William Tyndale: Burnt at the Stake for Translating the Bible

Epigraph:

“Surely, the Believers, and the Jews, and the Christians and the Sabians — whichever party from among these truly believes in Allah and the Last Day and does good deeds — shall have their reward with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve.” (Al Quran 2:62/63 )

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Encyclopedia Britannica has the following to say about William Tyndale:

After church authorities in England prevented him from translating the Bible there, he went to Germany in 1524, receiving financial support from wealthy London merchants. His New Testament translation was completed in July 1525 and printed at Cologne and, when Catholic authorities suppressed it, at Worms. The first copies reached England in 1526. Tyndale then began work on an Old Testament translation but was captured in Antwerp before it was completed; he was executed at Vilvoorde in 1536.

At the time of his death, several thousand copies of his New Testament had been printed; however, only one intact copy remains today at London’s British Library. The first vernacular English text of any part of the Bible to be so published, Tyndale’s version became the basis for most subsequent English translations, beginning with the King James Version of 1611.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Tyndale (sometimes spelled Tynsdale, Tindall, Tindill, Tyndall; c. 1492–1536) was an English scholar who became a leading figure in Protestant reform in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known for his translation of the Bible into English. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther.^[1] While a number of partial and incomplete translations had been made from the seventh century onward, the grass-roots spread of Wycliffe’s Bible resulted in a death sentence for any unlicensed possession of Scripture in English—even though all the major European languages had been translated and made available.^[2][3] Tyndale’s translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, the first English one to take advantage of the printing press, and first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation. It was taken to be a direct challenge to the hegemony of both the Roman Catholic Church and English Laws to maintain church rulings. In 1530, Tyndale also wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII‘s divorce on the grounds that it contravened Scripture.

While Tyndale had to learn Hebrew in Germany due to England’s active Edict of Expulsion against the Jews, he worked in an age where Greek was available to the European scholarly community for the first time in centuries. Erasmus compiled and edited Greek Scriptures into the Textus Receptus—ironically, to improve upon the Latin Vulgate—following the Renaissance-fueling Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the dispersion of Greek-speaking intellectuals and texts into a Europe which previously had access to none. Sharing Erasmus’ translation ideals, Tyndale took the ill-regarded, unpopular and awkward Middle-English “vulgar” tongue, improved upon it using Greek and Hebrew syntaxes and idioms, and formed an Early Modern English basis that Shakespeare and others would later follow and build upon as Tyndale-inspired vernacular forms took over.^[2][4] When a copy of his paradigm shifting “The Obedience of a Christian Man” fell into the hands of Henry VIII, the king found the rationale to break the Church in England from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534.^[5][6]

In 1535, Tyndale was arrested and jailed in the castle of Filford outside Brussels for over a year. In 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake. His dying request that the King of England’s eyes would be opened seemed to find its fulfillment just two years later with Henry’s authorization of The Great Bible for the Church of England—which was largely Tyndale’s own work. Hence, The Tyndale Bible, as it was known, continued to play a key role in spreading Reformation ideas across the English-speaking world and eventually, on the global British Empire. His version also worked prominently into the Geneva Bible which was taken to the New World to Jamestown in 1607, and on the Mayflower in 1620. Notably, in 1611, the 54 independent scholars who created the King James Version, drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale’s, and the Old Testament 76%.^[7]

Contents [hide] 1 Biography 1.1 At Oxford 1.2 In Europe 1.3 Opposition to Henry VIII’s divorce 1.4 Betrayal and death 2 Theological views 3 Printed works 4 Legacy 4.1 Impact on the English language 4.1.1 Controversy over new words and phrases 4.2 Impact on the English Bible 4.3 Memorials 4.4 Liturgical commemoration 5 Films about Tyndale 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

Biography

Tyndale was born at some time in the period 1484–1496, possibly in one of the villages near Dursley, Gloucestershire. The Tyndale family also went by the name Hychyns (Hitchins), and it was as William Hychyns that Tyndale was enrolled at Magdalen College School, Oxford. Tyndale’s family had migrated to Gloucestershire at some point in the fifteenth century – probably as a result of the Wars of the Roses. The family derived from Northumberland via East Anglia. Tyndale’s uncle, Edward, was receiver to the lands of Lord Berkeley. Edward Smith is recorded in two genealogies^[8] as having been the brother of Sir William Tyndale, of Deane, Northumberland, and Hockwald, Norfolk, who was knighted at the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales to Katherine of Aragon. Tyndale’s family was therefore derived from Baron Adam de Tyndale, a tenant-in-chief of Henry I (see Tyndall). William Tyndale’s niece was Margaret Tyndale who married Rowland Taylor “The Martyr”.

At Oxford

Tyndale began a Bachelor of Arts degree at Magdalen Hall (later Hertford College) of Oxford University in 1506 and received his B.A. in 1512; the same year becoming a subdeacon. He was made Master of Arts in July 1515 and was held to be a man of virtuous disposition, leading an unblemished life.^[9] The M.A. allowed him to start studying theology, but the official course did not include the systematic study of Scripture. As Tyndale later complained:

“They have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture, until he be noselled in heathen learning eight or nine years and armed with false principles, with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.”

He was a gifted linguist, over the years becoming fluent in French, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, in addition to his native English.^[10] Between 1517 and 1521, he went to the University of Cambridge. Erasmus had been the leading teacher of Greek there from August 1511 to January 1512, but not during Tyndale’s time at the university.^[11] Tyndale may have met Thomas Bilney and John Frith whilst there.^[12]

Tyndale became chaplain to the house of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury and tutor to his children in about 1521. His opinions proved controversial to fellow clergymen, and around 1522 he was called before John Bell, the Chancellor of the Diocese of Worcester, though no formal charges were laid.^[13]

After the harsh meeting with Bell and other church leaders, and near the end of Tyndale’s time at Little Sodbury, John Foxe describes an argument with a “learned” but “blasphemous” clergyman, who had asserted to Tyndale that, “We had better be without God’s laws than the Pope’s.” Tyndale responded: “I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!”^[14][15]

Tyndale left for London in 1523 to seek permission to translate the Bible into English. He requested help from Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, a well-known classicist who had praised Erasmus after working together with him on a Greek New Testament. The bishop, however, declined to extend his patronage, telling Tyndale he had no room for him in his household.^[16] Tyndale preached and studied “at his book” in London for some time, relying on the help of a cloth merchant, Humphrey Monmouth. During this time he lectured widely, including at St Dunstan-in-the-West.

In Europe

William Tyndale then left England and landed on the continent, perhaps at Hamburg, in the spring of the year 1524, possibly travelling on to Wittenberg. The entry of the name “Guillelmus Daltici ex Anglia“ in the matriculation registers of the University Wittenberg has been taken to be a Latinization of “William Tyndale from England”.^[17] At this time, possibly in Wittenberg, he began translating the New Testament, completing it in 1525, with assistance from Observant friar William Roy.

In 1525, publication of the work by Peter Quentell, in Cologne, was interrupted by the impact of anti-Lutheranism. It was not until 1526 that a full edition of the New Testament was produced by the printer Peter Schoeffer in Worms, a free imperial city then in the process of adopting Lutheranism.^[18] More copies were soon printed in Antwerp. The book was smuggled into England and Scotland, and was condemned in October 1526 by Bishop Tunstall, who issued warnings to booksellers and had copies burned in public.^[19] Marius notes that the “spectacle of the scriptures being put to the torch” “provoked controversy even amongst the faithful.”^[19] Cardinal Wolsey condemned Tyndale as a heretic, his first mention in open court as a heretic being in January 1529.^[20]

From an entry in George Spalatin‘s Diary, on 11 August 1526, it seems that Tyndale remained at Worms about a year. It is not clear exactly when he left Worms and moved to Antwerp. The colophon to Tyndale’s translation of Genesis and the title pages of several pamphlets from this time are purported to have been printed by Hans Luft at Marburg, but this is a false address. Hans Luft, the printer of Luther’s books, never had a printing press at Marburg.^{[citation needed]}

Around 1529, it is possible that Tyndale intended to move to Hamburg, carrying on his work. He revised his New Testament and began translating the Old Testament and writing various treatises.

Opposition to Henry VIII’s divorce

In 1530, he wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII‘s planned divorce from Catherine of Aragon, in favour of Anne Boleyn, on the grounds that it was unscriptural and was a plot by Cardinal Wolsey to get Henry entangled in the papal courts of Pope Clement VII.^[21] The king’s wrath was aimed at Tyndale: Henry asked the Emperor Charles V to have the writer apprehended and returned to England under the terms of the Treaty of Cambrai, however, the Emperor responded that formal evidence was required before extradition.^[22] Tyndale developed his case in An Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue.

Betrayal and death

Eventually, Tyndale was betrayed by Henry Phillips to the imperial authorities,^[23] seized in Antwerp in 1535 and held in the castle of Filford near Brussels.^[24] He was tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and condemned to death, despite Thomas Cromwell‘s intercession on his behalf. Tyndale “was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned”.^[25] Tyndale’s final words, spoken “at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice”, were reported as “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes.”^[26] The traditional date of commemoration is 6 October, but records of Tyndale’s imprisonment suggest the actual date of his execution might have been some weeks earlier.^[27] Foxe gives 6 October as the date of commemoration (left-hand date column), but gives no date of death (right-hand date column).^[24]

Within four years, at the same king’s behest, four English translations of the Bible were published in England,^[28] including Henry’s official Great Bible. All were based on Tyndale’s work.

Theological views

Tyndale denounced the practice of prayer to saints.^[29] He taught justification by faith, believer’s baptism, the return of Christ, and mortality of the soul.^[30]

Printed works

Most well known for his translation of the Bible, Tyndale was an active writer and translator. Not only did Tyndale’s works focus on the way in which religion should be carried out, but were also greatly keyed towards the political arena.

Year Printed	Name of Work	Place of Publication	Publisher
1525	The New Testament Translation (incomplete)	Cologne
1526*	The New Testament Translation (first full printed edition in English)	Worms
1526	A compendious introduccion, prologue or preface into the epistle of Paul to the Romans
1528	The parable of the wicked mammon	Antwerp
1528	The Obedience of a Christen Man[31] (and how Christen rulers ought to govern…)	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1530*	The five books of Moses [the Pentateuch] Translation (each book with individual title page)	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1530	The practyse of prelates	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1531	The exposition of the fyrste epistle of seynt Jhon with a prologge before it	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1531?	The prophete Jonas Translation	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1531	An answere vnto sir Thomas Mores dialogue
1533?	An exposicion vppon the. v. vi. vii. chapters of Mathew
1533	Erasmus: Enchiridion militis Christiani Translation
1534	The New Testament Translation (thoroughly revised, with a second foreword against George Joye‘s unauthorised changes in an edition of Tyndale’s New Testament published earlier in the same year)	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1535	The testament of master Wylliam Tracie esquier, expounded both by W. Tindall and J. Frith
1536?	A path way into the holy scripture
1537	The bible, which is all the holy scripture Translation (only in part Tyndale’s)
1548?	A briefe declaration of the sacraments
1573	The whole workes of W. Tyndall, John Frith, and Doct. Barnes, edited by John Foxe
1848*	Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures		Tindal, Frith, Barnes
1849*	Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures Together with the Practice of Prelates
1850*	An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord after the True Meaning of John VI. and I Cor. XI., and William Tracy’s Testament Expounded
1964*	The Work of William Tyndale
1989**	Tyndale’s New Testament
1992**	Tyndale’s Old Testament
Forthcoming	The Independent Works of William Tyndale
*	These works were printed more than once, usually signifying a revision or reprint. However the 1525 edition was printed as an incomplete quarto and was then reprinted in 1526 as a complete octavo.
**	These works were reprints of Tyndale’s earlier translations revised for modern spelling.

Legacy

Impact on the English language

In translating the Bible, Tyndale introduced new words into the English language, and many were subsequently used in the King James Bible:

• Jehovah (from a transliterated Hebrew construction in the Old Testament; composed from the Tetragrammaton YHWH)
• Passover (as the name for the Jewish holiday, Pesach or Pesah)
• scapegoat (the goat that bears the sins and iniquities of the people in Leviticus, Chapter 16)

Coinage of the word atonement (a concatenation of the words ‘At One’ to describe Christ’s work of restoring a good relationship—a reconciliation—between God and people)^[32] is also sometimes ascribed to Tyndale.^[33][34] However, the word was probably in use by at least 1513, before Tyndale’s translation.^[35][36] Similarly, sometimes Tyndale is said to have coined the term mercy seat.^[37] While it is true that Tyndale introduced the word into English, mercy seat is more accurately a translation of Martin Luther‘s German Gnadenstuhl.^[38]

As well as individual words, Tyndale also coined such familiar phrases as:

• lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
• knock and it shall be opened unto you
• twinkling of an eye (another translation from Luther)^[37]
• a moment in time
• fashion not yourselves to the world
• seek and you shall find
• ask and it shall be given you
• judge not that you not be judged
• the word of God which liveth and lasteth forever
• let there be light (Luther translated Genesis 1,3 as: Es werde Licht, which would be word for word translated: It will be light)
• the powers that be
• my brother’s keeper
• the salt of the earth
• a law unto themselves
• filthy lucre
• it came to pass
• gave up the ghost
• the signs of the times
• the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak (which is like Luther’s translation of Mathew 26,41: der Geist ist willig, aber das Fleisch ist schwach; Wyclif for example translated it with: for the spirit is ready, but the flesh is sick.)
• live and move and have our being
• fight the good fight

Controversy over new words and phrases

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church did not approve of some of the words and phrases introduced by Tyndale, such as “overseer”, where the it would have understood as “bishop,” “elder” for “priest,” and “love” rather than “charity.” Tyndale, citing Erasmus, contended that the Greek New Testament did not support the traditional Roman Catholic readings. More controversially, Tyndale translated the Greek “ekklesia,” (literally “called out ones”^[39]) as “congregation” rather than “Church.”^[40] It has been asserted this translation choice “was a direct threat to the Church’s ancient—but so Tyndale here made clear, non-scriptural—claim to be the body of Christ on earth. To change these words was to strip the Church hierarchy of its pretensions to be Christ’s terrestrial representative, and to award this honour to individual worshipers who made up each congregation.”^[40]

Contention from Roman Catholics came not only from real or perceived errors in translation but also a fear of the erosion of their social power if Christians could read the Bible in their own language. “The Pope’s dogma is bloody,” Tyndale wrote in his Obedience of a Christian Man.^[41] Thomas More (since 1925 in the Catholic church, Saint Thomas More) commented that searching for errors in the Tyndale Bible was similar to searching for water in the sea, and charged Tyndale’s translation of Obedience of a Christian Man with having about a thousand falsely translated errors. Bishop Tunstall of London declared that there were upwards of 2,000 errors in Tyndale’s Bible, having already in 1523 denied Tyndale the permission required under the Constitutions of Oxford (1409), which were still in force, to translate the Bible into English.

In response to allegations of inaccuracies in his translation in the New Testament, Tyndale in the Prologue to his 1525 translation wrote that he never intentionally altered or misrepresented any of the Bible in his translation, but that he had sought to “interpret the sense of the scripture and the meaning of the spirit.”^[40]

While translating, Tyndale followed Erasmus‘ (1522) Greek edition of the New Testament. In his Preface to his 1534 New Testament (“WT unto the Reader”), he not only goes into some detail about the Greek tenses but also points out that there is often a Hebrew idiom underlying the Greek. The Tyndale Society adduces much further evidence to show that his translations were made directly from the original Hebrew and Greek sources he had at his disposal. For example, the Prolegomena in Mombert’s William Tyndale’s Five Books of Moses show that Tyndale’s Pentateuch is a translation of the Hebrew original. His translation also drew on Latin Vulgate and Luther’s 1521 September Testament.^[40]

Of the first (1526) edition of Tyndale’s New Testament, only three copies survive. The only complete copy is part of the Bible Collection of Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart. The copy of the British Library is almost complete, lacking only the title page and list of contents. Another rarity of Tyndale’s is the Pentateuch of which only nine remain.

Impact on the English Bible

The Bible in English
Old English (pre-1066) Middle English (1066–1500) Early Modern English (1500–1800) Modern Christian (1800–) Modern Jewish (1853–) Miscellaneous
v· t· e

The translators of the Revised Standard Version in the 1940s noted that Tyndale’s translation inspired the great translations that followed, including 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”. Many scholars today believe that such is the case. Moynahan writes: “A complete analysis of the Authorised Version, known down the generations as “the AV” or “the King James” was made in 1998. It shows that Tyndale’s words account for 84% of the New Testament and for 75.8% of the Old Testament books that he translated.^[42] Joan Bridgman makes the comment in the Contemporary Review that, “He [Tyndale] is the mainly unrecognised 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.”^[43]

Many of the great 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 ploughboy.^[44][45]

George Steiner in his book on translation After Babel refers to “the influence of the genius of Tyndale, the greatest of English Bible translators…” [After Babel p. 366]. He has also appeared as a character in two plays dealing with the King James Bible, Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn (2010) and David Edgar’s Written on the Heart (2011).

Memorials

A memorial to Tyndale stands in Vilvoorde, where he was executed. It was erected in 1913 by Friends of the Trinitarian Bible Society of London and the Belgian Bible Society^[46] There is also a small William Tyndale Museum in the town, attached to the Protestant church.^[47]

A bronze statue by Sir Joseph Boehm commemorating the life and work of Tyndale was erected in Victoria Embankment Gardens on the Thames Embankment, London in 1884. It shows his right hand on an open Bible, which is itself resting on an early printing press.

The Tyndale Monument was built in 1866 on a hill above his supposed birthplace, North Nibley, Gloucestershire.

A number of colleges, schools and study centres have been named in his honour, including Tyndale House (Cambridge), Tyndale University College and Seminary (Toronto), the Tyndale-Carey Graduate School affiliated to the Bible College of New Zealand, William Tyndale College (Farmington Hills, Michigan), and Tyndale Theological Seminary (Shreveport, Louisiana, and Fort Worth, Texas), as well as the independent Tyndale Theological Seminary^[48] in Badhoevedorp, near Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

An American Christian publishing house, also called Tyndale House, was named after Tyndale.

Liturgical commemoration

By tradition Tyndale’s death is commemorated on 6 October.^[49] There are commemorations on this date in the church calendars of members of the Anglican Communion, initially as one of the “days of optional devotion” in the American Book of Common Prayer (1979),^[50] and a “black-letter day” in the Church of England‘s Alternative Service Book.^[51] The Common Worship that came into use in the Church of England in 2000 provides a collect proper to 6 October, beginning with the words:

“Lord, give your people grace to hear and keep your word that, after the example of your servant William Tyndale, we may not only profess your gospel but also be ready to suffer and die for it, to the honour of your name; …”

See the List of Anglican Church Calendars.

Tyndale is also honoured in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as a translator and martyr the same day.

Films about Tyndale

• The first biographical film about Tyndale, titled William Tindale, was released in 1937.^[52]
• The second, titled God’s Outlaw: The Story of William Tyndale, was released in 1986.
• A cartoon film about his life, titled Torchlighters: The William Tyndale Story, was released ca. 2005.^{[citation needed]}
• The film Stephen’s Test of Faith (1998) includes a long scene with Tyndale, how he translated the Bible and how he was put to death.^[53]
• The documentary film, William Tyndale: Man with a Mission, was released ca. 2005. The movie included an interview with David Daniell.^{[citation needed]}
• Another known documentary is the film William Tyndale: His Life, His Legacy.^[54]
• The 2-hour Channel 4 documentary, The Bible Revolution, presented by Rod Liddle, details the roles of historically significant English Reformers John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, and Thomas Cranmer.
• The “Battle for the Bible” (2007) episode of the PBS Secrets of the Dead series, narrated by Liev Schreiber, features Tyndale’s story and legacy and includes historical context. This film is an abbreviated and revised version of the PBS/Channel 4 version, and replaces some British footage with that more relevant to American audiences.^{[citation needed]}
• In 2011, BYUtv produced a miniseries on the creation of the King James Bible that focused heavily on Tyndale’s life called Fires of Faith.^[55][56]

See also

• Luther Bible
• Matthew Bible
• Works of Arnold Wathen Robinson, reference to stained glass featuring William Tyndale

Notes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Tyndale

Wikisourcehas original works written by or about:William Tyndale

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Tyndale

• History of English Bible versions from Tyndale to the King James Version
• Works by William Tyndale at Project Gutenberg
• Look Higher ! – Download the 1530 Tyndale Bible in PDF format
• Find A Grave Entry
• Documentary about Tyndale, from Secrets of the Dead
• Downloadable cleartext of Tyndales translation
• https://familysearch.org/search/treeDetails/show?uri=http://tree.familysearch.org:8080/www-af-webservice/person/2041841/
• Portraits of William Tyndale at the National Portrait Gallery, London