Pacific Hope

Summary

William Tyndale was a 16th century Christian Reformer and scholar who translated the Bible into the early Modern English of his day. The driving passion of his life was to see the Bible translated from the Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English available for every person in England to read. The Catholic Church and the King of England both furiously opposed the work that Tyndale was doing and he became a fugitive for much of his later life. He was eventually thrown into prison and then publicly executed by being strangled and burned at the stake. Much of the modern English language we owe to William Tyndale.

Biography

William Tyndale was born in 1495 at Slymbridge, England near the Welsh border. He received his degrees from Magdalen College, Oxford, and also studied at Cambridge. He was ordained to the  Catholic priesthood in 1521, and soon began to speak of his desire, which eventually became his life's obsession, to translate the Scriptures into English. The idea of the common man being able to read the Word of God is what fueled Tyndale's passion to accomplish this challenging task. It was not something that the Catholic Church had any interest in, since they were the ones who held absolute authority in matters of interpreting the Scriptures and being the mediator between God and man.
When he was twenty-eight years old in 1522, he was serving as a tutor in the home of John Walsh in
Gloucestershire, spending most of his time studying Erasmus' Greek New Testament which had just been printed six years before in 1516. Every day William Tyndale was seeing more and more of the doctrines of the Reformation as clearly being taught in the Greek New Testament. Increasingly he was making himself suspect in this Catholic house of John Walsh. Learned men would come for dinner, and Tyndale would discuss the things he was seeing in the New Testament. Reformed Historian John Foxe tells us that one day an exasperated Catholic scholar at dinner with Tyndale said, "We are better without God's law than the pope's." In response Tyndale spoke his famous words, "I defy the Pope and all his laws. . . . If God spare my life before many years, I will cause a boy that drives the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do." Because King Henry VIII was firmly set against any English version of the Scriptures, Tyndale had to leave England, and eventually, showed up on Martin Luther's doorstep in Germany in 1525. Tyndale was on the run because of the wide-spread rumor that his English New Testament project was underway, causing inquisitors and bounty hunters to be 
constantly on his trail to arrest him and prevent his ‘devilish' mission.

In 1525, for the first time ever in history, the Greek New Testament was being translated into English. And for the first time ever the New Testament in English was to be made available in a printed form. Before Tyndale there were only hand-written manuscripts of the Bible in English. These manuscripts we owe to the work and inspiration of John Wycliff and the Lollards from a hundred-thirty years earlier. For a thousand years the only translation of the Greek and Hebrew Bible was the Latin Vulgate, and few people could understand it, even if they had access to it. Having God's Word available to the public in the language of the common man would have meant disaster to the Catholic church. No longer would they control access to the Scriptures. If people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income and power would crumble. They could not possibly continue to get away with selling indulgences or selling the release of loved ones from "Purgatory". People would begin to challenge the church's authority if they were able to read the Scriptures for themselves. The contradictions between what God's Word said, and what the priests taught, would open the public's eyes and the truth would set them free from the grip of fear that the
institutional church held. Salvation through faith, not works or donations, would be understood. The need for priests would vanish through the priesthood of all believers. The veneration of  church-canonized Saints and Mary would be called into question. The availability of the scriptures into English was the biggest threat imaginable to the Roman church. Neither side would give up without a fight.

William Tyndale finished the English translation of the Greek New Testament in Worms, Germany, and began to smuggle it into England in bails of cloth, along with other books he had written denouncing the Catholic church and supporting the Reformation. By October of 1526 his translation had been banned by Bishop Tunstall in London, but the print run was at least three thousand- and the books were getting to the people. Over the next eight years, five pirated editions were printed as well. They were burned as soon as the Bishop could confiscate them, but copies trickled through and the more the King and Bishop resisted its distribution, the more fascinated the public at large  became. The church declared it contained thousands of errors as they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy. One risked death by burning if caught inmere possession of Tyndale's forbidden books.

An Offer to Return

Stephen Vaughn was an English merchant commissioned by Thomas Cromwell, the king's advisor, to find William Tyndale and inform himthat King Henry VIII desired him to come back to England from out of hiding on the continent. Thepoint of contention from Tyndale's perspective was this: Will the King of England give hisofficial endorsement to a vernacular Bible for all his English subjects? If not, he will not return. If so, he will give himself up to the king and never write another book.Henry VIII was angry with Tyndale for believing and promoting Martin Luther's Reformation teachings, but in spite of this high court anger against Tyndale, the king's message was sprinkled with mercy: "The kings' royal majesty is . . . inclined to mercy, pity, and compassion." The thirty-seven-year-old Tyndale was moved to tears by this offer of reconciliation. He had been an exile from his homeland for seven years. But it always came back to the same point of disputation as before. Tyndale's words from May, 1531 state: I assure you, if it would stand with the King's most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the Scripture [that is, without explanatory notes] to be put forth among his people.... I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, not abide two days in these parts after the same: but immediately to repair unto his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so this [translation] be  obtained.Until that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer.In other words, Tyndale will give himself up to the king on one condition-that the king authorize an English Bible translated from the Greek and Hebrew in the common language of the people. The king refused. Tyndale never went to his homeland again. 
Through this tumultuous time of being a fugitive, he watched a rising tide of persecution and felt the pain of seeing young men burned alive who were converted by reading his translation and his books. His closest friend, John Frith, was arrested in London and tried by the King's associate Thomas More and burned alive July 4, 1531, at the age of twentyeight. Richard Bayfield ran the ships that took Tyndale's books to England. He was betrayed and arrested, and Thomas More wrote on December 4, 1531, that Bayfield "the  monk and apostate [was] well and worthily burned in Smythfelde." Three weeks later the same end came to John Tewkesbury. He was converted by reading Tyndale's Parable of the Wicked Mammon which defended justification by faith alone. He was whipped in Thomas More's garden and had his brow squeezed with small ropes till blood came out of his eyes. Then he was sent to the Tower where he was racked till he was lame. Then at last they burned him alive. Thomas More "rejoiced that his victim was  ow in hell, where Tyndale ‘is like to find him when they come together.'"

Four months later James Bainham followed in the flames in April of 1532. He had stood up during the mass at St. Augustine's Church in London and lifted a copy of Tyndale's  New Testament and pleaded with the people to die rather than deny the word of God. That virtually was to sign his own death warrant. Add to these Thomas Bilney, Thomas Dusgate, John Bent, Thomas Harding, Andrew Hewet, Elizabeth Barton and others, all burned alive for sharing the views of William Tyndale about the Scriptures and the Reformed faith.

Early in 1535. Tyndale became friends with Henry Phillips, a visiting Englishman.
Phillips presented himself to Tyndale as sympathetic to the Lutheran cause, but plotted
with the emperor's magistrates to arrest Tyndale. In May, 1535, Phillips invited Tyndale
out to dinner and, upon leaving his residence, identified him to waiting guards who
apprehended him. Although by this time, England had separated from the Catholic
Church and Tyndale had some supporters in the government, the Church of England
continued to fight against Lutheranism. Tyndale's friends appealed to the English
government to intervene, but to no avail. After a sixteen month imprisonment, an
ecclesiastical panel convicted Tyndale of heresy in August, 1536 and turned him over to
the secular authority. These months in prison were not easy. They were a long dying
leading to death. We get one glimpse into the prison to see Tyndale's condition and his
passion. He wrote a letter in September, 1535, that was addressed to an unnamed officer
of the castle where he was imprisoned. Here is a condensed version:
"I beg your lordship, and that of the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here through
the winter, you will request the commissary to have the kindness to send me, from the
goods of mine which he has, a warmer cap; for I suffer greatly from cold in the head, and
am afflicted by a perpetual catarrh, which is much increased in this cell; a warmer coat
also, for this which I have is very thin; a piece of cloth too to patch my leggings. My
overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also worn out. He has a woolen shirt, if he will be
good enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth to put on above; he
has also warmer night-caps. And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is
indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark. But most of all I beg and beseech your
clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the
Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that
study. In return may you obtain what you most desire, so only that it be for the salvation
of your soul. But if any other decision has been taken concerning me, to be carried out
before winter, I will be patient, abiding the will of God, to the glory of the grace of my
Lord Jesus Christ: whose spirit (I pray) may ever direct your heart. Amen"
We don't know if his requests were granted. He did stay in that prison through the winter.
His verdict was sealed in August, 1536. He was formally condemned as a heretic and
degraded from the priesthood. Then in early October (traditionally October 6), he was
tied to the stake and then strangled by the executioner, then afterward consumed in the
fire. John Foxe reports that his last words were, "Lord! Open the King of England's
eyes!" He was forty-two years old, never married and never buried.
Tyndale and the English Language
It is surprising that the name of William Tyndale is not more familiar, for there is no man
who did more to enrich the English language. Tyndale is the man who taught England
how to read and showed Shakespeare how to write. No English writer has reached so
many.
Tyndale knew eight languages: Latin, Greek, German, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian,
and English. He loved the natural power of language and with his translation became part
of a rebirth of interest in the way language works.
Tyndale's contributions, enshrined in his and subsequent English Bibles, molded the
speech of even those who condemned him. The British Library described Tyndale's New
Testament as "the most important printed book in the English language" and paid more
than one million pounds for it. Only two complete copies are known to have survived:
most were burned or literally read to pieces.
The sages assembled by King James to prepare the Authorized Version of 1611 (KJV), so
often praised for their "group inspiration," took over Tyndale's work almost in its
entirety. Over eighty-five percent of the Authorized Version's New Testament and the
first half of the Old Testament are taken directly from Tyndale's -- albeit
unacknowledged. The same is true of the Geneva Bible used by the Pilgrims and
Puritans. Where the Authorized Version wavered from its Tyndale roots, it frequently
offered no improvement. Tyndale carefully chose words which would clearly express the
meaning of the original Biblical languages. On occasion the King James translators chose
words more acceptable to the church hierarchy. For instance, where Tyndale uses:
"congregation", "elders" and "love" -- the KJV reverts to the latin: "church", "bishops"
and charity".
In translating the Bible, Tyndale introduced new words into the English language:
Here is a sampling of the English phrases we owe to Tyndale:
"Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3).
"Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9)
"The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be
merciful unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace"
(Numbers 6:24-26).
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God"
(John 1:1).
"There were shepherds abiding in the field" (Luke 2:8).
"Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4).
"Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name" (Matthew 6:9).
"The signs of the times" (Matthew 16:3)
"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41).
"He went out . . . and wept bitterly" (Matthew 26:75). The two words, wept bitterly, are
still used by almost all modern translations (NIV, NASB, ESV, NKJV). It has not been
improved on for five hundred years in spite of weak efforts like one recent translation:
"cried hard." Unlike that phrase, "the rhythm of his two words carries the experience."
"A law unto themselves" (Romans 2:14)
"In him we live, move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels" (1 Corinthians 13:1)
"Fight the good fight" (1 Timothy 6:12).
According to one biographer, "The list of such near-proverbial phrases is endless." Five
hundred years after his great work "newspaper headlines still quote Tyndale, though
unknowingly, and he has reached more people than even Shakespeare."
In Closing
How much do we owe to this great hero of the faith? Tyndale was a man that lived and
died for the glory of God. In the last words written by Tyndale before he was executed,
that he sent to his best friend, John Frith, in a letter just before he was burned alive for
believing and speaking the truth of Scripture:
"Your cause is Christ's gospel, a light that must be fed with the blood of faith. . . . If
when we be buffeted for well-doing, we suffer patiently and endure, that is thankful with
God; for to that end we are called. For Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example
that we should follow his steps, who did no sin. Hereby have we perceived love that he
laid down his life for us: therefore we ought to be able to lay down our lives for the
brethren. . . . Let not your body faint. If the pain be above your strength, remember:
"Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will give it you." And pray to our Father in that
name, and he will ease your pain, or shorten it. . . . Amen."
For more information:
Why William Tyndale Lived and Died (Sermon by John Piper, Jan 31, 2006)
"God's Outlaw-The Life of William Tyndale" (DVD)
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
www.williamtyndale.com