Sir, – Michael Austin (October 24th) is unnecessarily upset by what he sees as David Norris’s disrespectful use of biblical diction in the title of the Senator’s entertaining autobiography.
In fact, however, the phrase “kick against the pricks” (pros kentra laktizein) comes from Euripides, Bacchae, line 794. It may be proverbial.
Acts 26:14 presents Saint Paul as ascribing it to the risen Christ, perhaps in order to please educated Greek ears.
I see nothing religiously offensive in Mr Norris’s title, and I think it is unwise, in a world seething with fundamentalism, to be so overprotective of biblical diction. – Yours, etc,