On 6th October 1536 William Tyndale was executed
in what is now Belgium but at the time was part of the Spanish Netherlands.
William Tyndale is renowned for being an early translator of the Bible into
English, and for making a substantial contribution to the richness of the
English language.
As a clergyman, Tyndale was bound to obey the dictates of
the Roman Catholic Church, but found himself at odds with the Church over the
matter of the Bible not being available in English. The people were required to
attend Mass, but this was always said in Latin (which was true well into the 20th
century) and readings from the Bible were also in Latin, in the translation
known as the “Vulgate”.
Tyndale once had an angry exchange with a traditionalist in
which the former swore that he would “cause the boy that drives the plough to
know more of the Scriptures than you do”. Being a gifted linguist, Tyndale made
it his life’s work to translate the Bible into English.
The atmosphere in England was so antagonistic to his
thinking that Tyndale left for the Continent in 1524, settling first at
Wittenberg (probably – there is some doubt about his actual location at this
time) where he began work on translating the New Testament from Greek into
English.
Tyndale was a fast worker, and the task was completed a year
later although it was not until 1526 that copies were printed and started to be
smuggled into England and Scotland. Within a decade 50,000 copies were in
circulation in the British Isles.
Tyndale’s unpopularity with the religious and political
establishment in Britain was compounded in 1530 when he published a pamphlet
that condemned King Henry VIII’s divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon. He
therefore made some very powerful enemies, namely the Catholic Church and the
King of England.
Undaunted, William Tyndale started work on translating the
Old Testament from Hebrew into English. Being in Germany was essential for this
task, because speakers of Hebrew were non-existent in England due to the 14th
century expulsion of the Jews under King Edward III. Many of these had fled to
Germany, where their descendants still lived and were able to teach the
language to Tyndale.
With King Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Wolsey, making
steps to have Tyndale arrested in Germany, he fled to Antwerp which was even
more dangerous in that, being in the Spanish Netherlands, it was subject to the
activities of the Spanish Inquisition. Tyndale was betrayed and accused of
being a heretic, for which the punishment was execution by burning at the
stake.
The execution duly took place on 6th October 1536,
with Tyndale first being strangled then burned. His last words were reputed to
have been: “Lord, open thou the King of England’s eyes”. This prayer was
granted only four years later, when King Henry, who had by now declared himself
to be the head of the Church of England, authorised the “Great Bible” to be
read in church. This was largely based on Tyndale’s work, with the Old
Testament completed by Miles Coverdale.
The “King James Version” of the Bible, published in 1611,
was the work of a team of translators, but it is noticeable that many of them
relied heavily on Tyndale’s work. Many of the ringing phrases of the 1611
Bible, which have entered the English language surreptitiously, were actually
written by William Tyndale. Here are two examples from Tyndale’s translation,
from the Old and New Testaments respectively:
“In the begynnynge God created heaven and erth. The erth was
voyde and emptie, and darcknesse was vpon the depe …”
“In the begynnynge was the worde, and the worde was with
God: and the worde was God. The same was in the begynnynge with God.”
© John Welford
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