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Translators, beware!
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In 403AD in North Africa a bishop was reading the scriptures aloud. He had got a new translation of the Book of Jonah. He came to the place where a plant sheltered Jonah from the heat. It was a passage familiar to his hearers, they had chanted the same words for generations. Jonah was sheltered by a gourd… but the bishop read out, 'ivy'! The congregation rose up in anger at the change. There was a riot. The bishop had to climb down, and go back to the old words, or else lose his flock. The author of the new translation, Jerome, had gone back to the original Hebrew. He asserted that the Hebrew did not say 'gourd'. The Hebrew was 'niceion', which nobody would understand if he put that. He had put 'ivy' as the best equivalent, for 'a kind of shrub having large leaves like a vine'. Jerome was advised that it was dangerous to change familiar
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