William Tyndale and the English Reformation
By
Phil Newton
Written for
Kairos Journal
Browse through almost any Christian bookstore and you will find dozens of options for purchasing a new Bible. Translations from the Authorized Version to the New International Version to the Revised New English Bible to the New Century Version are among a few you will locate. You ask for a study Bible and you are shown more options than the mind can handle from reformed to dispensational to charismatic to special teenager helps to women and men's study Bibles. But if you lived in the early part of the 16th century you could not find a Bible in English much less options for translations and study helps.
John Wycliffe and the Lollards
John Wycliffe made an attempt to provide the Bible in English during the late 14th century. But Wycliffe had only the Latin Vulgate, not the Hebrew and Greek manuscript versions of the originals (which he did not know anyway), and no printing press to reproduce his translations. The Roman Catholic Church was up in arms over his translation of a translation. It was not that they were concerned that it might lack accuracy, which in fact it did since it was based on the Latin Vulgate. They did not want the common man or even the educated man to have the Word of God in their own language. Otherwise the many dogmas of the church would be revealed for their lack of Scriptural basis. Wycliffe continued his translation work, distributing handwritten copies of Scripture portions throughout the villages of England by the hand of poor priests he had recruited - known as Lollards - a derisive term meaning "mumblers" because of their speaking and preaching the Word. Wycliffe lost his position at Oxford over his evangelical work but went to the grave in peace. Forty years after his death the Council of Constance ordered his bones dug up, and later the Bishop of London ordered them burned and the ashes scattered into the River Swift.
But church councils and bishops with fire cannot stop the Word of God. The Lollards, though greatly persecuted, continued to spread small portions of the Word of God in the "vulgar tongue." More was needed, for a spiritual hunger was emerging throughout Europe. God raised up Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin on the Continent to call the populace back to Scripture alone. But just as important as these better-known reformers, God raised up William Tyndale for the salvation of the common man in England.
The Lord has never been constrained to use only those people who express devotion to him. We need only look to Nebachadnezzar and Cyrus, ancient kings that were called the servants of the Lord, to know that he can use whomever he desires to accomplish his purposes. In the case of early 16th century England, the Lord used a Dutch humanist scholar by the name of Desiderius Erasmus as a choice instrument of reformation. Erasmus was no evangelical even though he joined them with a number of grievances toward the Pope and the Catholic Church's doctrinal and social abuses. Erasmus even wrote tracts and papers exposing the errors of the papacy though he remained a Catholic and friend of the papacy all his life. Erasmus was the greatest scholar of his day. He was a superb Greek scholar - a rarity in that era. With his access to the Vatican holdings, Erasmus assimilated the first Greek New Testament for publication in 1516, compiling in critical fashion a dozen or so manuscripts into one Greek Testament. In his preface he encouraged "the translation of the Scripture into the common tongues of Europe." Soon German, French, and English translations appeared [Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, 268].
One of the young scholars that bought a copy of Erasmus' Greek New Testament was Thomas Bilney of Cambridge. As he opened it his eyes fell upon Paul's word to Timothy: "It is a true saying and worthy of all men to be embraced, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (I Tim. 1:15). "This one sentence," Bilney later recalled, "did so exhilarate my heart, being before wounded with the guilt of my sins, and being almost in despair, that immediately I felt a marvelous comfort and quietness, in so much 'that my bruised bones leaped for joy'" [Timothy George, "The Translator's Tale," Christianity Today, October 24, 1994, 37].
When William Tyndale completed his master's degree at Oxford he made his way to Cambridge to study where Erasmus had been lecturing and having great influence. Erasmus was gone by the time Tyndale arrived, somewhere around 1518-1520. The college was noted for its Greek scholarship and more importantly, a shift from studying only Terence, Plato, and Cicero to that of studying the letters of Paul. Details are sketchy about whom Tyndale befriended during his days at Cambridge, but it is certain that at minimum, the influence of Bilney, Robert Barnes, John Frith, and others had an effect upon the young scholar. What would not have been spoken of at Oxford was openly discussed at Cambridge: the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Study of the Greek New Testament took place in the Spartan rooms of the students, in private meeting places, and in clandestine gatherings. William Tyndale breathed deeply of the rarified air of reformation sweeping through Cambridge.
William Tyndale was born at Slymbridge near the Welsh border in 1494, an area where he eventually landed for a couple of years as tutor for a wealthy gentleman's children. Little is known about his early life except that he was raised in reasonably prosperous surroundings with family land holdings and possibly interest in farming or raising sheep for cloth merchants. Along with his brothers, two of whom were later involved in passing along Tyndale's forbidden books and Bible translations, William grew up in the hilly Cotswold region, hearing Welsh, English, and Latin in daily settings. This may have helped to spur on his early interest in languages.
Tyndale received his bachelor's degree from Oxford in 1512 having registered under the name William Hychyns, a name his family assumed when they fled from the valley of Tyne in Northumberland during the Wars of the Roses (Brian Edwards, God's Outlaw, 29). In 1515 he received the master's degree, and by 1520 the family returned to the name Tyndale. He moved to Cambridge after completing his master's degree to pursue further study in the Greek language, which he desired to master, and particularly the Greek New Testament. Eventually he mastered seven languages and put these to good use in his research, translation, and writing.
From 1521-1523, Sir John Walsh of Little Sodbury Manor as tutor for his two sons employed Tyndale. In this secluded region near his boyhood home, Tyndale was able to pursue translation work, completing a translation of Erasmus' Manual of the Christian Soldier. Often Sir John Walsh would entertain guests in his manor, occasionally hosting priests at his table. He found delight in allowing his young scholar-in-residence to dialogue with the priests over meals. On one occasion after a priest had rambled on with his popery, William Tyndale announced, "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost." Needless to say, the conversation ended! But Tyndale's work was just beginning.
He left Little Sodbury Manor for London where he sought out Bishop Tunstall, a friend of Erasmus. His goal was to be commissioned by the Bishop to translate the Greek New Testament into English for the common man. Tunstall was impressed with Tyndale's handling of the Greek but had no desire to oppose the ban on the English Bible that had been in effect since 1408. Rebuffed but not despondent, Tyndale sought other avenues for completing his work. The pressure began to mount as Tyndale realized that neither Tunstall nor King Henry VIII would back down on the ban on the English Bible, so he traveled to Germany in 1524 through the help of a London merchant. Tyndale never returned to his homeland but spent the balance of his life in secrecy so that he could give himself to the work of translation.
Tyndale's time in Germany was spent partially with Martin Luther, as the two discussed the work of translation and Christian doctrine. Tyndale remained there for eight or nine months but left because he wanted a sense of independence in both his translation and from Luther's weak points. Though he agreed with Luther on the cardinal doctrines of "justification by faith alone, the sovereignty of divine grace, and the infallibility of Scripture," he disagreed "on issues such as the nature of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper and the role of sanctification in the life of the Christian," holding a position much closer to Zwingli and Calvin [T. George, 38].
From Worms he moved to Cologne, a Catholic stronghold, where he first began to print the English New Testament. A radical opponent of the Reformation, John Cochlaeus, happened to be utilizing the same printer as Tyndale and overheard workers discussing an English translation of the New Testament. Cochlaeus passed word to authorities so that the printer's shop was raided as he was in the middle of printing Mark's Gospel. Tyndale had gotten word of the raid and grabbed his precious translation, along with an armload of printed pages and headed up the Rhine River to Luther's territory of Worms. There a printer named Peter Schoeffer printed the first 6000 copies of the English New Testament. By early 1526 copies began to spread throughout England like an unstoppable wave. England was experiencing famine conditions so that the import of grain was essential to their survival. Merchants that shipped the grain and seed also sneaked the "seed of the Word of God" into the containers carrying their goods. Copies of Tyndale's New Testament in English crossed the English Channel in barrels of grain to feed the spiritual famine of the English-speaking world. The secret cooperation of merchants prevented the Testaments from immediate confiscation. The printer's haste did little to help the translation from a number of errors that Tyndale did not like. But he was ready to get the Scripture into people's hands as quickly as possible. Ironically, the very man that Tyndale sought out in the first place, Bishop Tunstall, bought up every copy he could find and burned them at St. Paul's Cross Church in London. Tunstall wrote to his archdeacons explaining that the Testaments had to be found and destroyed. He complained of the "holy gospel of God" that was written in the common tongue was intermingled with
...certain articles of heretical depravity and pernicious erroneous opinions, pestilent, scandalous, and seductive of simple minds...of which translation many books, containing the pestilent and pernicious poison in the vulgar (common) tongue, have been dispersed in great numbers throughout our diocese; which truly, unless it be speedily foreseen will without doubt infect and contaminate the flock committed to us, with the pestilent poison and the deadly disease of heretical depravity [Edwards 92].
With all of Tunstall's adjectival expletives, Tyndale rejoiced in Tunstall's move because it afforded him money to improve his translation and the next printing. He understood clearly the sovereign working of God's wise providence in his life. God worked Tunstall's evil for good. And the "boy that driveth the plow" had the Scripture in his own tongue.
Once Tyndale's translation began to hit the streets, the English authorities-civil and religious-began to get edgy. Tyndale was a marked man from this point on, as Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and the scholar, Thomas More, invoked their rage against him. At this point in his story, Tyndale's life sounds more like that of a cloak-and-dagger secret agent than one of a humble bible translator! He lived in secrecy; passed his manuscripts through other sources; avoided publicity; and maintained diligence in his work. On one occasion he agreed to meet a government official as long as he was alone and agreed not to entrap him. They met in a remote spot in an open field. After the discussion, Tyndale walked away, seemingly disappearing before the eyes of the official. Though he lived with constant danger for eleven years, the Lord protected his servant even while the English government and Roman Catholic Church diligently sought him out.
Just how accurate of a job did Tyndale do on his translation of the New Testament? If you have read the King James Translation or Authorized Version of the Bible then you have read 85-90% of Tyndale's translation. Those translators were not original. Many of their improvements were not improvements at all but have had to be changed by modern translators. Tyndale said of his overriding principle in translation work: "I call God to record, against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, to give a reckoning of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience, nor would this day, if all that is in the earth, whether it be pleasure, honour or riches, might be given me" [Edwards 100]. The renowned Greek scholar of the nineteenth century, B.F. Westcott, commented, "He deals with the text as one who passed a scholar's judgement upon every fragment of the work, unbiased by any predecessor" [Edwards 100].
Aside from his translation work, Tyndale brought unity to the English language. No one, including Chaucer and Shakespeare, has had greater influence on the English language than William Tyndale. One writer stated,
Tyndale is the man who taught England how to read and showed Shakespeare how to write. No English writer-not even Shakespeare-has reached so many. According to a recent exhibit co-sponsored by the British Library and the Library of Congress: "Contrary to what history teaches about Chaucer being the father of the English Language, this mantle belongs to William Tyndale, whose work was read by ten thousand times as many people as Chaucer" [www.williamtyndale.com/0page1a.htm].
There are expressions we utilize on a regular basis that were coined by William Tyndale. He had the capacity to weave the homely language of the plowboy with the pungency of scholarship to produce a readable text of God's Word. Phrases like, "eat, drink, and be merry," "the powers that be," "fight the good fight," "am I my brother's keeper," "the salt of the earth," and "a man after his own heart" were crafted by Tyndale and remain part of our regular speech.
Tyndale settled the last several years of his life in Antwerp, Belgium. It was home to a strong English merchant community that readily aided Tyndale's desire to spread the Word of God in England. Many of them eventually lost their livelihood and lives over their involvement in secretly shipping the Scripture into England. While in Antwerp Tyndale lived with a wealthy merchant, Thomas Poyntz, who offered him protection and a place to continue his translation work. On an occasion when Poyntz was out of the country on business a man whom Tyndale had befriended, Henry Phillips, lured him away from the safety of the English community in Antwerp to the narrow, winding streets of Antwerp. There, under the financial backing of the wicked Bishop Stokesley, officers waited in a pre-arranged spot to kidnap Tyndale. At the opening in a narrow street, Phillips politely allowed Tyndale to go first. As the translator moved into the dark opening, he spied the two officers, attempted to back up, but was pushed forward by Phillips who pointed at Tyndale to alert the soldiers that they had their man. He was bound with ropes and carried to the castle of Vilvorde that was modeled after the French Bastille, just a few miles north of Brussels.
What were the crimes of William Tyndale? The charges totaled seven in all.
1. He maintains that faith alone justifies.
2. He maintains that to believe in the forgiveness of sins and to embrace the mercy offered in the Gospel, is enough for salvation.
3. He avers that human traditions cannot bind the conscience, except where their neglect might occasion scandal.
4. He denies the freedom of the will.
5. He denies that there is any purgatory.
6. He affirms that neither the Virgin nor the Saints pray for us in their own person.
7. He asserts that neither the Virgin nor the Saints should be invoked by us [www.williamtyndalecom/0page1a.htm].
"Lord, Open the King of England's Eyes"
At the castle of Vilvorde, Tyndale remained prisoner for over a year despite the heroic efforts of Thomas Poyntz and others who sought his release. Among the few surviving documents of William Tyndale is a letter written in Latin and addressed to the governor of the prison. In it he requested from his own goods...
a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely from cold in the head.... A warmer coat also, for that which I have is very thin; also a piece of cloth to patch my leggings: my overcoat has been worn out; my shirts are also worn out. He has a woolen shirt of mine, if he will be kind enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth for the putting on above; he also has warmer caps for wearing at night. I wish also his permission to have a candle in the evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark.
But above all, I entreat and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the Procurer that he may kindly permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Grammar, and Hebrew Dictionary, that I may spend my time with that study. And in return, may you obtain your dearest wish, provided always it be consistent with the salvation of your soul. But if any other resolutions have been come to concerning me, before the conclusion of the winter, I shall be patient, abiding the will of God to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ, whose spirit, I pray, may ever direct your heart. Amen [www.williamtyndale.com/0page1c.htm].
In October 1536, at the age of 42, William Tyndale was strangled to death and his body burned at the stake. His last words, according to John Foxe, came in the form of a prayer, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes." Tyndale's humble work paved the way for the evangelical reformation in England. Evangelicals stand today as beneficiaries of his faithfulness as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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