The Making of the English - Speaking World: William Tyndale

The Making of the English-Speaking World: William Tyndale

William Tyndale was born around the year 1490 in South West England. He was and Oxford classical scholar, translator and ordained priest, who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism toward the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Erasmus who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and Martin Luther who's goal was to translate the New Testament into German. He accomplished this in 1522. ² Like Tyndale, Martin Luther believed that if the Bible was available in the vernacular, all could read it and judge the teachings of the Church for themselves. But a common influence for all of them must have been John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was also an early advocate for translation of the Bible into the common tongue. He completed his translation directly from the Vulgate (Catholic Latin Bible) into vernacular English in the year 1382, now known as Wycliffe's Bible.

Tyndale started off by working as a tutor in a large household in Gloucestershire, England. The family appears to have been happy secretly to fund Tyndale's plans; to propagate the Bible to the English laypeople by translating it into English. This quality of support so early in his life must have given Tyndale any extra encouragement he might have needed.

During this period of time, England was not only under the rule of King Henry VIII, but also the Roman Catholic Church. The Bible was only available in Latin. Prior to the Reformation, most laypeople encountered the Bible through the interpretations of priests, who were able to read it in the Latin translation known as the Vulgate. Protestants insisted that the Scriptures should be available to all laypeople in their own languages and William Tyndale strongly shared the same point of view. The Roman Catholic Church however did not. ¹

William Tyndale was frustrated with the Roman Catholic Church and its reluctance to give the people a bible that anyone, rich or poor could read. For a period there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French and Latin. English was not considered to be a literary language. It was characterised as "rude" and "barbarous" and therefore to be a language for the common people only. Furthermore books were not that common at that time and very expensive. Most of the lower classes did not know how to read.

The Church wanted to keep its monopoly on being the one who could read and interpret the Bible. If anyone could read the Bible, anyone was free to interpret what was written, and this was dangerous to the catholic faith. Furthermore Tyndale found problems and flaws in the way the Catholic Church had translated the Bible into Latin. ¹

Tyndale opposed both the political facets of England's national church and Roman Catholicism. Within both, he found many problems in the way the Bible was interpreted. In fact, he wrote,

"They divide scripture into four senses, the literal, typological, allegorical, and analogical. The literal sense is become nothing at all: for the pope hath taken it clean away, and hath made it his possession. He hath partly locked it up with the false and counterfeited keys of his traditions, ceremonies, and feigned lies; and driveth men from it with violence of sword; for no man dare abide by the literal sense of the text, but under a protestation, 'If it shall please the pope.' ... Thou shalt understand, therefore, that the scriptures hath but one sense, which is the literal sense. And that literal sense is the root and ground of all, and the anchor that never faileth, whereunto if thou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of the way".

William Tyndale grew more and more unpopular with the Church, but also with King Henry VIII, who still was defender of the Catholic faith. The Church also had a hold on the King, as he wanted a divorce from his wife in order to marry a new love. According to the Catholic faith, divorce is not an option. But in some very rare cases, the Church can grant it anyway, and by helping the Church, the King might get what he wanted in return. In an attempt to restrain the influence of Wycliffe's followers, in 1408 Parliament had passed the "Constitutions of Oxford" which forbade anyone translating or reading a part of the Bible in the language of the people without permission of the ecclesiastical authorities. Men and women were even burned for teaching their children the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments in English.The King had already promised the pope that he would burn any "untrue translations". This previously led to the great book-burning in 1521 where a bonfire of confiscated heretical works was made outside the original St. Paul's Cathedral. To make things worse, as an outspoken man of God, Tyndale opposed King Henry VIII's divorce on the grounds of it being unbiblical. This led to his unpopularity with the institutional Christianity of that time.

Realising he was in danger and that he could not translate the Bible into English in his home country, Tyndale decided to leave England in 1524 at the age of thirty. Dodging any encounter with the religious authorities who had now condemned him as a heretic and a traitor, William Tyndale lived in hiding abroad and moved around whenever he had to. He began single-handedly to translate the New Testament not from Latin but from the original Greek and Hebrew. He wanted to provide the people with a more pure and accessible version of the Scriptures and he found the original texts more accurate, complete and a simple source of Christian truth. Tyndale completed his first translation of the Bible into English in 1526, with the aim of rendering the New Testament into 'proper English.'

In Germany during the mid 1400's Johannes Gutenberg had invented a printing press with movable type. The printing press would eliminate copyist errors and make the Scriptures more easily available in quantity editions. This greatly increased the speed of printing books and had an enormous effect on the Reformation. Tyndale was therefore able to print thousands of copies of his translation and smuggle them into England. English was finally to return to England once again. Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. However, King Henry VIII had spies everywhere and knew what was happening, and he and the Church were determined to stop the Bible to come into England. Naval ships patrolled the coastal waters, boats were stopped and searched, men were arrested and a great many Bibles were intercepted. Because God entrusted the Holy Scripture exclusively to the Catholic Church, it became the Church's duty to defend it and to