Stephen Vaughn was an English merchant commissioned by Thomas Cromwell, the king’s adviser, to find William Tyndale and inform him that King Henry VIII wanted him to return to England. In a letter from Vaughan to Cromwell, dated June 19, 1531, Vaughan wrote about Tyndale (1494–1536) these simple words: “I see him always sing the same note. “[1] The note was: Will the King of England give his official consent to a vernacular Bible for all his English subjects?Otherwise, Tyndale won’t come. If so, Tyndale will turn himself in to the king and never write another book again.
This was the driving passion of his life: to see the Bible translated from Greek and Hebrew into common English and accessible to all in England.
- Henry VIII was angry at Tyndale for believing and promoting the teachings of Martin Luther’s Reformation.
- In particular.
- He was irritated by Tyndale’s book.
- Was he? Answer to Sir Thomas More?[Reply to Mr.
- Thomas More].
- Thomas More (famous for his book Utopia and the film A Man for All Seasons) was the chancellor who helped Henry VIII write his rejection of Luther entitled Defense of the Seven Sacraments.
- ].
- Thomas More was a convinced Roman Catholic and radically anti-Reform.
- Anti-Luther and anti-Tyndale.
- Therefore.
- Tyndale was under the same ruthless critique as Thomas More.
- [2] In fact.
- More had an “almost fanatical hatred” [3] for Tyndale and published three long answers for him.
- Totaling nearly three-quarters of a million words[4].
But despite this anger against Tyndale, the king’s message to Tyndale, conveyed by Vaughan, was merciful: “Is royal majesty, the king, prone to mercy, mercy, and compassion?[5]
Tyndale, then thirty-seven, was moved to tears by this offer of mercy; had been exiled from his homeland for seven years. But now he resings his “unique note”: will the king allow a Bible in the vernacular language of the original languages?Vaughan gives us the words of Tyndale, May 1531:
I assure you that if the king, with the most graceful pleasure, gave only the simple text of Scripture (i. e. , without explanatory notes) to be presented among his people, as presented among the subjects of the emperor in these regions and other Christian princes, or of the translation of anyone who has pleased His Majesty, I will immediately make the faithful promise never to write again , I won’t even be here for two days; but soon I will go to his kingdom and submit very humbly to the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer the pain or torture, yes, the death he wants, to be done. the hardness of every opportunity, no matter what, and endure as much pain in my life as I can bear and suffer. [6]
In other words, Tyndale will surrender to the king on one condition: that the king allow a Bible in English, the common language of the people, translated from Greek and Hebrew.
The king refused. And Tyndale never returned to his native country. On the other hand, if the king and the Roman Catholic Church did not want to provide an English-printed Bible to the common man, would Tyndale do it, even if it cost him his life?in fact, it happened five years later.
When he was twenty-eight years old in 1522, Tyndale served as a tutor at John Walsh’s home in Gloucestershire, spending most of his time studying Erasmus’s Greek New Testament, which had just been printed six years earlier, in 1516. to make a pause here and clarify what was the most incendiary in this Greek New Testament from a historical point of view David Daniell describes the magnitude of this event:
It was the first time the Greek New Testament had been printed. It is no exaggeration to say that he set Europe on fire. Luther [1483-1546] translated it into his famous German version of 1522. Within a few years, greek translations appeared in most European vernacular languages. This was the real basis for popular reform. [7]
During all the days when William Tyndale saw more clearly these truths of the Reformation in the Greek New Testament, there was still an ordained Catholic priest. He was increasingly suspicious of John Walsh’s Catholic home. The scholars were going to dinner and Tyndale talked about the things he had. John Foxe tells us that a Catholic scholar once became angry with Tyndale over dinner and said, “We would be better off without God’s law than without the Pope. “In response, Tyndale uttered his famous words: “I challenge the Pope and all his laws?And if God spares my life for many years, will I make sure that a boy who handles the plow knows the scriptures more than you do?[8]
Four years later, Tyndale completed the English translation of the Greek New Testament into Worms, Germany, and began sending them to England hidden in clothing. He had grown up in Gloucestershire, county making clothes, and now we see this as a measure. [9] By October 1526, the book had been banned by Dom Tunstall in London, but the circulation was at least three thousand copies and the books reached people. Over the next eight years, five pirated editions were also printed. [10]
In 1534, Tyndale published a revised New Testament, having learned Hebrew at that interval, probably in Germany, which helped him better understand the links between the Old and New Testaments. Daniell calls this New Testament of 1534 “the glory of the work of his life. “If Tyndale” always sang a note,” was the intensification of the song of his life: the New Testament, complete and improved, in English.
For the first time in history, the Greek New Testament has been translated into English and, for the first time, the New Testament in English was available in print. Before Tyndale, only English manuscripts of the Bible existed. These manuscripts are the work and inspiration of John Wyclif and the Lolardo, [12] one hundred and thirty years earlier. [13] For a thousand years, the only translation of the Greek and Hebrew Bible was the Latin Vulgate, and few people could understand it, even if they had access to it.
Before being martyred in 1536, Tyndale had translated into clear and common English [14] not only the New Testament [, 15] but also the Pentateal and Joshua into 2 Chronicles and Jonah [16]. Did all this material become the basis of the Great Bible published by Miles Coverdale in England in 1539 [17] and the basis of the Geneva Bible published in 1557?”The Bible of the Nation,” [18] which sold more than a million copies between 1560 and 1640.
We have no clear idea of Tyndale’s success without a few comparisons, we consider that the dominant version of King James is the one that generally gave us the language of the Bible in English, but Daniell clarifies the situation:
William Tyndale gave us our Bible in English. The sages gathered by King James to prepare the authorized version of 1611, so often praised for their unique corporate inspiration, continued Tyndale’s work. Nine-tenths of the authorized version of the New Testament comes from Tyndale. The same goes for the first half of the Old Testament, which went as far as he could tell before being executed outside Brussels in 1536[ 19].
Here’s a sample of the phrases we owe Tyndale
? There is light (Genesis 1. 3).
?? Am I my brother’s protector? (Genesis 4. 9).
?? The Lord blesses and protects you. Let the Lord enlighten you with his face and grant you the favor. May the Lord reveal his face of love to you and grant you peace?(Numbers 6. 24-26).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God?(John 1. 1).
?? Were there shepherds in the fields? (Luke 2. 8)
Blessed are those who weep, for they will be comforted? (Matthew 5. 4).
“Our Father, who art in heaven, be your name sanctified?(Matthew 6:9).
?? the signs of the times? (Matthew 16:3)
“Is the mind prepared, but the flesh is weak?(Matthew 26:41).
“When you left this place, did you cry bitterly? (Matthew 26:75). These two words are still used in almost all modern translations. They have not been improved in five hundred years, despite poor efforts, such as a recent translation: “Much shouted. “Contrary to this phrase, “the rhythm of these two words demonstrates your experience. “[20]
?? law for themselves? (Romans 2:14)
? Do we live, move and exist? (Acts 17:28).
“Even if I speak the languages of men and angels?(1 Corinthians 13: 1).
“Did I fight the good fight? (1 Timothy 6. 12)
According to Daniell, “the list of these almost proverbial phrases is endless. “[21] One hundred years after his great work, newspaper headlines still quote Tyndale, albeit unconsciously, and reached more people than even Shakespeare.
Luther’s translation of 1522 is often praised for “giving the language to the nascent German nation. “Daniell states the same for Tyndale as for English.
In his translations of the Bible, the conscious use of everyday words, without investments, in a neutral order of words and his wonderful ear for rhythmic patterns, gave English not only a biblical language, but a new prose. England was blessed as a nation, because the language of its main book, as it soon became the English Bible, was the source of which the lucidity, flexibility and expressive scope of the greatest prose resulted.
His English language skills were brilliant. [24]
He translated two-thirds of the Bible so well that his translations remain today. [25]
It wasn’t just a literary phenomenon; it was a spiritual explosion. The Bible and Tyndale’s writings were the fire that ignited the Reformation in England.
1 David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (William Tyndale: A Biography) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 217.
2 For example, in the book of More29, 1529, Dialogue on Heresies
3 Daniell, Tyndale, p. 4.
4 Thomas More wrote more to condemn Tyndale than Tyndale wrote in his defense. After a book entitled An Answer Unto Sir Thomas More?S Dialogue (1531), Tyndale stopped. As for Thomas More, however, were there nearly three-quarters of a million words against Tyndale?[Compared to] eighty thousand Tyndale in his answer ?. Ibid. , P. 277.
5 Ibid. , P. 216
6 Ibid.
# 7 William Tyndale, Selected Writings edited with an introduction by David Daniell (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. ix. “Do modern defenders of the Catholic position like to support a vision of the Reformation that was entirely a political imposition of a ruthless ruling minority against the traditions and wishes of the pious people of England?” The power that affected all human life in Northern Europe, however, came from a different place. It was not the result of a political imposition; Does it come from the discovery of the Word of God as it was originally written? in the language of the people. Furthermore, could it be read and understood without censorship or mediation by the Church? This reading produced a totally different vision of everyday Christianity: the weekly, daily, even hourly ceremonies, so lovingly cataloged by certain Catholic revisionists, are not there; purgatory is not there; there is no confession or penance. Two foundations of the wealth and power of the Church have collapsed. Instead, there was simply personal faith in Christ the Savior in Scripture. That and only that? The sinner, whose innate faults were now before God, not the bishops or the Pope? Daniell, Tyndale, p. 58.
8 Daniell, Tyndale, p. 79
9 – William Tyndale, exiled to Cologne, Worms and Antwerp, took the international trade routes of cloth merchants to bring his books to England, smuggled in pieces of cloth Ibid. , P. 15.
10 Ibid. , P. 188.
11 Ibid. , P. 316
12 – In the summer of 1382, Wyclif was attacked in a sermon preached in St. Louis. Mary’s, Oxford, and her followers were first denounced as “Lolardos”. ?a vague and meaningless term (“whisperers”) used in the Netherlands for Bible students and therefore heretics. David Daniell, The Bible: His Story and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 73.
Gutenberg’s printing press arrived in 1450.
# 14? Tyndale transmitted an English force opposed to Latin, which is seen in the difference between?Tall? Et? High?,?Gift?,? Many and crowds. Daniell, Tyndale, page 3.
15 Tyndale did not follow Luther in placing Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation in a separate section of the New Testament as the bottom. “Tyndale, as his preface to James in his 1534 New Testament later shows, is not just wiser and more generous? Is it more faithful to the New Testament? Ibid. , 120.
It is now available in print with all its original notes and introductions: the Old Testament of Tyndale, translated by William Tyndale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); as Tyndale’s New Testament, translated by William Tyndale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
How was Tyndale martyred in 1536 for translating the Bible into English, and his New Testament was burned in London by Bishop Tunstall, and even a fully printed Bible, essentially the Great Bible of Tyndale, could be published in England three years later?Officially approved by this Bible-burning bishop? Daniell explains: “Tunstall, whose name would briefly appear on the front pages approving two editions of the Great Bible, acted politically, being a puppet of the pope through Wolsey and the king, betraying his Christian humanist learning according to the church, do you need to receive the favor of [Thomas] Wolsey?Burning God’s word for politics was a good deal for Tyndale?. Tyndale, 93.
18 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. Xi
# 19 Tyndale, p. 1. Daniell speaks more specifically elsewhere and says that the authoritative version is 83 percent of Tyndale’s (Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. Brian Moynahan, in God? S Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible? A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal [The Besteller of God: William Tyndale, Thomas More and English Bible Writing? A History of Martyrdom and Betrayal] (New York: St. Martin? S Press, 2002, p. 1) , confirms with his estimates: Tyndale’s words? They correspond to 84% of the New Testament of the [King James Version] and 75. 8% of the Old Testament books he translated? Daniell also points out how the translations of the Old were Testament: “These first chapters of Genesis are the earliest translations – not just the earliest printed versions, but the earliest translations – from Hebrew into English. This must be emphasized. Not only was the Hebrew language known. In England in 1529 and 15 30 for a maximum of one mile a small handful of scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, probably none; that there was a language called Hebrew or that it had some connection to the Bible, would it have been new to most of the common population? Tyndale, p. 287.
20 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. Xv.
21 Tyndale, p. 142
22 Ibid. , 2.
23 Ibid. , P. 116.
24 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. Xv
25 Daniell, Tyndale, p. 121. Tyndale gave the nation a biblical language that was English in words, order of words, and poetry. He invented certain words (e. g. , “scapegoat” and the great Oxford English Dictionary incorrectly attributed it, and so we dated several of its first uses (Ibid. , P. 3)