Introduction page vii
INTRODUCTION
The four hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of William Tyndale on the sixth of October 1536 gave an opportunity to the British people for acknowledging their indebtedness to the man whose service to the nation should be held in everlasting remembrance. In some thousands of churches and schools, passages were read from Tyndale's actual translation, and many people learned, for the first time, how close is the resemblance between the New Testament of to-day and Tyndale's rendering.
When the Revisers of the New Testament completed their work in 1880, they felt bound to begin their Preface by placing on record their tribute to Tyndale. Writing of the English Version of 1611, commonly known by the name of the Authorised Version, they said:
' That Translation was the work of many hands and of several generations. The foundation was laid by William Tyndale. His translation of the New Testament was the true primary Version. The Versions that followed were either substantially reproductions of Tyndale's translation in its final shape, or revisions of Versions that had been themselves almost entirely based on it.
If, as seems true, the British people have only in recent years begun to realise the extent of their obligation to Tyndale, this belated recognition is, in some measure, due to the fact that his work has not been easily available to the general reader. When the four hundredth anniversary of his death called attention to his service the suggestion was made that his name and fame could be best commemorated by the publication, in some worthy form, of his New Testament translation. That suggestion was readily taken up by the Royal Society of Literature. The Society was fortunate in securing the services of one of its Fellows, Mr N. Hardy Wallis, and his devotion and labour have made possible the publication of this volume.
William Tyndale has come slowly into his fame. For many generations after his death he seems to have been almost forgotten. The place given to him in our ecclesiastical histories, and by most of those who have taken upon themselves to write the story of our literature, is one of the main surprises of English letters and an outstanding example of the ignorance of the learned.
Speaking generally, our literary historians, if they have mentioned
Vili Introduction Tyndale at all, have dismissed him with a short reference revealing no attempt to study his work or to appraise his contribution. Sometimes our writers have allowed themselves to asperse his memory and disparage his achievement. Happily this tendency has changed in recent years. In this regard our oratitude is mainly due to Robert Demaus (whose noble biography was published about fifty years ago), the Parker Society, Christopher Anderson,
George Offor, Bishop Westcott, Dr J. J.
Mombert, Edward Arber, Francis Fry, and Professor Alfred W. Pollard. The Rev. J. F. Mozley has recently published a most valuable study of Tyndale, and his book, together with the biography of Demaus, should be read by those who desire fully to appreciate the volume now published.
When Tyndale completed his New Testament in 1525 he wrote a postscript addressed "To the Reader" apologising for the rudeness of the work and expressing the hope that he could revise it later. The following is an excerpt (the spelling modernised):
Them that are learned christianly, I beseech, forasmuch as I am sure, and my conscience beareth me record, that of a pure intent, singly and faithfully, I have interpreted it, as far forth as God gave me the gift of knowledge and understanding, that the rudeness of the work now at the first time offend them not; but that they consider how that I had no man to counterfeit, neither was helped with English of any that had interpreted the same or such like thing in the scripture beforetime. Moreover, even very necessity, and cumbrance (God is record) above strength, which I will not rehearse, lest we should seem to boast ourselves, caused that many things are lacking which necessarily are required. Count it as a thing not having his full shape, but as it were born before his time, even as a thing begun rather than finished. In time to come (if God have appointed us thereunto) we will give it his full shape, and put out, if ought be added superfluously, and add to, if ought be overseen through negligence; and will enforce to bring to compendiousness that which is now translated at the length, and to give light where it is required, and to seek in certain places more proper English, and with a table to expound the words which are not commonly used, and shew how the scripture useth many words which are otherwise understood of the common people, and to help with a declaration where one tongue taketh not another; and will endeavour ourselves, as it were, to seethe it better, and to make it more apt for the weak stomachs; desiring them that are learned, and able, to remember their duty, and to help them thereunto, and to bestow unto the edifying of Christ's body, which is the congregation of them that believe, those gifts which they have received of God for the same purpose.
Introduction ix The hope expressed in this postscript was in due course fulfilled, and in 1534 the revision appeared. Of this revised Testament a few copies have survived and from one of these, kindly lent to the Royal Society of Literature,
Mr Hardy Wallis has prepared his reprint.
It should be stated that Tyndale lived to make yet a further revision, which he published shortly before his death in 1536. The alterations made in this second revision are set out in detail in Francis Fry's invaluable book A Bibliographical Description of the Editions of the New Testament, Tyndale's Versions
(1878).
The English reader therefore now has made available for him (and for the first time in its entirety) the Revised N ew Testament which Westcott describes as "'altogether Tyndale's noblest monument".
Moreover the reader has the advantage of seeing at a glance just what this work of revision meant for Tyndale, and as he compares the changes made after the interval of years he will find that great as Tyndale was as a translator, he was even greater as a reviser. Westcott says of his work as a reviser:
Sometimes the changes are made to secure a closer accordance with the Greek: sometimes to gain a more vigorous, or a more idiomatic rendering: sometimes to preserve a just uniformity: sometimes to introduce a new interpretation. The very minuteness of the changes is a singular testimony to the diligence with which Tyndale still laboured at his appointed work. Nothing seemed trifling to him, we may believe, if only he could better seize or convey to others the meaning of one fragment of Scripture.
All those who have studied the two Testaments of 1525 and 1534 have endorsed Westcott's eulogium of Tyndale's genius as a reviser. We can allow for the first enthusiasm of the Translator, eager to complete his work so that "the boy that driveth the plough" might know something of the Scripture, but here in the Revised Testament we have revealed something of the patience and conscientiousness and unwearied diligence with which Tyndale did his life-work. The second thoughts of the great writers and poets are sometimes changes for the worse, but the reader comparing the text of 1534 with that of 1525, can judge for himself the result of Tyndale's mature reflections and more intense study. The changes generally show the desire for the truer translation and the simpler expression,
x Introduction but sometimes they are made only as a result of a more delicate sense in the choice of words. If Tyndale had not lived to revise some passages, we might never have had in our English speech some cadences which are dearest in our memory. "Blessed are the maynteyners of peace" is correct translation, but "Blessed are the peacemakers" is a phrase we should not like to have lost. In 1525 Tyndale wrote of the Prodigal Son "Then he remembred hym selfe and sayde...". In the 1534 edition the phrase appears "Then he came to him selfe and sayde"'. "See that youre light so shyne.. ." in 1525, becomes "Let your light so shyne " in the revision; "The faveour of ourelorde
Jesus Christ" in the benediction closing the second Letter to the Corinthians is changed to "The grace of oure Lorde Jesus Christ". "' And ye shall fynd ese unto your soules" becomes " And ye shall fynde rest unto youre soules". The passage in St Mark "For unto suche belongeth the kyngdome of God" becomes most happily "For of sucheis the kyngdome of God". "'Beholdethe lyles of the felde" is changed to "'Considre the lylies of the felde". Why
Tyndale changed the word from "' Beholde" to " Considre" we do not know, but what enrichment is given by the later choice !
Whilst the reader ponders on these revisions, he should remember something of the manner of life which Tyndale led during the years intervening between his first and second Testaments. He was in exile, a hunted man, with a price on his head, forced to hide from his enemies, who having burned his books were determined also to burn him. It is only rarely that we catch a glimpse of his mind. One thinks of the words he used to Stephen
Vaughan, one of the envoys to the Low Countries, with whom he had an interview early in 1531, in a field just outside the gates of Antwerp. When they met, the reformer said "Do you not know me? My name is Tyndale", and in further conversation came the words which are almost his fullest autobiography: "If for my pains therein taken, if for my poverty, if for my exile out of my natural country, and bitter absence from my friends, if for my hunger, my thirst, my cold, the great danger wherewith I am everywhere compassed, and finally, if for innumerable other hard and sharp fightings which I endure. ..."
It was in conditions such as these that Tyndale revised his New Testament at the same time that he was taking part in fierce controversy, writing books
Introduction xi that had the leading place in the polemical literature of the day and translating the larger part of the Old Testament direct from the Hebrew into his native tongue.
Within a year after Tyndale's death his work was included in what was known as the Matthew Bible compiled by John Rogers, and this Bible became the basis of all successive revisions. We have this year been celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the setting up of the Bible in the Parish Churches. The book then sanctioned was this same Matthew Bible, and in that compilation the whole of the New Testament and the larger part of the Old Testament were the work of William Tyndale.
When in 1604 the revisers commenced their work for the Authorised Version, they had before them not only the work of Tyndale, but all the translations that had appeared during the seventy years following upon his death. A study of the English Hexapla will help to show that they took full advantage of these, but when the English Bible of 1611 left their hands the work of Tyndale remained largely undisturbed.
In many instances (and some highly important) where King James' Committee departed from Tyndale's translation the Revisers of 1881 have restored his original words.
The most notableinstances of these restorationsis "love" (instead of "charity") in St Paul's great hymn in the thirteenth chapter of the First Corinthian Letter.
The recovery of the word "flock" (instead of "fold" in the 1611 version) in St John x. 16 making the passage read "'and there shall be one flock and one shepherd" is no less important. "Except ye be converted and become as little children" has now been changed to Tyndale's first translation " Except ye turn...". "For they all did cast in of their superfluity" was Tyndale's translation from the story of the poor widow and the rich men. For some reason the Committee of 1611 changed the significant word "superfluity" to "abundance". Tyndale's word has now been restored, and with it the main point of the parable.
In these cases and in scores of others the reader of the New Testament will find new light thrown upon the page by Tyndale's translation, and again and again, if he refers to his Greek Testament, he will find that Tyndale gets nearer to the meaning of the original word or phrase than either the revisers of 1611 or 1881. If the student will turn, for instance, to the trans-
xii Introduction lation of Ephesians iv. 12, he will find that Tyndale's rendering of that passage
(although not adopted by the revisers) is fully in line with the conclusions of modern scholars like Westcott, Armitage Robinson, and others. Their interpretation of this much-discussed passage is virtually a reproduction of Tyndale's words.
When Miles Coverdale wrote his "Prologue unto the Christian Reader" he said:
Sure I am, that there cometh more knowledge and understanding of the Scripture by their sundry translations, than by all the glosses of our sophisticated Doctors. For that one interpreteth something obscurely in one place, the same translateth another
(or else he himself) more manifestly by a plain vocable of the same meaning in another place.
If every new translation is another commentary, how great should be the interest of this book, showing how Tyndale with the text of Erasmus before him, read line after line of the Greek, and pondered upon its meaning, and then sought to express both the meaning and the beauty in the synonyms and common speech of his native land.
The persistence of Tyndale's work is in fact the outstanding miracle in the history of English letters. After four centuries of war and peace, of achievement and vicissitude, the faithful labour of this scholar and martyr remains vindicated. On the four hundredth anniversary of his death a writer in The Times Literary Supplement spoke of him as "the man, whose choice of words, has, for four hundred years, exercised supreme influence upon English prose". His words are daily on our lips, his phrases have become part of our household speech, his cadences are treasured in every part of the world where the English language has gone. What other Englishman has touched so many lives?
ISAAC FOOT
July 1938