FOUR hundred years ago on 6th October William Tindale, Reformer and Translator, was strangled and then burnt at Vilvorde in Belgium. And as the quatercentenary of his death will be taken advantage of to call the attention of the English-speaking world to its great debt to this noble Reformer for his work as translator of the Scriptures we are devoting this article to a short account of his work which we are afraid has not received the attention it deserves. The story of Tindale’s life has been told in Demaus’ standard biography, William Tindale, a curtailed edition of which has recently been issued by the Religious Tract Society at the exceptionally low price of one and sixpence. In this article it is not so much to the facts of his life we are directing our readers’ attention as to his work as a Translator. Dr. Wescott, an authority on the subject, says: “With Tindale the history of our present English Bible begins; and for fifteen years the history of the Bible is almost identical with the history of Tindale. The fortunes of both, if followed out in detail, are even of romantic interest” (History of the English Bible, p. 25). Tindale had high expectations that the Bishop of London, Tunstall, whose love of scholarship Erasmus had praised would be helpful to him in the design that lay so near his heart. But he met with a very cold reception from the proud Romish prelate. According to his own words: “In London I abode almost a year and marked the course of the world . . . and understood at the last, not only, that there was no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the New Testament but also there was no place to do it in all England.” But, if the Bishop of London failed him, Tindale found in Humphrey Monmouth, a wealthy alderman of London a friend who helped him financially and otherwise. The Bishop of London’s treatment of him, however, determined him to leave his native land to which he was destined never to return. In 1525 he went to Cologne and there began to print the translation of the New Testament which he had by that time completed. Troubles were coming thick and fast upon the Reformation cause and its enemies were busy and unscrupulous. The printing of the New Testament in the language the English people could understand was a crime that could not be tolerated and there were men who imagined they were doing God service in putting a stop to the work. Cochlaeus, a relentless enemy of the truth, managed to stop the work of printing when only ten sheets in quarto had been printed. Cochlaeus has left an account of his success in his Satanic work. He got into touch with the printers and plying some of them with wine he learned where three thousand copies of the New Testament were being worked off for despatch to England. The authorities forbade the printers to proceed but Tindale and his friend Roye escaped with the printed sheets to Worms. While at Worms, Tindale found a safe retreat as the city, by this date, had become wholly Lutheran. To baffle his enemies, Tindale, instead of publishing the quarto edition first, which had been stopped by Cochlaeus, issued an octavo edition. In a preface he apologises for “the rudeness of the work.” This edition, with the quarto edition, reached England without any indication of the translator’s name early in 1526. Henry VIII. had received a warning before their arrival that such books had been printed. The books were eagerly bought when they came to England but there was also strong opposition. Sir Thomas More fiercely attacked the translation as ignorant, dishonest, and heretical. Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Tunstall, Bishop of London, issued mandates for the suppression and surrender of copies. The efforts to suppress the book failed, so eager were the demands for it. In burning the book Tindale had a premonition of what was awaiting himself. “They did none other thing than I looked for,” he said, “no more shall they do if they burn me also, if it be God’s will it shall be so. Nevertheless in translating the New Testament I did my duty.” Tindale continued his work and early in 1530 the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, was published. In 1531 the book of Jonah appeared but no more of Tindale’s work on the Old Testament was published during his life-time.
In 1534 Tindale’s revised New Testament appeared. “He had worked,” says Dr. Wescott, “for thirteen years in exile by foreign instruments, and now in his last moments he was allowed to rejoice in the thought that his labour had found its proper home in his own land. For this end he had constantly striven; for this he had been prepared to sacrifice everything else; and the end was gained only when he was called to die” (History of the English Bible, p. 49).
A traitor had worked his way into his confidence notwithstanding the warnings Tindale had received. He was apprehended, tried, and condemned. He was first of all strangled and then burned. His last prayer was: “Lord open the King of England’s eyes.” So died one of England’s noblest martyrs after accomplishing a work the fruitfulness of which only the opening of the records on the Great Day will declare.
His aim in translating the Scriptures is set forth in his own words. “As concerning all I have translated or otherwise written, I beseech all men to read it for that purpose I wrote it: even to bring them to the knowledge of the Scripture.”
Tindale approached the work of translation with a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and all external evidence it has been truly said goes to prove Tindale’s originality as a translator. While making use of Luther’s German translation and also of the Vulgate it is evident he translated independent of both. We conclude our article with the following tribute to Tindale’s genius as a translator by one whose judgment on the subject is worthy of respect. “Before he began,” says Dr. Wescott, “he had prepared himself for a task of which he could apprehend the full difficulty. He had rightly measured the momentous issues of a vernacular version of the Holy Scriptures, and determined once for all the principles on which it must be made. His later efforts were directed simply to the nearer attainment of this ideal. To gain this end he availed himself of the best help which lay within his reach, but he used it as a master and not as a disciple. In this work alone he felt that substantial independence was essential to success. In exposition or exhortation he might borrow freely the language or the thought which seemed suited to his purpose, but in rendering the sacred text he remained throughout faithful to the instincts of a scholar. From first to last his style and his interpretation are his own, and in the originality of Tindale is included in a large measure the originality of our English version. For not only did Tindale contribute to it directly the substantial basis of half the Old Testament (in all probability) and of the whole of the New but he established a standard of Biblical translation which others followed. It is even of less moment that by far the greater part of his translation remains intact in our present Bibles, than that his spirit animates the whole. He toiled faithfully himself, and where he failed he left to those who should come after the secret of success. The achievement was not for one but for many; but he fixed the types according to which the later labourers worked. His influence decided that our Bible should be popular and not literary, speaking in a simple dialect, and that so by its simplicity it should be endowed with permanence. He felt by a happy instinct the potential affinity between Hebrew and English idioms, and enriched our language and thought forever with the characteristics of the Semitic mind” (History of the English Bible, pp. 157, 158).
While this tribute to his scholarship is well deserved it would be a grave omission to overlook the fact that his equipment as a successful translator of God’s Word was not altogether due to scholarship. Behind that scholarship there were the mighty impulses of the new life begotten by the Holy Ghost which vitalised his scholarship and consecrated all his work as a translator to the service of God. “My part,” he writes, “be not in Christ if mine heart be not to follow and live according as I teach, and also if mine heart weep not night and day for mine own sin and other men’s indifferently, beseeching God to convert us all and to take His wrath from us and to be merciful as well to all other men, as to mine own soul, caring for the wealth of the realm I was born in, for the king and all that are thereof, as a tender-hearted mother would do for her only son.”
*These words are the closing sentences of his disclaimer of Joye’s unauthorised revision of Tindale’s New Testament.—Editor.