Once upon a time, in an England not so long ago, Church and Aristocracy were very closely aligned. They made it illegal to read, to teach, or to translate the Bible. To do so was punishable by torture and death. And one man wrote, "Let there be light!" He was strangled then burned to death. His crime? Translating the Bible into English.
Around 1350, the official Catholic version of the Bible was the Vulgate, a Latin translation derived from a Greek translation. The Bible’s first books are written in Hebrew; the New Testament, about the man (or God but he said not to call him that) called Christ was probably written originally in Greek. In church, Priests chanted prayers in Latin. Since almost no one spoke Latin, the congregation relied on the Priests to translate or simply left the church ignorant of what had been said. John Adams, writing around 1772, saw the same in Catholic churches of his day.
John Wycliffe, an Oxford scholar and Catholic priest, felt the Bible should be read and studied in English. Wycliffe was a quiet, weak bodied, ascetic scholar. Around 1350, Wycliffe supervised a Bible translation from the Vulgate’s Latin into English.
At this time, the English peasants were rebelling. A hundred years earlier, the King of England had agreed to relinquish some of his power to the nobles, this agreement set forth in the Magna Carta. The peasants were not mentioned. The Peasant Rebellion of the 1300’s fought perceived Government’s favoritism towards the landed rich and the Catholic Church.
John Ball, a Catholic priest supported the salt of the earth peasants. He quoted Wycliffe in a speech. Based on Ball’s speech, the Archbishop of Canterbury alleged Wycliffe’s writings were heresy and had fueled the peasant revolt.
The Church, Parliament, and the King moved against Wycliffe. They demanded Wycliffe be removed from his position at Oxford. The Bishops scheduled a trial. Lo and behold, before they could meet, an earthquake struck.
Spirit willing if his flesh was weak, Wycliffe claimed the earthquake was God’s judgment that he was correct; however, neither the Church nor King Richard II was impressed. God was actually mad they were not moving quickly enough against the rebellious paupers.
So they had Wycliffe removed from Oxford. They enacted laws making it illegal to think, speak, write or act against Catholicism. Anyone possessing a Wycliffe Bible was committing a crime; the penalty torture or death. Not enough.
In 1415, Wycliffe already dead, a council of Catholic Bishops declared Wycliffe a heretic. A few years after that, the Pope ordered Wycliffe’s remains exhumed, burnt, then thrown into a river. But Wycliffe had fought the good fight. Knowledge and free thought is apparently scary. So was the Bible. The Catholic Church ordained that no one could even study the Bible until they were vetted and had spent 7 or 8 years as a Priest.
But other events were happening. People talk. People think. One of the Ten Commandments states “Thou shalt not worship graven images.” And the Catholic churches are filled with them. The centerpiece of many churches is Christ dying on a crucifix. Fallibility is a human condition.
In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Muslims. Many scholars fled for Europe. They took with them their books, making the works of Plato and Aristotle along with Greek translations of the Bible widely available in the Northern and Western European countries for the first time in centuries. Additionally, Jews kept their Torah in the original Hebrew, carefully copied by hand into thick rolls of paper; insights of philosophers like Maimonides crept into Catholic thought through publications by Catholic scholars. When then should the only official Bible be in Latin, a language dead a thousand years, or Hebrew, a language spoken only by a mostly despised sect? Devout Christians who spoke German wanted a German translation; those who spoke English wanted an English Bible.
In 1494, William Tyndale was born in Gloucester. Being English, obviously he was a terrible cook. So he concentrated on other things, like books. Admitted to Oxford, by 1515 Tyndale proved a brilliant scholar and had risen to the Church position of sub-deacon. A polylingust, fluent in French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin and Spanish besides his native English, Tyndale’s scholarly career continued at the University of Cambridge. Tyndale arrived at Cambridge a few years after the famous scholar Desiderius Erasmus taught there.
Erasmus, a Dutch Catholic priest, was a champion of learning and religious tolerance. Like Tyndale, he was a polylinguist. Erasmus, though quite liberal in his social views, tolerant of other's opinions, remained within the Catholic church throughout his life, trying to convince the powers that be. While at Cambridge, Erasmus introduced his conclusions about Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Middle English. Middle English, Erasmus felt, lacked the idiom and syntactic depth of the elder tongues.
Tyndale was convinced that the Greek and Hebrew texts showed the Vulgate translation had errors in it. Likewise, he agreed with Erasmus that middle English lacked subtlety. Tyndale chaffed at the rules prohibiting use of the Bible, rules he considered selfish, unprincipled, and unsound.
The only reason for such rules, Tyndale claimed, was that the Catholic Church wished to inculcate men against any critical thought before they could read the actual book. There was no reason the Bible should remain solely in Latin. After all, the original versions were in other languages. Tyndale argued many of the Catholic rules and superstitions made sense only if one believed God ordained the rich and the Church hierarchy with some Christian duty to mulct the public--and Christ himself died for protesting just that. Jews, Catholics, whatever group you care to name: some of 'em are knaves.
Tyndale wrote many tracts, and spoke, one assumes, more brazenly then he wrote. At this time, thoughts or words—let alone deeds—were sufficient cause for the powers that be to have a man tortured and killed.
But Tyndale’s ideals proved stronger than his fears. He petitioned a Bishop for the right to create an English Bible translation. Martin Luther had already caused great consternation for purported heresy by publishing a German translation of the Bible in 1522. Tyndale’s petition was denied and his initial work was destroyed.
Meanwhile, Tyndale had taken a position as a tutor. Here, Tyndale violated English Catholic based laws by teaching the Vulgate to an aristocrat’s son. Further, Tyndale wrote tracts criticizing the Roman Catholic Church which caused considerable controversy.
Brave he might be but death and torture should be feared by all men. Rather than live a situation where his best hope was torture before prison rather than torture before death, Tyndale fled to the Continent. There, the Protestant revolt against the Catholic Church and its allied monarchies was ongoing.
Tyndale hid in various places in Northern Europe while continuing his work. Using the Vulgate, Luther, Greek and Hebrew sources, Tyndale created a new Bible translation written in English. Tyndale often using idioms or phrases he created himself.
At this time, English was not yet fixed. An authoritative English dictionary basically did not yet exist; the English language remained in great flux; however, Jewish and Greek scholars had written Hebrew to Greek to Latin grammar books.
Agreeing with Erasmus that middle English lacked depth and idiom, Tyndale used Greek and Hebrew syntaxes for his translations, creating an early modern English used by luminaries such as William Shakespeare. Perhaps, the destruction of Tyndale's earlier work proved a blessing in disguise as his later translation proved so brilliant.
In 1526, Tyndale’s New Testament was published in Brussels; his incomplete old Testament published a year after his death in 1536.
Tyndale used ideas similar to Erasmus's thoughts on translation and deficiencies in Middle English as a starting point for his creation of new words and phrases. Many of Tyndale's creations remain well known and commonly used. They include:
Passover from Hebrew Pesach or Pesah
Christmas for Jesus’s date of Birth
Atonement (combining “At One” with "ment" to describe Christ's reconciling God and man)
Readers will also recognize these phrases Tyndale created:
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
Knock and it shall be opened unto you
Twinkling of an eye (from Luther)
A moment in time
Seek and you shall find
Eat, drink and be merry
Ask and it shall be given you
Judge not that you not be judged
Let there be light
The powers that be
My brother's keeper
The salt of the earth
A law unto themselves
Filthy lucre
It came to pass
Gave up the ghost
The signs of the times
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak
Fight the good fight
Tyndale was executed in 1535. He was then hiding in Brussels. Tyndale was betrayed by a friend for filthy money, 30 pieces of silver perhaps. The Catholic authorities tried Tyndale for heresy. While in prison, Tyndale begged for a Hebrew grammar book to continue his work. Sentenced to death, Tyndale survived his strangling and then was burned. They say his final words were loud, spoken with zeal, “Lord, Open the King of England’s eyes!”
Perhaps the King heard. Just not those last words. Tyndale wrote many essays which also proved influential. A copy of Tyndale’s essay The Obedience of a Christian Man somehow made it to Henry the VIII. Tyndale's essay provided the King with a rationale he used to justify his decision to break the English Church from the Catholic Church.
The dying for trying to translate was not quite done yet. John Rogers was another English priest killed by the Catholic Church for it. Not a moment in time when the superstitious are not protective of their prerequisites.
Rogers broke from the Catholic Church, becoming a Protestant. After he met Tyndale in Belgium, Rogers directed a 1537 printing of Tyndale’s Bible translation. Tyndale already having been named heretic and executed by then, they tried to distance it from Tyndale by naming it the Matthews Bible. The ploy failed.
Fifteen years later, in 1553, Catholic Queen Mary I ascended to the throne of England. A Catholic, she set about reversing gains made by the AnglicanProtestant sects, restoring power to Catholics. Queens are a law unto themselves. In the twinkling of an eye, she was executing Protestants. Rogers was the first.
Rogers had returned to England in 1540 once finishing his degrees. In 1555, the queen they called Bloody Mary made Rogers the first of many English Protestants she had killed. No earthquake intervened. Every Matthew’s Bible she could find she had burned.
The printed word is a powerful thing. Some books survived. Tyndale’s translations formed the basis for both the Geneva Bible (written by CalvinistPuritans in Switzerland and brought over to America on the Mayflower) and the King James Bible, published around 1611.
The impetus for the King James Bible started around 1605. In that year, England’s King James decreed an official English version of the Bible be created. A team of scholars relied heavily on Tyndale in writing the King James Bible. Scholars believe the Geneva and King James Bible each use 75%-85% of Tyndale’s word choices.
David Daniel, a modern Oxford scholar, revived interest in William Tyndale, reprinting his translations of the Old and New Testaments in the late 1990's. Professor Daniel also created the William Tyndale Society (those interested can join) whose bi-yearly newsletter is printed in English.
Sources: David Daniel, Tyndale's Old Testament; Wikipedia pages for William Tyndale, John Wycliffe, John Rogers, Henry VIII, Queen Mary ; The Geneva Bible, 1560 Edition, by Hendrickson's Bibles, Lloyd Berry introduction