Letter: Common recent use of the name Noah reminds us how deeply the Bible has impacted our culture

But what does this tell us about contemporary society? Many modern parents probably still have a faint idea of Noah being a heroic Old Testament figure who built an ark.

The old name's common recent use certainly reminds us how deeply the Bible has impacted our culture in countless unseen ways.

Alas, however, very few of our modern Noahs will have received their name in a Walton style naming ritual, where Daddy Bear takes down a battered homestead King James Version of the Scriptures, and reverently opens it so that his paw providentially falls on the name Noah.

A part of me laments the unseen witness to the Apostle's Creed which is being lost, when we dispense with those New Testament favourites which formerly graced every school or university roll book: Peter, James and John.

The apostolic witness is certainly burning a little dimmer in these parts, but it is not extinguished and it never will be.

James Hardy, Belfast