Posted on 12/12/2005 5:04:14 AM PST by HarleyD
THE 1526 NEW TESTAMENT
Tyndale sailed for Hamburg in 1524, never to return to England. While there, he remained under the patronage of the Christian Brethren, who, with a powerful mixture of religious radicalism and risk-taking entrepreneurship, were profiting handsomely from their book-smuggling trade. Concealed in bales of cloth, sacks of grain, and barrels of wine, the books they smuggled through the English ports were soon being transmitted all along the cloth-trade networks where they were eagerly purchased.1 Interestingly, this term “Christian Brethren,” the self-designation of these London merchants engaged in importing books by English Protestants on the continent, was also applied to the Lollards and their book-exchanging networks. “So,” notes Dickens, “in men like Monmouth we see the linkage between the international world of Lutheranism and the older English networks of Lollards.”2
Tyndale and his amanuensis William Roye, an Augustinian friar of Jewish background from Calais, worked together on translating the New Testament using Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, the Vulgate, and Luther’s German Bible as sources. In the spring of 1525, they moved on to Cologne, a center of printing, and by autumn of that year they handed a finished copy to a Cologne printer who managed to print out 3,000 copies of the first eighty pages before the local authorities ordered him to stop. The anti-Lutheran controversialist known as Cochlaeus had infiltrated the ranks of the printers and had discovered their plot to flood England with these Tyndale Testaments before the king or cardinal could discover it. He saw to it that further printing was expressly forbidden, and he promptly fired off letters to Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and the bishop of Rochester to warn them “that they might take diligent precautions at all the English ports to prevent these pernicious wares being imported.”3
To get a sense of just how threatened many English churchmen were by the prospect of translated Bibles being disseminated without any controls, see this letter from Edward Lee, later Archbishop of York, to Henry VIII:
The Lutheran influence on Tyndale’s Testament was pervasive. This fact may indicate that the Englishman had moved closer to the Lutheran position since his disappointment with what we might refer to as the “non-populist humanism” of Cuthbert and since his arrival in Germany. On the other hand, it may merely indicate that he was freer now to express the Lutheran opinions which he had held already. Or perhaps some combination of both explanations is true. In any event, Tyndale’s prefaces to Romans, First Corinthians, and Galatians were essentially translations of Luther’s own. Even more importantly, Tyndale’s prologue, epilogue, and marginal glosses were distinctly Lutheran in their emphasis on the priority of justification by faith. As an example of this emphasis, consider this passage from the Tyndale’s epilogue:
These words of the king were followed by a formal episcopal prohibition. Cuthbert Tunstall, the bishop of London who had rebuffed Tyndale earlier and referred to Tyndale and Joye as “children of iniquitie mainteiners of Luthers sect,” wrote of the arrival of these new translations in terms of a public health crisis:
[These books] conteining in the english tongue that pestiferous and moste pernicious poyson dispersed throughout all our dioces of London in great nomber, whiche truely without it be spedely forsene without doubt will contaminate and infect the flocke committed vnto vs, with most deadly poyson and heresy… Wherfore we Cuthbert, the bishop aforesaid ... straightly enjoyne and comaund you ... vnder payne of excommunication, and incurring the suspicion of heresie, they do bring in and really deliuer vnto our vicar-generall, all and singular such books conteyning the translation of the new testament in the English tongue [within thirty days].8
Tunstall worked furiously to stem the flood of New Testaments which were being smuggled into London from the continent, but came quickly to realize that his battle against the demand-side only effort (“interdiction,” to use the phrase of our modern drug war) was doomed to failure. So, he determined to address the supply-side, too. He worked out a deal with a certain London merchant, Augustine Packyngton, who had connections with the Christian Brethren in Germany. Tunstall’s plan was to buy up all copies of Tyndale’s New Testament, right off the press, in order to burn them. Packyngton is reported as having come to Tyndale and explained the situation, and Tyndale apparently reacted with some glee:
Now the printers ran a second printing. When Cuthbert began to hear reports of still more copies of the book flooding into London, he was vexed and called Packyngton before him, asking,
LOLLARD-LUTHERAN LINKAGES
Tunstall would oversee his dramatic book burning in London in St. Paul’s churchyard, which included the Testaments he had purchased from the German printers and many others. Yet despite this, and despite the ban on Tyndale’s work, the Bibles were making their way into English society and beginning to make an impact. One significant development for which we find evidence is the linking up of the remaining Lollards and Lollard-sympathizers with the Lutherans, a class-breaching linkage facilitated by Tyndale’s superb English translation. It is reported that a certain Lollard named John Tyball, and another man, also Lollard, journeyed to see Robert Barnes, the leader of the White Horse Inn, the Lutheran circle at Cambridge we spoke of earlier. Tyball showed Barnes their Lollard manuscripts, but Barnes essentially dismissed these, arguing that the Tyndale New Testament was “of more cleaner English,” and then sold a copy to them.12 Here we see crucial evidence of a positive “meeting-up” of the older, native, and lower class Lollard networks with the new, international Lutheran movement, through the shared medium of Tyndale’s translation.
This is by no means the only evidence of such linkage. There is also the interesting case of Thomas Harding, a Lollard from Chesham who was prosecuted for heresy in 1532. He was found to have hidden under his floorboards several works of Tyndale, including The Obedience of the Christian Man and The Practice of Prelates. Lambert informs us,
MORE’S ATTACK ON TYNDALE
Obviously, the prospect of emerging linkages between Lollardy and Lutheranism were dangerous from the point of view of the ecclesiastical establishment. Accordingly, Tunstall granted Thomas More a license to read Tyndale’s Testament to expose its errors and heresies and thus to prove the validity of the episcopal prohibition on his work. Now, Thomas More is a saint of the Roman Church who was martyred for the faith in 1535 when he refused to support Henry’s breach with the papacy and self-exaltation as supreme head of the English Church. He was also a man of great learning, one of the foremost humanist scholars of his day. One might have, and perhaps should have, expected such a man to have behaved differently than he did when dealing with opponents. But the fact is that he behaved shamefully. He oversaw the burning of several Protestant heretics, and he pursued Tyndale with an almost maniacal intensity, the two engaging in a war of words which escalated beyond all reason and restraint. The key to More’s thinking was the inerrancy of the Church in matters of faith and practice, and on this point he would not budge, even in light of scriptural evidence to the contrary. It is a tragic story, but one which shows the deep cleft in the humanist ranks between those who were prepared to accept the authority of the Bible and those who were not.
In his letters directed against Tyndale, More accused the translator of evil purpose in corrupting and changing the words and sense of Scripture “from the good and holsom doctryne of Criste to the deuylysh heresyes of theyr own.” Specifically, he charged Tyndale with mischief in changing three key words throughout the whole of his Testament, such that “priest,” “church,” and “charity” of customary Roman Catholic usage became in Tyndale’s translation “elder,” “congregation,” and “love,” respectively. As for calling priests “elders,” More wrote that “nether were all prestes chosen old … nor euery elder man is not a prest.” Moreover, Tyndale “wold make hyt seme that the scrypture dyd neuer speke of eny prestys dyfferent from leymen amonge chrysten peple.” With regard to “congregation,” More objected to the replacement of “church” by a weak word which “is comen to a company of cristen men or a company of turkys.” As for “love,” More charged Tyndale that to make the Lutheran “heresy” of justification by faith alone appear more biblical, he had changed “that name of holy vertuous affeccyon, in to the bare name of loue commen to the vertuouse loue that man berith to god, and to the lewd loue that is bytwene flekke and his make.” [This last phrase is a contemptuous expression for a man and his paramour.]14 In this entire argument over words, More was defending against what he saw as Tyndale’s malicious attack on the very integrity of the Church. More, and Tunstall as well, were dead set against allowing such “poison,” as they referred to Lutheran doctrines, to infect their flock. In defense of his position, More was prepared to do what he must to destroy Tyndale, who, he perceived, would otherwise destroy the Church.
Tyndale’s answer to More was simple and powerful. In a letter written to John Frith, Tyndale said with regard to all these charges of malicious intent and false translation,
THE PENTATEUCH OF 1530 AND AFTERMATH
Soon after the publication of his New Testament at Worms in 1526, Tyndale moved to Antwerp and stayed with and under the protection of the Merchant Adventurers of Antwerp, another group of English merchants who were sympathetic to the Lutheran cause and were actively involved in the lucrative book-smuggling trade. During this period, Tyndale must have learned Hebrew in preparation for his work on the Old Testament. He would not have been able to have learned it earlier in England because the language was wholly unknown there.16
By 1529 he began his monumental work of translating the Five Books of Moses from Hebrew. When it was finished, he had coined several new terms, including “Jehovah,” “Passover,” “scapegoat,” “shewbread,” “peacemaker,” and “mercyseat.”17 He also emerged from the project with a transformed theological outlook. Until this time Tyndale had emphasized the difference between law and grace, but from this point on he came to place increasing stress upon law, upon the covenant between God and his people, as the key to understanding Scripture as a whole. This is an important doctrinal development, and we will return to it shortly. But let us first return to the narrative of his life.
Having completed his translation of the Pentateuch, Tyndale sailed for Hamburg in order to have it published there, but he was shipwrecked en route. In this disaster he lost all his books, writings, and copies, and was compelled to begin all over again. With the help of Miles Coverdale – a former Augustinian friar and follower of Robert Barnes – he set to once again to work, this time in Hamburg. Between Easter and December, 1525, he finished the Pentateuch again. Finally, the work was printed in January, 1530, and copies began arriving in London by the summer of that year.18 The book of Jonah would be published in 1531, and Tyndale continued to work with Coverdale on the history portions of the Old Testament. Ultimately, he would complete all the books through Chronicles, plus Nehemiah.
The arrival in London of the translated Pentateuch set in motion the wheels of repression once again. This time the king himself issued a proclamation in 1530, asserting that the function of these translations was “to pervert and withdraw the people from the true catholic faith, and also to stir and incense them to sedition and disobedience against their princes, sovereigns, and heads.” Accordingly, the king’s subjects were enjoined not to buy, receive, or have any of these books in their possession if they wished “to avoid his high indignation and most grievous displeasure.” They were further commanded to turn over all such books to the ecclesiastical authorities, on pain of punishment by the civil authority. Then, in a remarkable passage, the king answered those subjects who had argued that it was not only expedient but necessary that the Scripture be translated into the English tongue:
THE 1534 NEW TESTAMENT (AND 1535 REVISION) Meanwhile, back in Antwerp, Tyndale continued his work. In 1534 he published a completely revised version of the New Testament, with a completely new preface bearing no relation to the distinctly Lutheran 1525 prologue and 1526 epilogue. Nevertheless, his prologues to the various books remained largely the same, and most importantly, the prologue to Romans remained essentially a translation of Luther’s own prologue to that epistle. But in the prologue of this 1534 version (as well in as the slightly revised 1535 version), we read the doctrinally mature Tyndale, the man who had been so profoundly affected by translating the Pentateuch. He retained his Lutheran grounding in the gospel, but incorporated it into a vast theme of covenant. As Tyndale understood it, God covenants with his people and promises to bless them upon the condition that they then keep his law. In fact, this theme of covenant pervades both the prologue and his marginal notes. Here are just a few examples of this “covenant theology” which emerges from his prologue:
In light of all this we are led to see that Tyndale played an important role in the English Reformation, above and beyond the sheer (and frankly monumental) fact of his having translated Scripture. We come to see that his was also a role of linkage. As we have seen, connections emerged between the native, lower class Lollards and the internationally, academically oriented class of Lutherans, and it was their shared devotion to God’s Word in the common tongue – in short, Tyndale’s translation – which served as their linkage point. Such class-breaching linkages are surely significant, the stuff of societal transformation. But in addition to the vertical dimension of class linkage, there was also a horizontal linkage by which Tyndale’s emerging covenant theology linked the older, proto-Protestant Lollard emphasis on Law with the later, Puritan emphasis on Law grounded in justifying faith. It may be argued that by incorporating Luther’s central insight on the priority of the gospel, and by moving beyond Luther’s rejection of the Law, Tyndale’s theology linked with older emphases and laid a new groundwork in England for what would gradually emerge as Puritanism.
EPILOGUE – TYNDALE’S MARTYRDOM
In 1535 Tyndale was living with his friend and protector Thomas Poyntz in Antwerp. At this time, the villain Henry Phillips enters our story. An Englishman, he was the son of a well-to-do family, but he had stolen a sum of money which his father had entrusted for someone else, and had as a consequence fallen into disgrace and poverty. He moved to Louvain, a city near Antwerp and a center of anti-Protestantism. Professing a thorough hatred of Lutherans, he planned to lure Tyndale from the protective custody of the English merchants and to hand him over to the imperial authorities as a heretic. He must have been on the payroll of the anti-Tyndale forces in England (David Daniell suspects it was Stokesley, the bishop of London),26 because he spent a lot of money dining with Tyndale and gradually building up his confidence to think him a friend. Tyndale’s protector, Poyntz, did not trust the new character, but Tyndale assured him that he was fine. Then in May, 1535, Phillips talked Tyndale into going out for dinner. But when Tyndale walked beyond the protective care of his compound, he was arrested by the imperial procurer-general and charged as being a “Lutheran heretic.” He was brought to the castle of Vilvorde, an extra-security fortress.
The English Merchants sent letters to the imperial court at Brussels and to the English government, protesting this violation of their diplomatic privilege. Cranmer, now archbishop of Canterbury, tried to intervene but was ineffective, and political events complicated matters. On top of all that we have seen, in 1534 – in a development which must have shaken the religio-political establishment of England – continental radicals made contact with the Lollards in London. It seems that several Dutch Anabaptists had come to England during that year, and English delegates seem to have attended an anabaptist conference in Amsterdam in the winter of 1534-5. The English authorities responded to these developing linkages between March and June of 1535 by arresting, examining, and executing foreign anabaptist sympathizers. Several were also deported back to the Low Countries to be dealt with by the regent Mary, Queen of Hungary. This served Henry as a useful symbol of his continuing orthodoxy.27 Working for the release of Tyndale at that time would have worked against English policy in these matters.
However, while the English officialdom delayed, Phillips did everything he could to hasten events. Poyntz tried to intervene, first by writing letters to help his friend and then actually by going to the procurer-general. But Phillips informed on him, and Poyntz found himself arrested too. After being subjected to charges and interrogations over a period of twelve or thirteen weeks, Poyntz managed to flee to England, broke and forever banished from the Netherlands where his wife opted to stay.
Meanwhile, Tyndale’s last letter from Vilvorde led Daniell to compare it with Paul’s second letter to Timothy from the Mamertine:
Even before Tyndale died, his translations were being incorporated into the first complete Bible printed in English, the work of Miles Coverdale in Cologne. And only a few months later, Henry VIII licensed the first official translation, which would be called “Matthew’s Bible,” a fictitious cover for Tyndale’s and Coverdale’s work to make it appear to conform to the decree of the Upper House Convocation of 1534. This first official English Bible, printed at Antwerp, incorporated Tyndale’s 1530 Pentateuch and Old Testament work as far as Chronicles, as well as the 1534 New Testament. In this “Matthew’s Bible” a large “W.T.” was placed between Malachi and Matthew in silent acknowledgment of the martyred translator’s immeasurable gift to the English people. There would be several versions and many printings of the Bible right until the Authorized Version of 1611, which also incorporated the Tyndale portions largely as they were.
There’s a wonderful letter written by Cranmer in August, 1537, which captures something of his reaction upon first receiving and reading Matthew’s (i.e., Tyndale’s) Bible. Cranmer had been in the forefront of pushing for a Bishops Bible to conform to the decree of 1534, but now he wrote urgently to Cromwell, entreating him to use his influence with the king to get from him “a license that the same may be sold and redde of every person withoute danger of any acte, proclamacion or ordinaunce heretofore graunted to the contrary, untill such tyme that we the bishops shall set forth a better translation, which I thinke will not be till a day after Domesday.”30
As we conclude our examination of the life of William Tyndale, it seems most appropriate to recall these words written by Hughes:
BIBLIOGRAPHY
History ping...
It semes thyt More hyt the nayl on the heyd.
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: (1 Peter 2:9 KJV)
It is no wondyr thyt pepyl lyke More were so afrayd of the dysemmynashyn of the scryptures to the layity.
Out of the darknyss and into the light.
Thank God for men lyke Tyndale.
I think it would be faire to seye that More never red the Scriptures in the originall Greeke or he wold never have mayde these mystake. It is not that he was a Catholike mann, but that he was a better lawyer thann a Bibel scoler.
But I will never beleeve that More did not ryse bodily fromm the dedde and strangel Tyndale himmself. I have been told to the contrarie by too menny Protestantes to ken different on theese matteres ...
LOL!!!
It took me a long time trying to figure out this old English. I was going to update it but thought I would leave it alone.
It's hard to fathom the great risk these Reformers went to simply to get the Bibles into the hands of the common people. It amazes me the explosive intensity this happened at virtually the same time throughout Europe even though it was building up for several hundred years. It must have been very frustrating for the Vatican.
Given that Tyndale's Bible was full of tendentious commentary (written by Tyndale, of course), there was a lot more than just "Bibles" being given out.
The translation was done fully under the authority of Rome, and is still used (for private use, not liturgical) today. The D-R is a translation of the Latin Vulgate, not from the original languages, but I think you will agree that it still qualifies as the Bible.
Be sure to factor that into your timeline.
In point of fact, the Douay-Rheims Bible was completed in 1609, two years before the KJV. The texts were, as you have stated, the Latin Vulgate, with sprinklings of the Septuagent, (old Testament), and the Erasmus Greek text (also the basis for the Stephaneous Edition that became the majourity of the Textus Receptus used in the JKV). The language is quite beautiful. None the less, it is fraught with difficulties. This is why the Catholics have since gone to newer Catholic translations.
It is a shame that it is not used Liturgically, as i've said above, the language is truly beautiful.
I stand corrected, thanks.
The language is quite beautiful. None the less, it is fraught with difficulties. ... It is a shame that it is not used Liturgically, as i've said above, the language is truly beautiful.
Most of the time. There are a few points where the translators were a little too rigid in their translation, and they ended up keeping Latin sentence structure in the English, with incomprehensible results. (I think a couple of the worst examples were fixed in later editions.)
Of course, the big problem with the D-R is the same as with the KJV: the language has changed, and modern English speakers don't always understand what is being said.
The D-R is on my bookshelf at home. Sadly, it mostly stays there. I tried reading the Christmas story out of it to my kids one year, but it was clearly mystifying to them (and not easy for me, either). The RSV-CE is a good compromise between beautiful language and understandability, IMO. (Yes, I'm saying that the best English Catholic Bible on the market is a descendant of the King James Version. :-)).
The 1952 RSV was a good compromise translation. Personally, i don't care for the NRVS. It made far too many compromises. The 1952 RSV was not without difficulties, but not near as many as the more popular NIV.
Bible Translations are almost always a compromise situation. Neither Greek nor Hebrew/Aramiac literally translate well into the receptor language of choice (though i suspect that Greek translated well into Latin due to the proximity of the Latin speaking, and Greek Speaking populations). There are considerations of how to translate Idiom, metaphor, and obscure wording from the donor language. The NIV uses what is called Dynamic Equivalence, which is advertised as a "thought for thought translation". Of course the question is begged as to just whose thoughts are being placed into the text, and it is IMO arrogant to suggest that one can discern the thoughts of the writers 2,000 years after the fact. More Literal translations, on the other hand, Such as the KJV and the NASB, tend to make reading "choppy", and not so easy to comprehend. i would have to say for their time, the D-R, and the KJV, were a pretty good compromise, in that they achieved good balance in readability, and faithfullness to the respective texts they were translated from.
It is not quite accurate to say that the Best Catholic translation is descended from the KJV however. The RSV, and NRSV, both Catholic and Protestant Editions, were translated from the Wescott-Hort-Tischendorf texts, or their descendents (The Nestle-Aland Text, and/or the United Bible Societies Text)in the New Testament. There are some significant differences between that, and what became the Textus Receptus that the KJV translators later published...It is not too well known that the Textus Receptus was published after the KJV...Incidentally, i am not making a value judgement here on the merits and demerits of various Greek/Hebrew texts, just statements of fact.
All this being said, you may just want to brush up on the language of that dusty D-R on your bookshelf. It may interest you to know that the original Geneva Bible, the Bible brought to American Shores by the Puritans, is enjoing a resurgence among Protestants. i would not be surprised to see the D-R making a similar comeback among Catholics.
As far as a compromise between accuracy, and readability by American English speakers, The English Standard Version is getting good reviews. Perhaps there may soon be a Catholic version of it.
Yep. The RSV-CE, of course, is a modification of the 1952 RSV, not the NRSV.
It is not quite accurate to say that the Best Catholic translation is descended from the KJV however. The RSV, and NRSV, both Catholic and Protestant Editions, were translated from the Wescott-Hort-Tischendorf texts, or their descendents (The Nestle-Aland Text, and/or the United Bible Societies Text)in the New Testament.
Wasn't the RSV basically a "cleanup" of the KJV by (among other things) checking it against the UBS Greek, not a completely new translation?
Can I buy a Y?
You can't buy a "Y" by itself. You can buy a "YE", or an "EYE", or maybe an "IYE", but not just a "Y".
Aye!
That must have been a painful loss.
I was just moping over the loss several years ago of a huge recipe collection that I had spent over a year putting on my computer - only to have the files lost later. It doesn't come close to Tyndale's loss.
It was God's will.
** The D-R is a translation of the Latin Vulgate, not from the original languages, but I think you will agree that it still qualifies as the Bible.**
From the Translator to the Reader...1611 KJV...
• 1 Now to the latter we answer, that we do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the Word of God, nay, is the Word of God.
• 2 As the King's Speech which he uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King's Speech, though it be not interpreted by every translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere.
I think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego:
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