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. James spoke about the layers of structural violence laid upon oppressed communities, and the knowledge, wisdom and methods of surviving violence, that comes from people being oppressed, and defining “the artist, with those aesthetic relationships or those aesthetic understandings”. I think everything you can see in the Gospels is that Jesus wants us to think for ourselves,” she tells me. “He would be sad at somebody saying ‘Tell me what it actually means.’ He would say ‘no, no do some thinking. . .’” 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.

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.” Her baseline was a standardised edited text in Greek (“the result of hundreds of years of expert work by the best biblical scholars in the world, minutely vetted and persuasively reconstructed”). The standard translations that followed were, she says, “so rigorously controlled to avoid challenging and offending that their surface is flat and dull, their meanings obscure, and their footnotes an exercise in hiding anything interesting”. 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”). In For They Let In The Light one of the cripping aesthetics of that piece came in the second period of the making. The young people wanted to respond to the videos that had been made while they were in hospital and they wanted to perform them. And I’m like – that’s amazing”.

In Let in the Light, White invites readers to join him in a close and engaged encounter with the Confessions in which they will come to share his experience of the book’s power and profundity by reading at least some of it in Augustine’s own language. He offers an accessible guide to reading the text in Latin, line by line—even for those who have never studied the language.

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: At HowTheLightGetsIn London 2023 you can join a debate about the nature of the universe with the world's top scientists, laugh until your sides hurt with the UK's best comedians, dance at our famous disco tent to the finest beats or dine with our speakers at Inner Circle events. Join us again at HowTheLightGetsIn Hay 2024, 24- 27 May, for another unmissable weekend. 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”.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.’” 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.