William Tyndale

"Tyndale" redirects here. For the English family, see Tyndall. For other uses, see Tyndale (disambiguation).

William Tyndale
Born	c. 1494 Gloucestershire, England
Died	c. 6 October 1536 near Vilvoorde, Duchy of Brabant, Seventeen Provinces
Cause of death	Executed by strangling, then burnt at the stake
Alma mater	Magdalen Hall, University of Oxford
Known for	Tyndale Bible

William Tyndale (/ˈtɪndəl/; sometimes spelled Tynsdale, Tindall, Tindill, Tyndall; c. 1494–1536) 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. While a number of partial translations had been made from the seventh century onward, the spread of Wycliffe's Bible resulted in a death sentence for any unlicensed possession of Scripture in English—even though translations in all other major European languages had been accomplished and made available. 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 Church of England and the laws of England to maintain the church's position. In 1530, Tyndale also wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon on the grounds that it contravened Scripture.

Reuchlin's Hebrew grammar was published in 1506. Tyndale worked in an age in which 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. When a copy of 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.

In 1535 Tyndale was arrested and jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde (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 prayer 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, to the British Empire.

In 1611 the 54 scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as from 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%. With his translation of the Bible the first to be printed in English, and a model for subsequent English translations, in 2002, Tyndale was placed at number 26 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Life

Tyndale was born at some time in the period 1484–1496 in Melksham Court, Stinchcombe, a village 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 Hall, Oxford. Tyndale's family had moved to Gloucestershire at some point in the 15th century, probably as a result of the Wars of the Roses. The family derived from Northumberland via East Anglia. Tyndale's brother, Edward, was receiver to the lands of Lord Berkeley as attested to in a letter by Bishop Stokesley of London. Tyndale is recorded in two genealogies 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 Catherine of Aragon. Tyndale's family was thus derived from Baron Adam de Tyndale, a tenant-in-chief of Henry I (see Tyndall). William Tyndale's niece, Margaret Tyndale, was married to the Protestant martyr Rowland Taylor, burnt during the Marian Persecutions.

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. 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.

A gifted linguist, over the years he became fluent in French, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, in addition to English. 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.

Sculpted Head of William Tyndale from St Dunstan-in-the-West Church, London

Tyndale became chaplain at the home of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury and tutor to his children around 1521. His opinions proved controversial to fellow clergymen, and the next year he was summoned before John Bell, the Chancellor of the Diocese of Worcester, although no formal charges were laid at the time. 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!"

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. 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

Tyndale left England and landed on continental Europe, perhaps at Hamburg, in the spring of 1524, possibly traveling on to Wittenberg. The entry of the name "Guillelmus Daltici ex Anglia" in the matriculation registers of the University of Wittenberg has been taken to be a Latinization of "William Tyndale from England". At this time, possibly in Wittenberg, he began translating the New Testament, completing it in 1525 with assistance from Observant friar William Roy.

The beginning of the Gospel of John, from Tyndale's 1525 translation of the New Testament.

In 1525 publication of the work by Peter Quentell, in Cologne, was interrupted by the impact of anti-Lutheranism. A full edition of the New Testament was produced in 1526 by the printer Peter Schoeffer in Worms, a free imperial city then in the process of adopting Lutheranism. More copies were soon printed in Antwerp. The book was smuggled into England and Scotland; it was condemned in October 1526 by Bishop Tunstall, who issued warnings to booksellers and had copies burned in public. Marius notes that the "spectacle of the scriptures being put to the torch. . .provoked controversy even amongst the faithful." Cardinal Wolsey condemned Tyndale as a heretic, first stated in open court in January 1529.

From an entry in George Spalatin's Diary, for 11 August 1526, Tyndale apparently remained at Worms for about a year. It is not clear exactly when he moved to Antwerp. The colophon to Tyndale's translation of Genesis and the title pages of several pamphlets from this time 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.

William Tyndale, before being strangled and burned at the stake, cries out, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes". woodcut from Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563).

It is possible that Tyndale intended to carry on his work from Hamburg in about 1529. 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. 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. Tyndale developed his case in An Answer unto Sir Thomas More's Dialogue.

Betrayal and death

Memorial to William Tyndale in a Vilvoorde public garden

Eventually, Tyndale was betrayed by Henry Phillips to the imperial authorities, seized in Antwerp in 1535, and held in the castle of Vilvoorde (Filford) near Brussels. He was tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and was condemned to be burned 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". His 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." 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. Foxe gives 6 October as the date of commemoration (left-hand date column), but gives no date of death (right-hand date column).

Within four years four English translations of the Bible were published in England at the King's behest, including Henry's official Great Bible. All were based on Tyndale's work.

Theological views

Tyndale denounced the practice of prayer to saints. He taught justification by faith, the return of Christ, and mortality of the soul.

Printed works

Although best known for his translation of the Bible, Tyndale was also an active writer and translator. As well as his focus on the ways in which religion should be lived, he had a focus on political issues.

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 introduction, 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 (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 practice of prelates	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1531	The exposition of the first epistle of saint John with a prologue before it	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1531?	The prophet Jonah Translation	Antwerp	Merten de Keyser
1531	An answer into Sir Thomas More's dialogue
1533?	An exposicion upon 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 esquire, 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 brief declaration of the sacraments
1573	The whole works of W. Tyndall, John Frith, and Doct. Barnes, edited by John Foxe
1848*	Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, edited by Henry Walter		Tindal, Frith, Barnes
1849*	Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures Together with the Practice of Prelates, edited by Henry Walter
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, edited by Henry Walter
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,; many were subsequently used in the King James Bible:

• Passover (as the name for the Jewish holiday, Pesach or Pesah)
• scapegoat
• Jesus Birth (the holiday of Christmas)

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) is also sometimes ascribed to Tyndale. However, the word was probably in use by at least 1513, before Tyndale's translation. Similarly, sometimes Tyndale is said to have coined the term mercy seat. While it is true that Tyndale introduced the word into English, mercy seat is more accurately a translation of Martin Luther's German Gnadenstuhl.

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)
• a moment in time
• fashion not yourselves to the world
• seek and you shall find
• eat, drink and be merry
• 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
• 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 it would have been 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") as "congregation" rather than "church". 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 worshippers who made up each congregation."

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 The Obedience of a Christian Man. Thomas More (since 1935 in the Roman 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 The 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, but that he had sought to "interpret the sense of the scripture and the meaning of the spirit."

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 the Latin Vulgate and Luther's 1521 September Testament.

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 is Tyndale's Pentateuch, of which only nine remain.

Impact on the English Bible

The translators of the Revised Standard Version in the 1940s noted that Tyndale's translation inspired the 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. 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."

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 ploughboy.

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. There is also a small William Tyndale Museum in the town, attached to the Protestant church.

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 stained-glass window commemorating Tyndale was made in 1911 for the British and Foreign Bible Society by James Powell. In 1994, when the Society moved their offices, the window was reinstalled in the chapel of Hertford College. Tyndale was at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, which became Hertford College in 1874. The window depicts a full-length portrait of Tyndale, a cameo of a printing shop in action, some words of Tyndale, the opening words of Genesis in Hebrew, the opening words of John's Gospel in Greek, and the names of other pioneering Bible translators. The portrait is based on the oil painting that hangs in the college's dining hall.

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), the independent Tyndale Theological Seminary in Badhoevedorp, near Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Tyndale Christian School in South Australia and Tyndale Park Christian School in New Zealand.

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

A life sized bronze statue of a seated William Tyndale at work on his translation by Lawrence Holofcener (2000) was placed in the Millennium Square, Bristol, United Kingdom. In 2008, vandals attacked the statue, which was taken away, repaired, and reinstalled.

Liturgical commemoration

By tradition Tyndale's death is commemorated on 6 October. 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), and a "black-letter day" in the Church of England's Alternative Service Book. 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The documentary film, William Tyndale: Man with a Mission, was released ca. 2005. The movie included an interview with David Daniell.
• Another known documentary is the film William Tyndale: His Life, His Legacy.
• 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.
• 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.
• 2013, The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England, BBC Two, 60 minute documentary written and presented by Melvyn Bragg

Tyndale's pronunciation

Tyndale was writing at the beginning of the Early Modern English period. His pronunciation must have differed in its phonology from that of Shakespeare at the end of the period. The linguist David Crystal has made a transcription and a sound recording of Tyndale's translation of the whole of Saint Matthew's Gospel in what he believes to be the pronunciation of the day, using the term "original pronunciation". The recording has been published by The British Library on two compact discs with an introductory essay by Crystal.

See also

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

Sources

• .
• .
• .
• .
• .
• .
• .
• .
• Adapted from , online by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Additional references are available there.
• .
• .
• .
• .
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
• .
• .
• . The online version corrects the name of Tyndale's Antwerp landlord as "Thomas Pointz" vice the "Henry Pointz" indicated in the print ed.
• .

Further reading

• .

• Teems, David (2012) Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God An English Voice (Thomas Nelson)

External links

•  
• .
• .
• .
• .
• .
• Portraits of William Tyndale at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• The Tyndale Society.
• Works by William Tyndale at Project Gutenberg
• Works by William Tyndale at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)