Ronald A. Knox On Englishing The Bible Burns, Oates ( 1949)

‘Wragg is in custody.’ So ended a newspaper paragraph, in the sixties of last century, about a case of child-murder at Nottingham; and it was not difficult for Matthew Arnold to arraign the industrialized society which turned the wretched heroine of such a tragedy into a bare sur¬ name. You may achieve this effect of mononymity with¬ out getting into trouble with the police; you can translate the Bible. The thing, I confess, took me by surprise. All my life I had been indifferent to the use of titles; complete strangers referred to me, sometimes in my hearing, as ‘Ronnie Knox’—if anything, it was the surname that was regarded as optional. Then I published a translation of the New Testament, and all at once I found I had gone back to my school-days; I was simply ‘Knox’. Moffatt said this, Knox said that; 1 had become one of these translator-fellows.