Partly because I have spent my professional life in the sixteenth century and its language, and partly because I became an Anglican by falling in love with the texts of Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer, I have always preferred to read the liturgy there and the Scriptural passages in the 1611 Authorised Version. Until yesterday, that is; when the lectionary proposed reading St Paul's Epistle to the Romans and when, reading it in the AV, I found my eyes glazing over and realised that I understood not three words together of a text that I thought I knew.
So I went to a website I have come to like a great deal: Bible Gateway, where one can look up any passage in the Bible in a vast number of different versions and in a number of languages. I typed in "Romans 1" and was faced with the choice of versions. There are modern translations I genuinely dislike for their chattiness, but I also thought that going to other older versions, like Douai or Geneva, would probably not be a help. For the Epistle to the Romans is a notoriously theoretical and difficult letter of Paul's -- Karl Barth's most famous work is a book-length study of it --, so a modern version was after all indicated.
Then I remembered that when I was a boy my father used to read us a passage of Scripture at Sunday breakfast, and that these often came from a volume called Letters to Young Churches, translated into modern English by J.B. Phillips. So within the list on Bible Gateway I looked for the name, and found the J.B. Phillips Bible. The result you can follow here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1&version=PHILLIPS .
I started reading, and found I couldn't stop: it was fascinating, intelligent, challenging and wholly engrossing. My eyes glued to the screen, I read all 16 chapters. And at the end, I realised that there are moments when one's love for Renaissance English can be a hindrance rather than a help. A sobering thought, entirely suitable for Lent.
J.B. Phillips
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