Over the weekend, I took part in a discussion on BBC Radio 4 about the appropriacy of translating the Bible into regional dialects. The subject had come up due to the launch of an updated version of the Bible in Cockney. There was the usual hullabaloo about ‘dumbing down’ the Bible, despite the fact that the New Testament was originally written in Koine (i.e. common) rather than literary Greek.

As it stands, the Greek grammar of the book of Revelation is pretty rough and ready. And as I pointed out in the interview, the words of Jesus were themselves accommodated to different cultural audiences.

Matthew, writing for Jews, refers to “the kingdom of heaven” to avoid using the word God (Jews of the time found that offensive). Mark, on the other hand, writing for the non-Jewish audience simply has Jesus refer to ”the kingdom of God” (Compare Matthew 3:2 with Mark 1:15). So why do some people get all worked up about the Bible in dialect?

Usually because they are attached to the King James Version (used by just 8% of churchgoers in the UK) or have an overly-literal understanding of what it means to translate the Bible into other languages. The antidote is to become more familiar with how the Bible quotes itself. Absolute exactness was not always important. Hebrews 2:6, for example, introduces a quote from the Psalms with the somewhat vague “someone has testified somewhere”.

That’s not to say that it’s a free for all when it comes to interpreting or translating the Bible. But for a bit of fun, or to help make an ancient text more accessible, I see nothing wrong with referring to Noah’s Ark as “Noah’s Nanny Goat” (i.e. ‘boat’ in Cockney rhyming slang) or the valley of darkness as “murk of the glen” as in this Scots translation.