animated” language, she explains, with its origins in West Africa and some words taken directly from Twi. Sometimes, she notes, laughing, Jesus will ask “ee? ee?” when asking a question. “I just love it.” The development of this body of work has greatly altered the scale and ambition of James’s work, resulting in it becoming one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). Hearing this gives me hope that the arts are changing, and that those holding the purse strings are listening and accepting that the accumulation of funding for the disability arts sector is literally life-changing. Honestly when I heard it, I cried,” Ms Jones recalls. The daughter of a couple who moved from Jamaica in the late 1950s, she grew up listening to Jamaican Patois at home and has come to regard it as her “mother tongue — because that is what we first heard. So hearing it really chokes me up. Hearing Jesus speak in that vernacular, in that language, is like home. There are words he uses that mean more when spoken in Jamaican than in English. . . It’s like family talking.” THE effect of encountering biblical languages and exploring various translations should not be underestimated, suggests Dr Cressida Ryan, who teaches New Testament Greek at the University of Oxford. Yeah. I think I also kind of called the gallery out a little bit in the commissioning process. I asked them, ‘Why is this project labelled under an ‘engagement’ heading? Why aren’t we in the gallery as artists like everybody else?’”You are at a disadvantage, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t read the Bible as well,” she tells me. “That is the big distinction I would make.” Her recommendation, in the tradition of St Augustine, is to read a variety of translations. “A translation is an interpretation, just like a commentary or a book is . . . Very few people would ever say ‘I will only ever read one person or listen to one person preaching.’” TODAY, study of biblical languages is not a requirement for ordinands, although on many pathways it is either required or optional. Most will come to study with no prior knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, and, at St Stephen’s House, Dr Adam has observed students becoming “very excited at first discoveries”. I was able to catch up with James soon after the event and he surprised me by describing himself as “an activist that uses art”. This was interesting for a number of reasons however, particularly as art and activism are seen as kind of separate, despite their evident crossover.