BBC Radio 4 has marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible by claiming that King David, the Jewish king of the Old Testament who slew the giant Philistine Goliath, was in the Bible’s “only gay relationship.”

On a literary program, one of a series on the historic Bible translation, aired on Sunday, January 9th, playwright Howard Brenton claimed that David had been in love with Jonathan, the son of King Saul.

Brenton said, “To a secular reader the story of David and Jonathan’s love is obviously homosexual, the only gay relationship in the Bible.” Brenton acknowledged that the idea is “controversial.”...