Image from Hertford College, Oxford.
From James Keifer at the Lectionary:
Tyndale was born Slymbridge and educated at Oxford and Cambridge. Against the wishes of Henry VIII, he wanted to translate the Bible into English, the language of the people.
As Keifer says:
It is reported that, in the course of a dispute with a promminent clergyman who disparaged this proposal, he said, "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost."
That's telling him.
Because of Henry VII opposition, Tyndale left England, went to Germany and spent years in exile, poor, moving from place to place, and working on his translation.
He completed his translation of the New Testament in 1525, and it was printed at Worms and smuggled into England. Of 18,000 copies, only two survive. In 1534, he produced a revised version, and began work on the Old Testament. In the next two years he completed and published the Pentateuch and Jonah, and translated the books from Joshua through Second Chronicles, but then he was captured (betrayed by one he had befriended), tried for heresy, and put to death. He was burned at the stake, but, as was often done, the officer strangled him before lighting the fire. His last words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."
Miles Coverdale continued Tyndale's work by translating those portions of the Bible (including the Apocrypha) which Tyndale had not lived to translate himself, and publishing the complete work. In 1537, the "Matthew Bible" (essentially the Tyndale-Coverdale Bible under another man's name to spare the government embarrassment) was published in England with the Royal Permission. Six copies were set up for public reading in Old St Paul's Church, and throughout the daylight hours the church was crowded with those who had come to hear it. One man would stand at the lectern and read until his voice gave out, and then he would stand down and another would take his place. All English translations of the Bible from that time to the present century are essentially revisions of the Tyndale-Coverdale work.
I love the story of the public readings in Old St. Paul's Church, with crowds coming to listen. Even those who could not read were given access to the words of the Bible.
READINGS:
Psalm 1 or 15
James 1:21-25
John 12:44-50
PRAYER
Almighty God, who planted in the heart of your servant William Tyndale a consuming passion to bring the Scriptures to the people in their native tongue, and endowed him with the gift of powerful and graceful expression and with strength to persevere against all obstacles: Reveal to us your saving Word, as we read and study the Scriptures, and hear them calling us to repentance and life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
UPDATE: Thanks to LapinBizarre in the comments, here is a link to the text of the Tyndale New Testament:
As always, such brilliant posting.
ReplyDeleteBack from Spain and happy and grateful to be visiting your blog.
Thank you for this- thank you for all.
Fran, welcome back! I hope that you had a lovely time in Barcelona. You will tell us all about it and post pictures, I hope.
ReplyDeleteI love the Tyndale New Testament. Even today, it reads well, and in some instances is much more vivid than the Authorized Version (KJV).
ReplyDeleteTim, I'm not very faimiliar with the Tyndale NT, but I do know that the committee who did the KJB used the Tyndale extensively in their research for their translation.
ReplyDeleteThe book that was published recently on the history of the KJV was called God's Secretaries, while the the title of the history of the Tyndale bible is God's Bestseller.
There is a transcription of the Tyndale NT, most spelling modernized, at http://faithofgod.net/WTNT/
ReplyDeleteIt is still pretty easy to read and, as Tim Chesterton says, is often more vivid than the AV.
Lapin, thanks for the link. I read through a few chapters of Matthew, and it reads very nicely. The spellings of the proper names are curious - Judea is Jury and Jerimaiah is Ieremy.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why they've updated everything except the proper names. They leave John as "Jhon", for instance. "Jewry" is the accepted modern spelling of this now archaic term for Judea (Percy Dearmer - him again! - used it as recently as the 1920's in his carol "Unto us a boy is born"). "I" & "J" were still interchangeable in the printed word in the early 16th century, which the transcriber ought to have known - "Jeremy" would be more correct. I'm wary of substituting modern versions of proper nouns for fear of doing even more violence to the cadence of the prose - something of which writers of this period were very conscious - than has already been done by changes over time in the pronunciation and stress of words.
ReplyDeleteps. Making a last minute decision whether or not to take my old dog to the cathedral to be blessed at 6:00. Turns out that the blessing is to be incorporated in a Rite II communion service and I'm not sure that her intestines are up to it. Could take a doggie bag, I suppose, but there are things that should not be done in cathedrals.
ReplyDeleteMy mother (I come by it honestly, tho' my father was worse!) had a spoof of those "rain in Spain" -type elocution rotes, which comes to mind. It goes, "He crept in the crypt, cr-pped, and crept out".
Bye!
Lapin, read John Bassett's comment in the "Missing" post up above.
ReplyDeleteYou bless your old dog. I'm sure God will hear your prayer.
Life sounds pretty medieval - in the best sense of the word - at S. John's. Beautiful.
ReplyDelete