Ian Thomson

Rewriting holy writ

Harry Freedman’s engaging history of Bible translations includes a gay-friendly version, a Yiddish slang version and the ‘Wicked’ 1631 version with its infamous misprint

issue 14 May 2016

Jesuits, the leading apologists for Rome and Catholic revival in Elizabethan England, cast a long shadow over the paranoid post-Armada years. For one thing, they set much store by Romish ‘persuasion’ (sophistical reasoning) and were often superb linguists. Among the languages codified by Jesuits were Guaraní in Paraguay and Sri Lankan Tamil.

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