BIBLICAL TRANSLATION is full of difficulties, said the distinguished scholar and monk of Ampleforth Henry Wansbrough OSB at the launch of the Revised New Jerusalem Bible at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, last Wednesday. Only yesterday, he told us, he had received a four-page letter from the US saying that you cannot use the five-letter L word any more than you can use the N word (clue: “a man with a virulent skin disease”, as the NJB called it). In the RNJB Fr Wansbrough reverts to the traditional translation beginning with L.

The most incendiary issue of all is inclusive language. Fr Wansbrough told us he had decided “to do what I could without distorting English usage”. In Matthew 18 he felt the constant repetition of “brothers and sisters” would be too cumbersome, and he decided to eliminate the “sisters”. If that sounds cruel, consider Nicholas King SJ’s solution in his equally accomplished translation. When Fr King arrives at the same passage, he finds himself snookered: “If your brother or sister sins, go and correct them, just you and him or her alone.”