THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has given his personal backing to a new translation of the New Testament in which St Paul’s notorious condemnations of gay sex are deleted and Christians are told to go out and have more sex.

Instead of condemning fornicators, adulterers and “abusers of themselves with mankind”, the new version of his first letter to Corinth has St Paul advising Christians not to go without sex for too long in case they get “frustrated”.

The translation appears to contradict the authorised King James version which, in a passage in I Corinthians vii, often used to back the celibacy requirement in the Roman Catholic priesthood, quotes St Paul saying: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”

The new version, which Dr Williams says he hopes will spread “in epidemic profusion through religious and irreligious alike”, turns St Paul’s strictures against fornication on their head.

St Paul’s words now are: “Some of you think the best way to cope with sex is for men and women to keep right away from one another.

“I think that is more likely to lead to sexual offences.

“My advice is for everyone to have a regular partner. Husbands and wives should strive to meet each other’s sexual needs. They should submit to one another for that purpose. It’s not good to refuse a partner.”

The translation also changes the original Greek and Hebrew nomenclature into modern nicknames. St Peter becomes “Rocky”, Mary Magdalen becomes “Maggie”, Aaron becomes “Ron”, Andronicus becomes “Andy” and Barabbas becomes “Barry”.

In other passages the translator John Henson, a retired Baptist minister, renders “demon possession” as “mental illness” and “Son of Man”, the phrase used frequently to refer to Jesus, as “the Complete Person”.

Parables become “riddles” and to baptise is now to “dip” in water. Salvation becomes “healing” or “completeness” and Heaven becomes “the world beyond time and space.”

Mr Henson is the translation co-ordinator for ONE, a network of radical Christians that was one of the first organisations in Britain to make the case for “inclusive language”, in a 1981 pamphlet Bad Language in Church.

In his foreword to the new version of the New Testament, which also includes the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, Dr Williams describes it as a work of “extraordinary power” because it is “so close to the prose and poetry of ordinary life”. He writes: “Instead of being taken into a specialised religious frame of reference — as happens even with the most conscientious of formal modern translations — and being given a gospel addressed to specialised concerns . . . we have here a vehicle for thinking and worshipping that is fully earthed, recognisably about our humanity.”

Dr Williams is himself not known for his use of accessible language, and has been criticised recently for his use of obtuse and arcane theological phrases. In his foreword however, he praises Mr Henson’s translation for screening out “the stale, the technical, the unconsciously exclusive words and policies”.

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