William Tyndale, a Prophet Is Not Without Honour, Save in His Own Country – EVS Translations
In many aspects William Tyndale is the English equivalent of the German Martin Luther, whose translation of the Bible fostered the Protestant Reformation.
Tyndale is not the first translator of the Bible into English, as that title belongs to John Wycliffe, whose unauthorised translation was banned by the Oxford Synod, but just like Luther, Tyndale – having a burning desire to bring the biblical texts close to all common people – translated the Bible into English not from Latin sources, thus opposing the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church, but directly from the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, following Erasmus’ Greek translation of the New Testament.
Studying at Oxford and Cambridge, and after the Church of England refused to grant him authorisation to translate the Bible into English, Tyndale sailed for Germany with the aid of London merchants. And just one year after, in 1525, his English New Testament was printed in Cologne, with more copies to follow in the next year and with thousands smuggled into England.
There are some historical records suggesting that Luther and Tyndale met in person in Wittenberg, but even without such, Luther had the biggest influence on the work of Tyndale, with both proclaiming the doctrine that the church is defined by the believers and their faith, and Tyndale replacing what a catholic would read in the Vulgar Latin as the word ‘church’ (ecclesia) with the translation of the Greek ἐκκλησία as ‘congregation’ and with even only this one-word translation undermining the entire structure of the Catholic Church.
But just like Luther, Tyndale’s main aim was not to only question the Church and come out as a Reformer, but to translate the scriptures faithfully and convey the true meaning in a language that everyone could understand, with his primary purpose eloquently expressed in his famous declaration from 1522: “I defy the Pope and all his laws. . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that drives the plough, shall know more of the Scripture than thou does.”
And indeed, Tyndale came to the New Testament with a classical education, but rather than using a classic vocabulary, localised the manuscripts in a colloquial language, spoken and understood by the boy driving the plough.
And his linguistic influence on the formation of the modern English language is often compared to that of Shakespeare’s, with some of his Bible idioms so well-known that are often thought to be proverbial, like ‘let there be light’, ‘seek and you shall find’, ‘fight the good fight’, ‘the signs of the times’, ‘ask and it shall be given you’ , ‘a law unto themselves’, ‘knock and it shall be opened unto you’ , ‘judge not that ye be not judged’, ‘the last shall be first’, ‘eat, drink and be merry’, ‘go through the eye of a needle’, ‘the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak’ , ‘no man can serve two masters’, ‘pearls before swine’, ‘a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country’, and hundreds other.
And Tyndale went further, beginning to translate the Old Testament and living more openly after the break of the Church in England from the control of Rome and the death of his strongest enemy, Cardinal Wolsey, to his location betrayed and he strangled and burned at the stake on 6 October 1536, having spent 500 days in prison where he continued working.
His translation of the Old Testament remained unfinished at his death, but formed the basis of all subsequent English translations of the Bible, including the “Great Bible” published by Henry VIII just three years after Tyndale’s death and his last words: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”
Before Tyndale’s translation, the general perception was that if one wanted to write anything worth hearing, he had to write it in Latin, and English, itself, was far considered a barbaric language. Tyndale enriched and beautified the existing English language and paved its way to global dominance and arrogance.
