William Tyndale

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William Tyndale

Charged with Heresy and Burned atthe stake for changing the bible from Hebrew to English

Born	fl. 1484–1496 Gloucestershire, England
Died	c. 6 October 1536 near Vilvoorde, Duchy of Brabant,Seventeen Provinces
Cause of death	Executed by strangling, then burnt at the stake
Alma mater	Magdalen Hall, University of Oxford
Known for	Tyndale Bible

William Tyndale (sometimes spelled Tynsdale, Tindall, Tindill, Tyndall; c. 1494–1536) was an English scholar who became a leading figure in Protestant reform in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known for his translation of the Bible into English. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther.[1]While a number of partial and incomplete translations had been made from the seventh century onward, the grass-roots spread ofWycliffe's Bible resulted in a death sentence for any unlicensed possession of Scripture in English—even though translations in all other major European languages had been accomplished and made available Tyndale's translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, the first English one to take advantage of the printing press, and first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation. It was taken to be a direct challenge to the hegemony of both the Roman Catholic Church and English Laws to maintain church rulings. In 1530, Tyndale also wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII's divorce on the grounds that it contravened Scripture.

Tyndale had to learn Hebrew in Germany due to England's active Edict of Expulsion against the Jews. He worked in an age where Greek was available to the European scholarly community for the first time in centuries. Erasmus compiled and edited Greek Scriptures into the Textus Receptus — ironically, to improve upon the Latin Vulgate—following the Renaissance-fueling Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the dispersion of Greek-speaking intellectuals and texts into a Europe which previously had access to none. Sharing Erasmus' translation ideals, Tyndale took the ill-regarded, unpopular and awkward Middle-English "vulgar" tongue, improved upon it using Greek and Hebrew syntaxes and idioms, and formed an Early Modern English basis that Shakespeare and others would later follow and build upon as Tyndale-inspired vernacular forms took over. When a copy of The Obedience of a Christian Man fell into the hands of Henry VIII, the king found the rationale to break the Church in England from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534.

In 1535, Tyndale was arrested and jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde (Filford) outside Brussels for over a year. In 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake. His dying request that the King of England's eyes would be opened seemed to find its fulfillment just two years later with Henry's authorization of The Great Bible for the Church of England—which was largely Tyndale's own work. Hence, the Tyndale Bible, as it was known, continued to play a key role in spreadingReformation ideas across the English-speaking world and eventually, on the global British Empire. His version worked prominently into the Geneva Bible which was taken to the New World to Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, and on the Mayflower in 1620.

Notably, in 1611, the 54 independent scholars who created the King James Version, drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's, and the Old Testament 76%

Sculpted Head Of William Tyndale from St Dunstan-in-the-West Church London

Biography

Tyndale was born at some time in the period 1484–1496, in Melksham Court, Stinchcombe, a village near Dursley, Gloucestershire. The Tyndale family also went by the name Hychyns (Hitchins), and it was as William Hychyns that Tyndale was enrolled at Magdalen College School, Oxford. Tyndale's family had migrated to Gloucestershire at some point in the 15th century – probably as a result of the Wars of the Roses. The family derived from Northumberland via East Anglia. Tyndale's brother, Edward, was receiver to the lands of Lord Berkeley as attested to in a letter by Bishop Stokesly of London and included in a biography on William Tyndale by the Rev R Demaus published in 1871, at page 5. Tyndale is recorded in two genealogies[8] as having been the brother of Sir William Tyndale, of Deane, Northumberland, and Hockwald, Norfolk, who was knighted at the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales to Catherine of Aragon. Tyndale's family was thus derived from Baron Adam de Tyndale, a tenant-in-chief of Henry I (see Tyndall). William Tyndale's niece, Margaret Tyndale, was married to the Protestant martyr, Rowland Taylor, burnt during the Marian Persecutions.

Betrayal and death

William Tyndale, before being strangled and burned at the stake, cries out, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes".woodcut from Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563).

Memorial to William Tyndale in a Vilvoorde public garden

Eventually, Tyndale was betrayed by Henry Phillips to the imperial authorities, seized in Antwerp in 1535 and held in the castle of Vilvoorde (Filford) near Brussels.He was tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and condemned to be burned to death, despite Thomas Cromwell's intercession on his behalf. Tyndale "was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned".(The strangulation was not fully effective and Tyndale partially revived, it was reported that he was aware of being burned but died in a quiet, stoical manner). Reportedly, his final words, spoken "at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice", were reported as "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes." The traditional date of commemoration is 6 October, but records of Tyndale's imprisonment suggest the actual date of his execution might have been some weeks earlier. Foxe gives 6 October as the date of commemoration (left-hand date column), but gives no date of death (right-hand date column).

Within four years, at the same king's behest, four English translations of the Bible were published in England,including Henry's officialGreat Bible. All were based on Tyndale's work. Although Tyndale's translation of the Old Testament remained unfinished at his death, his work formed the basis of all subsequent English translations of the Bible, including the 'King James' version of 1611.

Memorial to William Tyndale in a Vilvoorde public garden