The Tyndale Bible generally refers to the body of biblical translations by the English Biblical scholar and linguist William Tyndale, made in c. 1522–1535. Tyndale's biblical text is credited with being the first English-language Biblical translation to work directly from Greek and, for the Pentateuch, Hebrew texts. The Vulgate and German Bibles were also used. It was the first English Biblical translation that was mass produced as a result of new advances in the art of printing.
Tyndale never published a complete Bible in English. He translated the New Testament, the Pentateuch, and produced a now lost translation of the historical books of the Old Testament. Of these, the Pentateuch, the Book of Jonah, and a revised version of the Book of Genesis were all published during his lifetime. His other Old Testament works were used in the creation of the Matthew Bible. The remaining books of the Old Testament were translated by the English ecclesiastical reformer Myles Coverdale. He supplemented Tyndale's translations with his own to produce the first complete printed Bible in English in 1535.
Contents
History
In 1522, the English linguist and scholar William Tyndale acquired a copy of Martin Luther's Bible. Tyndale began a translation of the New Testament into English, using Luther's Bible, the Latin Vulgate, the annotated Latin and Greek text compiled by the Dutch humanist Erasmus from several Greek manuscripts, and texts then thought to pre-date the Vulgate. Tyndale made his intention to translate the Bible into English known to Cuthbert Tunstall (the Bishop of London and Erasmus' collaborator). Tunstall refused to approve of or finance the project. Thwarted in England, Tyndale moved to Hamburg, where his New Testament was published in 1524.
A partial edition of the New Testament was printed in 1525 in Cologne, of which a single fragment survives, now kept in the British Library. But before the work could be completed, Tyndale was betrayed to the authorities and forced to leave the city. The first complete edition of his New Testament was published in 1526 by Peter Schöffer the Younger, Of the thousands of copies smuggled into England during Tyndale's lifetime, three have survived; these are held by St Paul's Cathedral, London, the British Library, and the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart. Revised editions were printed by Tyndale in 1534 and 1536.
Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch was published at Antwerp by Merten de Keyser and Joannes Grapheus in 1530. His English translation of the Book of Jonah was published the following year. This was followed by his revised version of the Book of Genesis in 1534. He translated the Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles from the Old Testament. These remained unpublished until they were included in the Matthew Bible, printed by Tyndale's associate John Rogers in 1537; they have not survived in their original form.
When translating the New Testament, Tyndale possibly referred to the 1522 edition of Erasmus's Novum Instrumentum omne, as well as Luther's German version of the New Testament, and the Vulgate. It may be the case that Tyndale stayed away from using Wycliffite Bibles as a source because he did not want his Early Modern English to reflect the Middle English used prior to the Renaissance. It is unlikely, however, that he could avoid having read Wycliffe's work. Tyndale claimed he did not translate with an existing English "ensample", however almost three fifths of the pre-existing Wycliffite language was used by Tyndale.
Catholic reaction
Tyndale's translations and polemical books were condemned and banned in England by the Catholic authorities. In particular almost all copies of his first 1526 New Testament, which authorities regarded as particularly flawed, were ordered by Tunstall to be bought up and burned. Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of the English king Henry VIII, claimed that he had purposely mistranslated the ancient texts in order to promote anti-clericalism and heretical views. In particular they cited the terms "church", "priest", "do penance" and "charity", which became in the Tyndale translation "congregation", "senior" (changed to "elder" in the revised edition of 1534), "repent" and "love", challenging key doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Most of these ideas originated from More's best friend, the Catholic scholar Erasmus; however, More insisted that Erasmus' intent was to enrich the meaning and not to subvert Catholic teaching.
Trial and execution of Tyndale
In 1535, Tyndale was arrested by the Antwerp authorities. He was imprisoned in the castle at Vilvoorde, during which time the Catholic theologian Jacobus Latomus and he spent almost a year and a half attempting to convince each other in a series of private books.
In August 1536 he was declared a heretic for his Lutheran advocacy and defrocked. Tyndale now being outside the derestriction of the Church. he was sentenced to be strangled to death and his body burned. Tyndale was not condemned because of translating or publishing Scriptures, which was not a crime in the Low Countries, but for the promulgation of Lutheran views that the Catholic states considered seditious or a threat to peace.
English ban
In 1543, The English Parliament enacted Henry VIII's Act for the Advancement of True Religion which banned keeping and using "books and writings in the English tongue, teaching or comprising any matters of Christian religion, articles of the faith, or Holy Scripture...", including Tyndale's translation of the New Testament.
Challenges to Catholic doctrine
Tyndale's translation of the Bible had notes critical of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church had long proclaimed that the only true Church was the Catholic Church. The word church in Catholic teaching could only be used of the Catholic Church, and there was no other organized religion in England at that time. Some radical reformers preached that the true church was the "invisible" church, that the church is wherever true Christians meet together to preach the word of God. To these reformers, the Catholic Church was unnecessary, and its very existence proved that it was in fact not the "true" Church. When Tyndale translated the Greek word ἐκκλησία (ekklēsía) as congregation, he was thereby undermining the entire structure of the Catholic Church.
Many of the reform movements believed in the authority of scripture alone. To them it dictated how a "true" church should be organized and administered. By changing the translation from church to congregation Tyndale was providing ammunition for the beliefs of the reformers. Their belief that the church was not a visible systematized institution but a body defined by believers, however organized, who held a specifically Protestant understanding of the Gospel and salvation was now to be found directly in Tyndale's translation of Scripture.
Tyndale's use of the word congregation conflicted with the Catholic Church's doctrine that the lay members and the clergy were two separate classes within the Church, and the Catholic teaching of the Sacrament of Ordination. If the true church is defined as a congregation, the common believers, then the Catholic Church's claim that the clergy were of a consecrated order different than the average Christian and that they had different functions within the Church no longer held sway.
Tyndale's translation of the Greek word πρεσβύτερος (presbúteros) to mean elder instead of priest also challenged the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
In particular, it undermined the Catholic Mass and its nature as a sacrifice. The role of the priest in the Catholic Church was to offer the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood in the ritual of the Mass, to bless, to conduct other religious ceremonies, to read and explain the scripture to the people, and to administer the other sacraments. In these ways they are different from the common believers.
Legacy
The importance of the Tyndale Bible in shaping and influencing the English language has been mentioned. According to one writer, Tyndale is "the man who more than Shakespeare even or Bunyan has moulded and enriched our language."
Impact on the English language
In translating the Bible, Tyndale invented new words into the English language; More pointed out this was problematic for a "vernacular" translation. Many were subsequently used in the King James Bible.
As well as individual words, Tyndale also is reported as having coined many familiar phrases, however, many of the claimed expressions turn out to have antecedents in the Middle English Bible translations or the German.
Many of the popular phrases and Bible verses that people quote today are in the language of Tyndale. An example of this is Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Such Germanic compound words as "peacemaker" are hallmarks of Tyndale's prose, and follow Middle English word-formation principles more than Modern English.
Passover (as the name for the Jewish holiday, Pesach or Pesah)
Scapegoat - When the Temple in Jerusalem stood, a portion of the Yom Kippur service was the lottery drawn on two goats, with one selected to be sacrificed as an offering and the other sent to Azazel to be thrown off a cliff, with the second goat translated as the "escapegoat", whose first letter was later omitted.
atonement
A concatenation of the words 'At One' to describe Christ's work of restoring a good relationship—a reconciliation—between God and people) is also sometimes ascribed to Tyndale. However, the word was probably in use by at least 1513, before Tyndale's translation.
mercy seat
Literal translation of Luther's German Gnadenstuhl.
Phrases which seem to have come from Tyndale include:
the word of God which liveth and lasteth forever
Impact on English Bibles
Tyndale's Bible laid the foundations for many of the English Bibles which followed his. His work made up a significant portion of the Great Bible of 1539, which was the first authorized version of the English Bible.
The translators of the Revised Standard Version in the 1940s noted that Tyndale's translation, including the 1537 Matthew Bible, inspired the translations that followed: The Great Bible of 1539; the Geneva Bible of 1560; the Bishops' Bible of 1568; the Douay-Rheims Bible of 1582–1609; and the King James Version of 1611, of which the RSV translators noted: "It [the KJV] kept felicitous phrases and apt expressions, from whatever source, which had stood the test of public usage. It owed most, especially in the New Testament, to Tyndale".
Joan Bridgman comments on the Contemporary Review that, "He [Tyndale] is the mainly unrecognized translator of the most influential book in the world. Although the Authorised King James Version is ostensibly the production of a learned committee of churchmen, it is mostly cribbed from Tyndale with some reworking of his translation."
It has been suggested that around 90% of the King James Version (or at least of the parts translated by Tyndale) is from Tyndale's works, with as much as one third of the text being word-for-word Tyndale.
However, historians such as Richard Marsden have cautioned that much scriptural language is simple and "offers little scope for variation by translators," and note that Tyndale himself was not working from scratch with a tabula rasa.
Many of the English versions since then have drawn inspiration from Tyndale, such as the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, and the English Standard Version. Even the paraphrases like the Living Bible have been inspired by the same desire to make the Bible understandable to Tyndale's proverbial plowboy.
The Tyndale Bible also played a key role in spreading Reformation ideas to England which had been reluctant to embrace the movement. By including many of Martin Luther's commentaries in his works, Tyndale also allowed the people of England direct access to the words and ideas of Luther, whose works had been banned in England.