Having preached at the 10.30 a.m. service on Sunday 13th March, Dick France returned to the church the following Monday evening for an event to recognise the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible.
People came from all over Sefton to hear the Rev. Dr. Dick France speak at the meeting which was chaired by the Rt. Rev. Richard Blackburn, the Bishop of Warrington.
Dick France is a former Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. More recently he spent four years in parish ministry on the Welsh border. He has now “retired” and lives in north Wales. A distinguished lecturer, he has written extensively on the gospels and the life and teaching of Jesus. He is currently part of the group completing an update of the NIV of the Bible.
From this well of knowledge and experience Dick enthralled his audience with a mesmerising, rapid fire talk. He gave us a very full account of the history of English translations of the Bible from the Lindisfarne Gospels (created in the early 8th Century) to the plethora of versions currently available. He elucidated the sources available to translators at the time and put each version in its historical context.
He also discussed the purpose of, and need for, each version and finally expressed his view that the business of translation will be on going as long as the English language continues to evolve.
Throughout, the Revd. France, peppered his talk with fascinating examples and personal anecdotes so that his audience would never have believed that they had been sat there for over an hour were it not for the hardness of the pews that they were sitting in!
As if that was not enough he then answered a variety of equally interesting questions (as the bishop took a microphone around the audience). He answered everybody with erudition and good humour, explaining the dilemmas faced by translators who had constantly to balance the sometimes conflicting imperatives of precision and intelligibility.
We, at St. John’s, are very grateful to Dick for making a complex and potentially dry subject into an entertaining, informative and spiritually challenging evening.
