This year marks the 500th anniversary of the appearance in England of William Tyndale’s translation of the Greek New Testament into English. It was one of the first such translations into the vernacular making the New Testament accessible to the general population.
Originally from Gloucester in southwest England, Tyndale studied at Oxford as well as Cambridge and subsequently decided to set out on his translation of the scriptures.
His story is one of religious devotion, intellect and independence of mind, determination and, as recounted below, ultimate brutal tragedy.
In the Introduction to the History of Christianity, edited by Tim Dowley (London, Lion, 2014), it is explained that Tyndale’s self-appointed task arose because, while working as a tutor after his university years, he was struck by the lack of education of the parochial clergy, and is reputed to have told one cleric: “If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall [sic] know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.”
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An immediate obstacle he met in his great project was the refusal of the then Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, later Prince-Bishop of Durham, to give his approval.
This was a decisive blow because Tunstall was immensely influential with the Tudor monarchs.
Indeed, in a popular account of the man, entitled The Calculating Bishop, Durham University has phrased it appealingly to the modern reader by observing that Tunstall’s name was to be found “in the address book of kings and queens, scholars and diplomats, heroes and traitors”.
Everyone apparently wanted, and many had, Tunstall’s ear.
This was of course before the English Church broke with Rome and the bishops did not favour the idea of the Bible in the vernacular, as the opening up of the Bible to ordinary people risked strengthening the Reformation process that was already under way.
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One might expect that Tyndale would have known of this immense difficulty as far as his plans were concerned, but he seems to have been the type of person who believes so much in a course of action that all such obstacles are deemed surmountable.
Alas, life is not quite as simple as that. There is always politics, in both state and church.
A late 14th century English text, the Wycliffe Bible, was a translation from the Latin Vulgate but, as a translation of a translation is a risky affair, it was not as dependable as a translation from the Greek.
The bishops had already effectively banned the Wycliffe Bible in 1407-08, not because of any unreliability but because of the danger of its fomenting ecclesiastical unrest encouraged by the Lollards, followers of Wycliffe.
The Lollards formed what is sometimes known as a “pre-Protestant” faction, were fiercely critical of Roman doctrine and practices and, perhaps needless to say, were much persecuted. Their nomenclature is not controversial today but at the time it was derogatory, being suggestive of mumbling.
Faced with the continued aversion to the Bible in the vernacular among the hierarchy, Tyndale fled to Germany in 1524. He completed his New Testament translation in 1525 but faced legal jeopardy over its printing. Nonetheless, it proceeded and Tyndale’s translation began circulation in England in the following year. Tragically he was martyred in 1536 by strangulation and burning at the stake, his final words having been recorded as, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”
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When it comes to the history of the text of the New Testament, there are many twists and turns.
The first unpalatable fact is that we do not have any of the original manuscripts, and nor did Tyndale or Erasmus (1466?-1536), on whose Greek text Tyndale relied. Erasmus had used a relatively small number of Greek manuscripts to compile his Greek text, but none of these is understood to have dated to before the 11th century.
The original texts of the New Testament were written in Greek because it was a common language used by officialdom and merchants across the region. Indeed, this assisted the spread of the Gospel beyond the Holy Land.
What happened was that the original texts were copied by scribes, often in a group setting in a scriptorium, with one person dictating. As a result of this, sometimes errors crept in or indeed changes were made because of doctrinal preferences.
The discipline of textual criticism, involving the assessing and comparing of many ancient manuscripts, has advanced remarkably since Tyndale’s time. As a result, we can be confident that our Bible today represents much more accurately what was originally written, although versions differ in style, and the number of books in the Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic versions of the Old Testament differ.
The development of the canons of the Old and New Testaments is another story.
One of the earliest extant New Testament manuscripts, known as P45, dates from the mid-3rd century and is held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.
Canon Ian Ellis was rector of Newcastle, Co Down, until retirement in 2020, and edited The Church of Ireland Gazette from 2001-2017.
