The New Testament In Scots - Softcover

The Greek scholar William Lorimer spent the last ten years of his life working on this project. Each Gospel has a different form of Scots to match the different forms of Greek used by the various apostles and scribes, and the vigour and immediacy of the language is everywhere apparent. Transcribed, edited and published by his son Robin Lorimer, this scholarly and dramatically fresh reading of an already familiar text caused a sensation when it first appeared in 1983. Beyond the poetry of the King James version, here are the voices of the disciples themselves, speaking, as they undoubtedly did, in 'plain braid Galilee'.

William Laughton Lorimer (1885-1967) was born at Strathmartine near Dundee and spent most of his life on his native East Coast as a teacher and a classical scholar. In the years before and after the Great War he lectured in Greek at St Andrews University, going on to become a Reader in Humanity at University College, Dundee (1929-53), before returning to St Andrews as Professor of Greek for three years until his retirement in 1955. Engaged with spoken Scots since his boyhood, he made many major contributions to the Scottish National Dictionary in his later years. It was also at this time that he started to translate the New Testament from Greek into Scots. He spent the last ten years of his life at this task, but he died before his final revisions could be made. It was his son Robin L.C. Lorimer who completed the revisions and prepared the manuscripts for publication.