A “Tendentious Translation”?  An Appraisal of William Tyndale’s English New Testament After 500 Years

The causes that moved me to translate / y thought better that other shulde ymagion / then that y shulde rehearce them. Moreover y supposed yt superfluous / for who ys so blynde to axe why lyght shulde be shewed to them that walke in dercknes / where they cannot but stumble / and where to stumble ys the daunger of eternall dammacion….¹

Five hundred years ago, in 1525, William Tyndale penned these words for the prologue of what would become the first chapters of the English New Testament in print—translated directly from the Greek, rather than from the Latin translation of the church father, Jerome. More than a century earlier, all translation of Scripture into English had been banned, apart from express ecclesiastical permission. This ban came as a response to the manuscript translation of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, associated with fourteenth-century theologian John Wyclif and his followers.² Therefore, Tyndale no doubt realized some would attack his work and try to snuff out the light of the vernacular Scriptures. This realization, in fact, influenced his decision in 1524 to leave his homeland and labor to print the English Bible from exile on the European continent.³

The attack on Tyndale’s English New Testament came suddenly, perhaps more suddenly than Tyndale expected. In 1525, with his translation work complete, Tyndale made his first attempt to print his New Testament in Cologne, Germany. But, even before the Gospel of Matthew had completed its press run, authorities raided the print shop, forcing Tyndale to halt his work and flee the city. The extant copy of this first attempt, known today as the “Cologne Fragment,” contains his prologue and nearly twenty-one chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. Hounded by his enemies, Tyndale fled to Worms, Germany, where in 1526 he printed the first English edition of the New Testament to be translated directly from the Greek. Despite its historic significance and generally high quality, the edition showed signs of haste. The first twenty-one chapters of the Gospel of Matthew were practically identical with what appeared in the “Cologne Fragment,” but the 1526 edition was a bare text, except for a brief afterword. It lacked Tyndale’s prologue, as well as his extensive marginal notes. Nonetheless, this 1526 edition was a landmark achievement in biblical translation and English prose alike.⁴

In following years, Tyndale went on also to translate from the Hebrew Old Testament, printing the full English Pentateuch (1530) and a separate translation of Jonah (ca. 1531). In 1534, he then printed a newly revised edition of his New Testament, as well as a revision of Genesis. He also continued laboring in the Hebrew Old Testament—very likely, completing translations, in manuscript only, of the Old Testament historical books, from Joshua to 2 Chronicles.⁵ Before he could bring these translations to print, however, he was betrayed and arrested in Antwerp then imprisoned in Vilvorde castle (in modern-day Belgium). Nonetheless, his one desire to make God’s Word available in the English tongue never wavered, as displayed in an extant prison letter, in Tyndale’s hand, written in Latin to his captors. In it, he begs to be given his “Hebrew bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study.”⁶ 

When, on October 6, 1536, Tyndale was strangled to death and burned at the stake as a heretic, he prayed that God would open the English king’s eyes, so that English Christians could finally read and hear the Bible in their own language. Even so, the king authorized an English Bible in 1537—containing, without obvious recognition, Tyndale’s own Old and New Testament translations. Indeed, his translations formed the foundation for nearly all early modern English translations of the Bible, including the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611, and his work continues to shape the nature of English Bible translation even five centuries later.⁷

Despite the success of Tyndale’s translation, we should not too quickly forget the criticism it received in his day. Soon after its printing in 1526, it was consigned to the flames by English church authorities—a threat of worse things to come for Tyndale, as he recognized.⁸ Moreover, his New Testament was attacked in massive tomes by Thomas More, who was Lord Chancellor of England from 1529 to 1532. More deemed, in 1529, that Tyndale’s New Testament translation was worthy to be burned for malicious errors as numerous as drops of “water in the sea.”⁹ According to More, certain translation errors were exemplary for the harm they would do. These alleged errors included: his use of “senior” (and later, “elder”), instead of “priest,” to translate the Greek πρεσβύτερος; “congregation” instead of “church” for ἐκκλησία; “love” instead of “charity” for ἀγάπη; “favor” instead of “grace” for χάρις; “acknowledge” instead of “confess” for ἐξομολογέω; “repentance” instead of “penance” for μετάνοια; and “troubled of heart” instead of “contrite of heart” for συντετριμμένους τὴν καρδίαν.¹⁰ In more recent decades, Stanley Maveety likewise argued that Tyndale’s translation was “tendentious.” As if Tyndale were also intellectually dishonest, Maveety writes, 

That interpretation preceded translation might seem reasonable were it not that the vernacular Bible was sometimes described as the opening at long last of the barred door to impartial Truth. Beyond doubt, that was the view of the Reformation translators; but, as we have seen, before unlocking the door they took the pains to arrange the exhibit.¹¹

These allegations, however, do not do justice either to Tyndale’s translation philosophy or practice. 

Maveety’s claim minimizes the complexities Tyndale faced in conveying in English the form and meaning, letter and spirit, clarity and ambiguity of the Greek New Testament. These are complexities that every Bible translator must face. As Moisés Silva writes, “‘faithfulness’ in translation is neither a simple concept to define nor an easy goal to achieve,” and even the most “literal English versions of the Bible” cannot avoid drawing some interpretive conclusions in translation.¹² At least, as Leland Ryken notes in a helpful clarification, no translator can avoid the practice of “lexical or linguistic interpretation. That is, translators must decide what English word or phrase most closely corresponds to a given word [or phrase] of the original text.” This may not best be called “interpretation,” but it is a “‘judgment call’ … akin to interpretation.”¹³ Nevertheless, this “judgment call” is required of every translator striving to find the best English rendering of various Greek terms—for example, ἐκκλησία and the other terms More mentioned in his criticism of Tyndale. This level of interpretive work, of course, cannot be equated intrinsically with tendentiousness. If such an intrinsic equation can be made, all translators are tendentious, and any bare allegation of tendentiousness would be irrelevant. 

In any case, it is not clear at all that More and Maveety are correct in their assessment of Tyndale. Gerald Snare has argued, by contrast, that Tyndale “resists making his source-text his own,” and that “his reformist conceptions … did not determine how he translated.” Instead, Tyndale “aims at the vulgar equivalent of the Greek, and not at the original Greek metamorphosed through the Latin.”¹⁴ As the following analysis of Tyndale’s translation philosophy and practice will show, Tyndale aimed with his groundbreaking English New Testament to set out faithfully and plainly for his readers both the structure and meaning of the biblical text. As a result, Christians for the past five centuries have found “spirituall edyfyinge / consolacion / and solas” (i.e., solace) in the reading of God’s Word in English.¹⁵ 

“The Process, Order, and Meaning of the Text” 

Nearly half a decade after publishing his first English New Testament, Tyndale reflected once again on his motivation for leaving his homeland and devoting his life to rendering God’s Word into the English language. In a prefatory note to the reader of his 1530 English Pentateuch, he describes how the “malicious and wily hypocrites” who opposed the English New Testament would rather have a thousand tracts “put forth against their abominable doings and doctrine, than that the scripture should come to light.” While Scripture “hath but one simple literal sense whose light the owls cannot abide,” these critics of Tyndale’s translations prefer spiritual darkness for the “unlearned lay people” of England. With “allegories” and “subtle riddles,” they wrest “scripture unto their own purpose clean contrary unto the process, order and meaning of the text.” They achieve their ends by making use of the “apparent reasons of sophistry, and traditions of their own making, founded without ground of Scripture” and by “juggling with the text, expounding it in such a sense as is impossible to gather of the text, if thou see the process, order, and meaning thereof.” For this reason, Tyndale felt compelled to translate the Bible into English. He writes, 

Which thing only moved me to translate the new testament. Because I had perceived by experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.¹⁶ 

Tyndale’s words here do not merely comprise a biographical note, nor do they consist of mere polemical attacks against sophistical English ecclesiastics. Rather, these words go far in revealing his philosophy of translation. 

Consider Tyndale’s phrase, “the process, order, and meaning of the text,” along with a synonymous term, “circumstance,” which will be seen below. These expressions, common in Tyndale’s writings, are shorthand for a hermeneutical method derived ultimately from classical writers like Cicero, tailored for biblical interpretation by Augustine of Hippo—especially via his De Doctrina Christiana—and passed along to sixteenth-century writers by humanists like Desiderius Erasmus. Tyndale would have been familiar with Erasmus’s Ratio, a prefatory section that appeared in his 1519 Greek New Testament, which served (alongside the 1522 revision of this text) as the basis for the English translator’s rendering of the New Testament. In it, Erasmus endorses this contextual hermeneutic: 

Accordingly, whoever wishes to use the Scriptures rightly should not think it enough to have picked out four or five little words without considering rather the context from which the words arise. Frequently the sense of this or that passage depends upon what has preceded. He should weigh carefully by whom the words are said, to whom, the time, the occasion, the words, the intent, what has preceded, what follows. For it is from gathering and weighing these things that one grasps the meaning of what is said.¹⁷ 

In multiple passages throughout his corpus, Tyndale expresses similar hermeneutical convictions by using some combination of the terms, “process,” “order,” “meaning,” or “circumstance.”¹⁸ Perhaps, one of the clearest summaries of this conviction appears in the prologue to his Obedience of a Christian Man: 

… and when I allege any scripture, look thou on the text, whether I interpret it right which thou shalt easily perceive, by the circumstance and process of them, if thou make Christ the foundation and ground and build all on him and referrest all to him, and findest also that the exposition agreeth unto the common articles of the faith and open scriptures. And God the father of mercy … give thee his spirit to judge what is righteous in his eyes.¹⁹ 

Tyndale calls readers to consider biblical passages within their immediate literary contexts (i.e., “the circumstance and process of them”), as well as within the broader contexts of a Christ-centered faith, the “common articles of the faith,” the biblical canon, and the Holy Spirit’s testimony to biblical truth. These represent much of what we find in the contextual hermeneutic Tyndale inherited. Working from such assumptions, Tyndale believed English-speaking Christians needed to hear and see for themselves the clear structure, context, and meaning of Scripture. Tyndale’s English translation, therefore, needed to convey accurately the “process, order, and meaning of the text.” Any translation that failed to do this would fall short of his aim. 

The Profession of Our Baptist or Covenants

The sixteenth-century martyrologist John Foxe hands down to us a well-known account that helps us understand something more of Tyndale’s passion and motivation for translating the Bible into English. Before leaving England, Tyndale had a theological dispute with a “learned manne” who claimed it would be better to set Scripture aside than to lose the pope’s law.²⁰ Tyndale responded with what C.S. Lewis calls his “vaunt”²¹—indeed, his declaration of purpose in life from that moment onward: “I defie the Pope and all his lawes,” Tyndale responds, “ and … if God spare my lyfe ere many yeares, I wyl cause a boye that dryueth ye plough, shall knowe more of the scripture then thou dost.”²² 

Tyndale’s mention of the plowman most likely alludes to the preface to Erasmus’s New Testament, “Paraclesis,” in which he encourages the vernacular translation of Scripture, with the result that “the farmer [would] sing some portion of them at the plow, the weaver hum some parts of them to the movement of his shuttle, the traveler lighten the weariness of the journey with stories of this kind!”²³ Tyndale would have taken note of Erasmus’s statement, especially since, around this time, he also translated the humanist’s devotional treatise, Enchiridion Militis Christiani.²⁴ Tyndale was also familiar with Erasmus’s paraphrase on the Gospel of Matthew at least by 1528, when he mentioned it by name, alongside the “Paraclesis.”²⁵ All three Erasmian treatises emphasize the common baptismal profession of Christians. Significantly, “Paraclesis” and the paraphrase on Matthew’s Gospel offered Tyndale an ecclesiological motivation for his vocation as a translator, convincing him that all Englishmen needed Scripture in the vernacular because, by baptism, they were all members of Christ’s body and needed to understand and live according to the profession they made to God in baptism. Apart from an English Bible, how could they truly understand their baptismal profession?²⁶ 

In the early 1530s, Tyndale’s thought crystalized around his theology of covenant, which, according to Michael Whiting, “is grounded in his interpretation and theology of baptism.”²⁷ In his exposition on 1 John, Tyndale establishes the connection between baptism, covenant, and the interpretation of Scripture. According to Carl Trueman, it is in this work that Tyndale “makes his first reference to an arrangement between God and man which approximates to that which he later describes with the term covenant.”²⁸ For Tyndale, the Christian people have been deprived of God’s Word not merely because it does not exist in the common tongue, but also because the Christian has not been taught the “professione of his baptyme.”²⁹ He writes, 

The hole & some then of al to gether is this[.] If our hertes wer taught thappoynmēt made between god & vs in Christes bloud when we wer baptized / we had the kay to open the scripture / & light to se & perceyue the true meaning of it / [and] the scripture shulde be easy to understonde. And because we be not taght that profession / is the cause which the scripture is so darke / & so fare passinge our capacyte.³⁰ 

This covenantal profession in baptism involves “knowlege of the lawe of God” and of “the promises of mercie which ar in oure sauioure Cryste.”³¹ The common baptismal profession, as Erasmus argued, provides a theological basis for translating Scripture. Now, inverting this argument, Tyndale insists upon the importance of teaching this baptismal profession so that Scripture might be understood aright. 

Significantly, according to Tyndale, this baptismal profession should be internalized, written on the heart. Bible-reading involved an interpretive process and context; however, biblical authority and perspicuity was not ultimately—to borrow a useful expression—“a product of the reasoning reader.”³² According to Tyndale, the person who reads Scripture aright does not act upon the biblical text; instead, Scripture acts upon the reader by the power of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, Anthony Thiselton describes Tyndale as a proto-speech-act theoretician. According to Thiselton, Tyndale insists that Scripture “performs actions: it wounds, heals, drives to despair, liberates, commands and above all promises. He is clear that this focus on action stands at the heart of the matter.”³³ Individuals do not judge Scripture. On the contrary, Scripture is the “twitchestone” (i.e., touchstone) used to “examen/ judge and trie” every doctrine and every preacher.³⁴ 

For the wayward reader, however, Scripture is merely an object of interpretation, rather than a subject that “interprets its readers.”³⁵ Indeed, while Tyndale sees correct biblical interpretation as Scripture acting by the power of the Spirit upon a person’s heart, he consistently describes incorrect interpretation as a result of the reader’s action: False preachers “feign allegories” with their imaginations and impose their glosses upon God’s Word, hiding its light as a cloud hides the light of the sun.³⁶ If Scripture contradicts their doctrines, they “make it a nose of waxe and wrest it this waye and that waye till it agree.”³⁷ Indeed, Tyndale argues that More and his allies resist his English translation for one reason alone: namely, that because of his translation “they haue lost theyr iuglinge termes,” that is, their Latin and philosophical jargon, imposed on Scripture.³⁸ They fashion Scripture and work upon it, rather than letting it work upon them according to the “process, order and meaning of the text.” 

Tyndale’s Translation Practice

New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce praised the quality of Tyndale’s Greek scholarship, noting that his “rendering is in general closer to the Greek text than” is the German translation of Martin Luther. “On the other hand, there is nothing pedantic about Tyndale’s translation; he turns the Greek text into good English, not into a painfully literal rendering of the original idiom.”³⁹ According to J.F. Mozley, Tyndale “varies his renderings” of a Greek term “constantly.”⁴⁰ For example, he depicts the semantic range of the common, yet significant, Greek term λόγος, by translating it variously as: “word” (Matt 12:32, John 1:1); “communication” (Matt 5:37); “accounts” (Matt 18:23, Luke 16:2); “question” (Matt 21:24); “saying” (Matt 28:15, Mark 8:32, John 21:23); “deed” (Mark 1:45); “thing” (Mark 11:29); “preaching” (Luke 4:32); “rumour” (Luke 7:17); “treatise” (Acts 1:1); “preacher” (Acts 14:12); “complaint” (Acts 19:38); and “exhortations” (Acts 20:2). Tyndale’s translation of λόγος is neither stilted nor monotonous; rather, it is generally sensitive to and makes apparent the “process, order, and meaning” of the Greek text, even though later translators sometimes improved upon his rendering. On the other hand, David Norton observes, “Tyndale did not always provide variety where it might be thought possible and desirable, and, as Hammond points out, ‘he did take care to recreate the original’s repetitiveness where it had either semantic or stylistic importance.’”⁴¹ 

As for rendering Greek syntax, Mozley notes that Tyndale is “very free in his treatment of connecting particles, such as therefore, but, and.” He “often omits them” in the 1526 translation, but he restored many of them in 1534.⁴² Likewise, Tyndale could be free with other issues of syntax and word order. For example, in the 1526 edition of 1 John 1:1-3, Tyndale clarifies the syntax by inserting a verbal clause (“declare we unto you”) in verse 1, which doesn’t appear in the Greek, or in the Authorized Version, until verse 3. In 1534, however, he removes the verbal clause from verse 1.⁴³ 

In 1526, Tyndale rendered the genitive construction in Romans 5:8 with syntactical clarity (“the love that god hath unto us”), yet he revised the translation in 1534, making it more syntactically ambiguous (“love of God”). However, he retains clumsy renderings of the genitive constructions, δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ and ἡ δόξα τοῦ Θεοῦ, in Romans 3:21-31. In verse 21, he reasonably translates δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ as “the rightewesnes that cōmeth of God” (c.f., Rom 1:17), but he varied his translation of the Greek phrase in the verses that follow: “the rightewesnes no dout which ys goode before God” (v. 22); “the rightewesnes which before hym is of valoure” (v. 25); and “the rightewesnes that is alowed off hym” (v. 26). Likewise, he translated ἡ δόξα τοῦ Θεοῦ as “the prayse that is off valoure before God” (v. 23). Tyndale’s renderings here may have been influenced by Luther’s German, though Tyndale significantly does not insert “alone” (German: allein) into Rom 3:28, as Luther did.⁴⁴ 

Finally, Tyndale struggled, in 1526, with the syntax of John 1:1: “In the begynnynge was that worde ād that worde was with god: and god was that worde.”⁴⁵ In 1534, however, Tyndale corrected this faulty translation, handing down to later generations the now classic rendering of the passage: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God: and the word was God.” Ironically, in making this correction, Tyndale may have been following More’s advice.⁴⁶ 

Tyndale’s Controversial Words: “Love,” “Congregation,” and “Elder”

What, then, may be said of More’s claim that Tyndale tendentiously translated particular words in the New Testament, such as “love” instead of “charity” for ἀγάπη, “congregation” instead of “church” for ἐκκλησία, and “senior”/“elder” instead of “priest” for πρεσβύτερος? 

In the first case, More resisted the broad connotations of the term, “love,” when used in place of “charity” as a translation for ἀγάπη. “For though charyte be alway loue/ yet is not ye wote well loue allway charyte,” he writes; after all, “love” could refer to erotic love—a connotation he refused to attach to ἀγάπη.⁴⁷ Modern readers may suspect he has a point. After all, ἀγάπη was clearly used in the context of New Testament theology to describe divine love poured out among the people of God.⁴⁸ Moreover, in the story of Christ’s renewal of Peter in John 21:15-19, Tyndale’s use of the single verb, “love,” has the apparent disadvantage of showing no distinction between two Greek terms used in the passage: ἀγαπάω and φιλέω. In part, this is because English has only one verb to describe the concept of love; moreover, as Tyndale notes, “charity” does not have a verb form.⁴⁹ Nonetheless, one may question the premise that ἀγάπη/ἀγαπάω is always a uniquely divine or Christian form of love, regardless of context and considered purely from the perspective of historical linguistics.⁵⁰ In any case, Tyndale questioned this premise, describing ἀγάπη as a general term—that is, as “comen unto all loues.” As such, he felt the more generic English term, “love,” should be preferred to “charity” in his New Testament, although he admitted to rendering it this way “in spite of mine herte often tymes.”⁵¹ For Tyndale, therefore, the definition of ἀγάπη/ἀγαπάω is “based on the context the word is in”⁵²—that is, as Tyndale might put it, based on the “process and order” of the text. 

More also objected to Tyndale’s translation of ἐκκλησία, arguing that not every “congregation” is a Christian congregation; in fact, the term could refer as easily to a Muslim or heretical congregation.⁵³ Tyndale responds, in the first place, that even the Greek term is used to refer to non-Christian assemblies and that “the circumstaunce doeth ever tell what congregacyon ys ment.”⁵⁴ Jamie Ferguson has correctly suggested that Tyndale was concerned with the “denotation” of the biblical terms discussed here, but it is incorrect to conclude from this that Tyndale is unconcerned with “connotation” and “usage.” Rather, his concern is for the connotations that arise out of the biblical context. Thus, “congregation” is used to translate the same Greek term in both Acts 19 and in Ephesians 5, and context distinguishes the varied connotations: In the former, the term refers once to a confused Gentile mob (vs. 32) and then again to a lawful civic gathering (vs. 39); however, in Ephesians 5, it refers to the Christian congregation, the bride of Christ.⁵⁵ Significantly, Acts 19 also uses the term “churches” in verse 37, in reference to pagan temples. Tyndale notes that, among its “diverse significations,” the term “church” refers to a “place.”⁵⁶ With more than a hint of mockery, he adds that More is wrong in thinking that “congregation” has broader connotations than “church”: “For whersoeuer I maye saye a congregacyon / there maye I saye a church also[,] as the church of the deuell / the church of sathan / the church of wretches / the church of wekedmen / the church of lyers and a church of turkes therto.”⁵⁷ The King James translators in 1611 must not have dismissed Tyndale’s philological reasoning outright, since they follow his translation in Acts 19:37. 

In defending his translation of the Greek, πρεσβύτερος, as “senior” (1526) and “elder” (1534), Tyndale noted that the Latin Vulgate itself does not use More’s preferred term, “priest”; instead, it often transliterates the Greek into Latin script and sometimes even uses the Latin equivalent of Tyndale’s “senior” (e.g., “seniores” in 1 Pet 5:1; “senior” in 2 John 1). Therefore, in condemning Tyndale’s translation, More “condemneth their awn olde latine text of heresye also.”⁵⁸ Now, Tyndale’s preferred translation of πρεσβύτερος carried connotations in sixteenth-century England, where there were elders in the manor, village or township—many of whom took up official responsibilities in the community. The “elder” was a “person singled out because of wisdom and experience to minister 

to the local congregation,” that is, to the parish community.⁵⁹ Putting a negative spin on the English connotations of the term, More protests that the word signifies a city alderman rather than a priest.⁶⁰ Though he failed to do so in this instance, Tyndale would have been right to remind More, once again, that the “circumstances” of the biblical text clarify its meaning. 

In challenging the broad English connotations for these words, More shows that, when isolated from their contexts, these terms have far too many connotations in the English language. In other words, Tyndale did not allow the theological interpretation that More preferred to force its way into the text of Scripture. And this is exactly the point, as Snare suggests: 

[O]ne can make an exposition of key terms, one can explicate accrued meanings, but one cannot make them in the translation of the text of scripture. The ‘significations,’ the interpretations, are not to shoulder their way into the text whenever, as Tyndale says, a passage ‘seemeth at the first chop hard to be understood.’⁶¹ 

Tyndale challenges readers—both friend and foe alike—to determine the meaning of biblical terms like “congregation,” “elder,” and “love” by considering “the process, order, and meaning of the text.” 

Take, for instance, the “process” and “order” of Acts 14:23. At first glance, Tyndale’s translation of this verse appears to challenge the late medieval practice of priestly ordination. It reads: “And when they had ordened them seniours by eleccion in every côngregacion/after they had prayd âd fasted/they commended them to god on whom they beleved.”⁶² Upon closer examination, one notices first of all that the passage contains two words that More disliked—namely “senior” and “congregation.” However, the real threat to ecclesiastical practice appears in the statement, “they had ordened … by eleccion,” which in the Greek is a single verb (χειροτονήσαντες). This phrase may imply that the members of each “congregation” should ordain their elders by a vote. Even if Tyndale were to prefer such an interpretation, his inclusion of the concept of “eleccion” in his rendering of the Greek verb, χειροτονέω, is reasonable on philological grounds.⁶³ Moreover, his translation does not require this interpretation, since readers could also argue that “they” in Acts 14:23 refers to the Apostle Paul and his companions, who also “preached” and “taught” and “returned” and “strengthe[ne]d the disciples soules” in the previous verses.⁶⁴ Thus, although Tyndale’s translation of this verse at first glance appears tendentious, it is actually an accurate rendering of the Greek, which leaves open a variety of possible interpretations, insofar as the “process and order of the text” allows. 

In many New Testament passages relevant to the Reformation debates of the sixteenth century, Tyndale leaves open the possibility of various interpretations. Take Matthew 16:18-19 as a prime example: 

And I saye also unto the/that thou arte Peter. And apon this roocke I wyll bylde my congregaciō. And the gates off hell shall nott prevayle ageynst it. And I wyll yeve unto the/the keyes of the kyngdō of heven/ād whatsoever thou byndest uppō erth/yt shall be bounde in heven. And whatsoever thou lowsest on erthe/yt shalbe lowsed in heven.⁶⁵ 

In his polemical works, Tyndale makes it clear that faith is the foundational rock of the church,⁶⁶ yet his translation retains the possibility, at least, of other interpretations. 

The same could be said for another passage relevant to papal authority— namely, Luke 22:35-38. In the passage, Jesus addresses his disciples on the night of his arrest. Here is the passage, as translated by Tyndale in 1526: 

And he sayde vnto thē: when I sent you with out wallet/ ād scrippe/ād shoues/lacked ye eny thynge: And they sayd/ nothynge. And he sayde to them: But nowe he that hath a wallet let him take itt / and lykewyse his scrippe. And he that hath noo swearde / let hym sell his coote and bye won. I saye vnto you that yet/ that which is written must be performed in me (Even with the wicked was he nombred) for those thyngs which are written of me have an ende. And they sayd: Lorde/beholde here are two sweardes. And he sayde vnto them: it is ynough.⁶⁷ 

Tyndale’s translation of this passage is notable at first glance only insofar as it leaves open the possibility of an interpretation favorable to the papacy. Speaking of the purported papal reading of this passage, Tyndale writes, “The disciples said unto Christ (Luke 22), Lo here be two swords. And Christ answered two is enough. Lo, say they, the Pope hath two swords, the spiritual sword and the temporal sword. And therefore is it lawful for him to fight and make war.”⁶⁸ Tyndale despised such allegorical readings of Scripture. Nevertheless, his translation does not prevent an allegorical reading; instead, the passage remains open to various interpretations, even though Tyndale could have privileged his own interpretation through the act of translation. One modern translation, in fact, has done just that, interpreting Jesus’s statement, “it is enough,” as an expression of his frustration with the disciples’ continued dullness. Thus, this translation renders Jesus’s statement as “Enough of that!”⁶⁹ Tyndale would have applauded this interpretation of the passage: “And Christ,” he writes in the Obedience, “to make an end of such babbling answered two is enough.”⁷⁰ But he refused to resolve his problem through translation. Rather, he lets the passage speak for itself, within its own context.

Some passages of the Greek New Testament, however, are more difficult to translate without interpretive considerations. To explore these questions, one may consider his nuanced translation of Galatians 4. Now, Tyndale criticizes the four-fold sense of Scripture, which allowed his opponents to present the “two sweardes” in Luke 22 as a defense of papal power. But for Tyndale, allegory is not repudiated absolutely, but reallocated and redefined. He notes that “allegory is as much to say as strange speaking or borrowed speech.”⁷¹ Scripture uses “proverbs, similitudes, riddles or allegories as all other speeches do, but that which the proverb, similitude, riddles or allegory signifieth is ever the literal sense which thou must seek out diligently.”⁷² Tyndale defines allegory as a rhetorical trope, in much the same way that it is defined within rhetorical handbooks of the period.⁷³ 

In Galatians 4:21-31, where Paul builds an allegory based on the wives of Abraham, the apostle also notes that the bondmaid, Hagar, persecuted the son of the free woman, Sarah. Considering this biblical passage, Tyndale writes that he follows Paul’s example by borrowing “likenesses or allegories of the scripture, as of Pharaoh and Herod and of the scribes and Pharisees, to express our miserable captivity and persecution under Antichrist the Pope.”⁷⁴ 

Thus, Tyndale finds support for his understanding and rhetorical use of allegory from Galatians 4, and his translation bears witness to this fact. Alongside his stated position on allegory, Tyndale’s translation of Galatians 4 implies that he understood Paul’s allegory as a didactic tool that reinforced—rather than proved—the doctrinal truths discussed earlier in Galatians. The essential portion of Tyndale’s translation reads as follows: 

For it is writte that Abraham had two sonnes/ the one by a bonde mayde/ the wother by a fre woman. Yee and he which was of the bonde woman/ was borne after the flesshe: but he which was of the fre woman/ was borne by promes. Which thyngs betoken mistery. For these wemen are two testaments/ the one from mounte Sina/ which gendreth unto bondage/ which is Agar (For mounte Sina is called Agar in Arabia/ and bordreth apon the citie which is nowe Jerusalem) and is in bondage with her Children.⁷⁵

Three elements in this translation stand out. The first element is, “which thyngs betoken mistery,” a statement that Tyndale uses to translate the Greek, ἅτινά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμενα.⁷⁶ Jerome translates this phrase into the Latin, “quae sunt per allegoriam dicta,” which is rendered similarly into English by the Douay-Rheims version, “Which things are said by an allegory.” In contrast to this translation, Tyndale’s rendering suggests a hesitance to provide apostolic legitimacy for the outlandish allegorical interpretations of Scripture that he so often criticized. Nevertheless, unlike one modern translation’s use of the term, “illustrations,”⁷⁷ Tyndale’s rendering, “mistery,” is not free from the suggestion of allegory; indeed, even in notes to the Douay-Rheims New Testament, the related adjective, “mystical,” could refer to Scripture’s “hidden,” spiritual sense.⁷⁸ 

The second element in this passage is the term, “Agar” [Hagar], which Tyndale ties to Mount Sinai by interpreting it as the Arabic name for the holy mountain: “For mounte Sina is called Agar in Arabia.”⁷⁹ The third element is the term, “bordreth,” which is Tyndale’s geographical translation of the difficult Greek word, συστοιχέω. The Greek term has the basic meaning of “to be in a series with,” thus showing a correspondence of some kind between Mount Sinai and the old Jerusalem—hence, the difficulty of determining what kind of correspondence this was. By translating these terms geographically, Tyndale clarifies the nature of this correspondence.⁸⁰ 

The significance of Tyndale’s translation is highlighted by a discussion of this passage in Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians. Like Tyndale, Luther writes that he sees Paul’s allegory as decoration, helpful in the explanation of truth but invalid as a doctrinal proof. This, he argues, is what Paul has done in Galatians 4. He then writes, 

For the same mountain that the Jews call Sinai—a name it seems to have because of its thickets and brambles—the Arabs call ‘Hagar’ in their language, as not only Paul but also Ptolemy and the scholia of the Greeks indicate. […] I imagine that this similarity of names gave Paul the idea and opportunity to pursue this allegory.⁸¹ 

It is therefore likely that Tyndale also understood the two terms mentioned above—i.e., “Agar” and “bordreth”—as providing Paul with the connections needed to create his allegory. Paul saw an opportunity to build upon the correspondence between the Arabic name for Mt. Sinai (“Hagar”), the old Jerusalem, and the Old Testament narrative of Sarah and Hagar, and he did so to “root … in the heart” those truths that he had plainly expressed earlier in the epistle.⁸² 

Therefore, Tyndale’s translation of this difficult passage is shaped by his understanding of allegory and by his understanding of the text. But one could hardly blame Tyndale for this, since Galatians 4 would have been obscure—if not incomprehensible—to readers had he not clarified some of its conceptual difficulties in translation. Despite the unavoidable interpretive work that lies behind his rendering of this passage, the theological significance of the translation is still under-determined. Utilized within a certain polemical context and read through a particular theological filter, Tyndale’s opponents could very well have defended their own views of allegory with this English translation. 

George Joye and the Debate over “Resurrection”

In his 1534 New Testament, Tyndale entered directly and publicly into debate with fellow evangelical George Joye regarding the resurrection and the intermediate state of the dead. He built his argument against Joye on the same premise that he had defended in his debate with Thomas More: namely, the need for a plain translation of Scripture, free from “juggling terms” and foreign theological connotations introduced into the text by the translator. Rather than twisting Scripture in this way, Tyndale advised putting glosses in the margin of the New Testament—although his 1534 marginal glosses in Matthew are notably fewer and more restrained than those of 1525.⁸³ “Howbeit in many places, me thinketh it better to put a declaration in the margin, than to run too far from the text,” he writes. “And in many places, where the text seemeth at the first chop hard to be understood, yet the circumstances before and after, and often reading together, maketh it plain enough.”⁸⁴ Instead of changing the text, he refers the reader to the context of the passage, to the “process and order” of the text. 

The debate between Tyndale and Joye is fraught with miscommunications, hurt feelings, injured pride, and hasty accusations. As Gergely Juhász notes, Tyndale is either unjust or misinformed in his representation of Joye’s beliefs—as when he suggests that Joye denied the bodily resurrection of the dead and encouraged others to do the same.⁸⁵ In fact, Joye makes no such denial. Although he removed the term “resurrection” from 22 passages of Scripture in his revision of Tyndale’s translation, he nevertheless retained “resurrection” or a synonymous expression—e.g., “ryse agayne” or “rysing from deeth”—in the other 45 cases.⁸⁶ However, Tyndale highlighted the 22 passages where Joye amended the translation, replacing the term “resurrection” with phrases like “very life” or “the lyfe after this.”⁸⁷ 

According to Tyndale, translations of this sort imply that a biblical passage refers to “the state of the souls after their departing from their bodies,” rather than to the bodily resurrection. If Joye believes this to be the true “sense and meaning of those scriptures,” he writes, “I answer it is sooner said than proved.”⁸⁸ He continues, 

But though it were the very meaning of the scripture: yet if it were lawful after his example to every man to play boo peep with the translations that are before him, and to put out the words of the text at his pleasure and to put in everywhere his meaning: or what he thought the meaning were, that were the next way to stablish all heresies and to destroy the ground wherewith we should improve them.⁸⁹ 

Tyndale claims that Joye had juggled with the text, introducing his own interpretation into the translation and thereby clouding the plain and open Scriptures. Joye’s “false gloss” has become “the text,” preventing Bible readers from being able to “correct false doctrine and defend Christ’s flock from false opinions.”⁹⁰ All such interpretive glosses should remain outside of the translation itself. “If the text be left uncorrupt,” Tyndale writes, “it will purge herself of all manner false glosses, how subtle soever they be feigned, as a seething pot casteth up her scum.”⁹¹ 

Therefore, just as More had once censured Tyndale for his tendentious translations, even so Tyndale now criticizes Joye for his tendentious translation. Some scholars have noted this as an apparent hypocrisy; however, the cases are not wholly equivalent. More defended theological connotations that Tyndale removed by means of his translation, connotations that Tyndale believed were foreign to the original Greek terms. But, in his debate with Joye, Tyndale is attempting to defend the denotation of the text, criticizing Joye for allegedly changing terms to add theological connotations into his translation. So, in both situations, Tyndale stakes his argument on the same translation philosophy. However, even after granting the consistency of Tyndale’s translation philosophy, one must face some significant difficulties that it seems Tyndale failed to recognize. 

The specific terms and passages discussed in the Tyndale–Joye debate highlight some of the difficulties inherent in putting Tyndale’s translation philosophy into practice. The problem is suggested by the following question: Theoretically speaking, what if no single English term can carry the varied connotations of a particular Greek term in Scripture? On the one hand, for example, the advantage of Tyndale’s use of the term, “congregation,” to translate ἐκκλησία is that the English term represents the denotative meaning of the Greek term—namely, an assembly or gathering. At the same time, however, the English term also has enough flexibility to carry the various connotations required by diverse contexts throughout Scripture—in some cases, an assembly or congregation of unbelieving Jews or Gentiles; in other cases, a Christian congregation. 

However, a potential problem arises if there is an incongruence between the English and Greek terms. What if the Greek terms ἐγείρω/ἀνίστημι and related nouns were flexible enough to carry connotations foreign to or contrary to the English term, “resurrection”? What if, in certain contexts, these Greek terms could refer to the intermediate state of the dead rather than the bodily resurrection? If this is the case, the translation, “resurrection,” would be inadequate because “resurrection” prohibits the very connotation that the immediate context requires of the Greek term—a connotation that the Greek term, potentially, is flexible enough to bear.⁹² 

This, it would seem, is the issue that Joye was trying to resolve when he amended some passages in Tyndale’s translation. Take, for example, Mark 12:18a, which Tyndale translated in 1526 with these words: “And the saduces cam vnto hym / which saye / there is no resurrection [ἀνάστασιν].”⁹³ By contrast, Joye translates ἀνάστασιν instead as “lyfe after thys.”⁹⁴. It is significant that this passage deals with Jesus’s confrontation with the Sadducees and their disbelief in the ἀνάστασιν. According to Juhász, “three quarters of all those instances where Joye changed Tyndale’s translation of resurreccion refer to the belief denied by the Sadducees.”⁹⁵ In this context, the Tyndale–Joye debate became a controversy about the various connotations that the Greek term could have carried within first-century Judaism. If, within its semantic domain, the term could refer to the intermediate state of the soul, then Joye might be justified in his translation. This would especially be the case if the context of Mark 12:18a required the term to carry such a connotation. 

As Joye rightly pointed out during this controversy, Tyndale claims that, during the first century, the doctrine of the soul’s immortality had not come into existence. As such, Tyndale could by no means accept Joye’s view that ἀνάστασιν refers to the soul’s immortality or active existence in the intermediate state (i.e., the “lyfe after thys”). According to Tyndale, the Sadducees simply rejected the bodily resurrection of the dead.⁹⁶ By contrast, Joye argued that the Sadducees rejected the soul’s life apart from the body during the intermediate state. As other Reformation commentators also had done, he supported his case by proposing a Semitic background to the Greek terms at issue.⁹⁷ This is interesting because, in the prefatory letter to his 1534 New Testament, Tyndale himself notes the significance of this background for translation, although his comment is limited primarily to grammatical—rather than semantic—issues.⁹⁸ Additionally, Joye correctly cites Josephus’s testimony that, according to the Sadducees, “the soule of man was mortal and dyed with the bodie,” and argued that Josephus’ testimony corresponded well with the biblical evidence about the Sadducees’ beliefs.⁹⁹ Informed by this historical context, Joye argues that ἀνάστασιν had a wider semantic domain than Tyndale allowed; therefore, the English term “resurrection” did not suffice in all contexts. 

Some scholars contend that Tyndale’s criticism of Joye reveals a tendency to domineer over others’ interpretations of Scripture; at least, one might suggest, Tyndale appears hypocritical, attacking Joye with the same criticism that he had received from More. It seems he wants no glosses in the translation, unless they are his own glosses.¹⁰⁰ But this would be the wrong conclusion to draw from the Tyndale–Joye debate. In fact, Tyndale remains consistent in his desire to make Scripture accessible to the Christian congregation, shorn of all glosses put into the translation itself. He criticizes Joye precisely because he believes Joye has clouded the text of Scripture with interpretive renderings foreign to the Greek. However, at least with regard to the Bible passages central to his debate with Joye, Tyndale fails to acknowledge any potential complexity in bridging the linguistic divide between Greek and English expressions related to the afterlife and resurrection. 

A Thing Begun, Rather than Finished

So, was Tyndale “tendentious” in his translation of the text? In his volume on sixteenth-century English literature, C.S. Lewis considered this question, suggesting that both Tyndale and More had strong theological convictions that lay behind their preferred translations for various Greek terms. Lewis wrote: 

[The renderings suggested by both men] are equally tendentious in the sense that each presupposes a belief. In that sense all translations of scripture are tendentious: translation, by its very nature, is a continuous implicit commentary. It can become less tendentious only by becoming less of a translation. Hence when Bishop Gardiner in the Convocation of 1542 tried to stem the tide of Protestant translation he found himself driven by the logic of his position to demand that in all future versions nearly a hundred Latin words … should be left Latin or only morphologically “Englished.”¹⁰¹ 

Lewis concludes that “Tyndale’s renderings are not Protestant dishonesty.” Rather, the interpretive decisions he makes “follow from the nature of translation.”¹⁰² His observation is valid, though we should add that Tyndale often resisted the interpretive aspects of his task. Now, he was not perfect as a translator. As even one of his greatest recent admirers, the late David Daniell, admits: “By modern standards, Tyndale got things wrong.”¹⁰³ Nevertheless, his translation represents an honest attempt to faithfully render the New Testament into English—that is, to find the English words and phrases that best correspond with the Greek. In 1533, writing to his imprisoned son in the faith, John Frith, he declared, “For I call to God to record … that I never altered one syllable of God’s word against my conscience.”¹⁰⁴ 

When dealing with theologically loaded words, Tyndale aimed to use English words that conveyed accurately the denotation of the Greek, while also having connotations that were both broad enough and flexible enough to respond to the “process and order” of the biblical context. In translating some biblical passages, such as Gal 4:21-31, Tyndale found it more difficult to untangle translation from the interpretive process, yet even here he often left the text open to various interpretations, including those he would have opposed. Tyndale held definite theological convictions, but the temptation to force these convictions onto the text was restrained by one overriding conviction—namely, his belief “that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.”¹⁰⁵ Scripture was for Tyndale the source and plumbline of true doctrine, and he wanted the Christians of England to see for themselves the same textual structure and meaning that the apostolic authors intended them to see. 

Finally, it is worth remembering these words, written by Tyndale about his 1526 English New Testament: “Count it as a thynge not hauynge his full shape/but as it were borne afore hys tyme/even as a thīg begunne rather then fynnesshed. … In tyme to come (yf god have apoynted us there unto) we will geve it his full shape.”¹⁰⁶ Did Tyndale think his 1534 edition had finally given the English New Testament its “full shape”? If not, what would its “full shape” have looked like? How much nearer the original Greek may it have become, and how much less open to the accusation of tendentiousness? Since his life was cut short, we will never know. In any case, the task he began 500 years ago continues to this day. May modern Bible translators learn from his example, aiming in their own efforts to display, as clearly as possible, “the process, order and meaning of the text,” that men and women may be established firmly in its truth.

1. The New Testament: Cologne Fragment, transl. by William Tyndale (Cologne: P. Quentell?, 1525; STC 2823), A2r.  ↩︎
2. David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 66-110. ↩︎
3. Among the best biographies on Tyndale are: J. F. Mozley, William Tyndale (London: SPCK, 1937); David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Brian Moynahan, God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible—A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003); and David Teems, Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012). Among the best analyses of Tyndale’s theology are: Carl R. Trueman, Luther’s Legacy: Salvation and English Reformers, 1525-1556 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Michael S. Whiting; Luther in English: The Influence of His Theology of Law and Gospel on Early English Evangelicals (1525-35), Princeton Theological Monographs (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010); William Tyndale (1491-1536): Reformatorische Theologie als kontextuelle Schriftauslegung ( Tübingen: M ohr S iebeck, 2 010); a nd Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, rev. ed. (Nashville: B&H), 327-376.  ↩︎
4. The New Testament: A Facsimile of the 1526 Edition Translated by William Tyndale with an Introduction by David Daniell (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008). It is also worth listening to the audio edition of the 1526 version of Matthew’s Gospel, read in a carefully reconstructed sixteenth-century dialect. See Tyndale’s Bible: Saint Matthew’s Gospel: Read in the Original Pronunciation by David Crystal (London: The British Library, 2014). ↩︎
5. For Tyndale’s Old Testament translations and prologues, see Tyndale’s Old Testament, ed. David Daniell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). For his 1534 New Testament, see Tyndale’s New Testament, ed. David Daniell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).  ↩︎
6. Mozley, William Tyndale, 334.  ↩︎
7. Daniell, The Bible in English, 111-499.  ↩︎
8. Tyndale, “The Parable of the Wicked Mammon,” in Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, ed. Henry Walter (Cambridge: University Press, 1848), 43-44.  ↩︎
9. Thomas More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, vol. 6, parts I-II of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, eds. Thomas M.C. Lawler, Germain Marc’hadour, and Richard C. Marius (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 285. ↩︎
10. Regarding συντετριμμένους τὴν καρδίαν: Ironically, this phrase is omitted from Luke 4:18 in modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament, as reflected also in many modern translations.  ↩︎
11. Stanley Maveety, “Doctrine in Tyndale’s New Testament: Translation as a Tendentious Art,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 6 (1966), 158.  ↩︎
12. Moisés Silva, “Are Translators Traitors? Some Personal Reflections,” in The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s Word to the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 37-50.  ↩︎
13. Leland Ryken, Understanding English Bible Translation: The Case for an Essentially Literal Approach (Crossway, 2009), 23-24. ↩︎
14. Gerald Snare, “Translation and Transmutation in William Tyndale and Thomas Watson,” Translation and Literature 12 (2003), 189-92.  ↩︎
15. The New Testament: Cologne Fragment (1525), A2r. ↩︎
16. William Tyndale, “W.T. to the Reader,” in Tyndale’s Old Testament, 4. Italics mine.  ↩︎
17. Desiderius Erasmus, “A System or Method of Arriving by a Short Cut at True Theology,” trans. Robert D. Sider, in Collected Works of Erasmus: The New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2019), 680. See also “Reading Tyndale’s Bible,” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005), 294-98. ↩︎
18. In the collected volumes of Tyndale’s works edited by Henry Walter, see the following: Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, vol. 1 (Cambridge, University Press, 1848), 25, 46, 96-97, 115, 118, 146, 147, 156, 167, 215, 305, 307- 08, 393-94, 469, 499, 505, 510, 513, 525; Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures Together with the Practice of Prelates, vol. 2 (Cambridge: University Press, 1849), 97, 143, 136-44, 282-83; An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord after the True Meaning of John VI. And 1 Cor. XI., and WM. Tracy’s Testament Expounded, vol. 3 (Cambridge: University Press, 1850), 12, 15, 21.  ↩︎
19. Tyndale, Obedience, 30. Italics mine. ↩︎
20. John Foxe, Acts and monuments of these latter and perilous dayes touching matters of the Church, etc. (London: John Day, 1563), 513-14.  ↩︎
21. C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 182.  ↩︎
22. Foxe, Acts and monuments (1563), 513-14.  ↩︎
23. Desiderius Erasmus, “Paraclesis,” in Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. John C. Olin (New York: Fordham University Press, 1987), 101.  ↩︎
24. A copy of the long-lost manuscript of Tyndale’s translation of the Enchiridion turned up in 2015 in the Duke of Northumberland’s collection, but scholars have long had access also to two print editions of 1533 and 1534 that originated from Tyndale’s translation. See Brian Cummings, “William Tyndale and Erasmus on How to Read the Bible: A Newly Discovered Manuscript of the English Enchiridion,” Reformation (23:1), 29-52. See also Daniell, William Tyndale, 70-74; Desiderius Erasmus, Enchiridion Militis Christiani: An English Version, edited by Anne M. O’Donnell (Oxford: Oxford University Press), xlix-liii.  ↩︎
25. William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, 25. ↩︎
26. See Erasmus, “Paraclesis,” 101: “Why do we restrict a profession common to all to a few? For it is not fitting, since baptism is common in an equal degree to all Christians, wherein there is the first profession of Christian philosophy, and since the other sacraments and at length the reward of immorality belong equally to all, that doctrines alone should be reserved for those very few whom today the crowd call theologians or monks….” Erasmus writes this immediately after calling for the translation of Scripture into the vernacular languages, so that even the ploughboy could understand it. Also, see Erasmus, Paraphrase on Matthew, trans. Dean Simpson (Buffalo. NY: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 19-20: In this work, Erasmus alludes to the “Paraclesis,” again expressing his wish that—through vernacular translation—“the ploughman” would be able to “chant in his own language something from the mystic Psalms.” He then suggests that “a summary of Christian faith and teaching” be “propounded annually to the Christian people.” Moreover, he writes, “In fact, I think the following idea would in no small measure serve the end I have in view: if those who were baptized as children upon reaching adolescence were asked to attend sermons in which it would be clearly shown to them what the profession of baptism involves.”  ↩︎
27. Whiting, Luther in English, 209. See also Robert J.D. Wainwright, “William Tyndale on Covenant and Justification,” Reformation & Renaissance Review 13 (2011), 369, who rightly describes this shift in Tyndale’s thought “as an organization rather than a legalization of Tyndale’s theology since he did not seek to depart from the gracious basis of justification exhibited in his earlier writings.” Also, see Snare, “Reading Tyndale’s Bible,” 310-19.  ↩︎
28. Trueman, Luther’s Legacy, 111. Additionally, see Tyndale, The exposition of the fyrste Epistle of seynt Ihon (Antwerp: M. deKeyser, 1531; STC 24443, N 3990), B3v, C5v.  ↩︎
29. Tyndale, fyrste Epistle of seynt Ihon, A2r, A5v. ↩︎
30. Tyndale, fyrste Epistle of seynt Ihon, A2r, A5v; c.f, Tyndale, “W. T. unto the Reader,” in The newe Testament dylygently corrected and compared with the Greke (Antwerp: M. deKeyser, 1534; STC 2826. N 2487), *2v.  ↩︎
31. Tyndale, fyrste Epistle of seynt Ihon, A2r, A5v; See also Tyndale, “W. T. unto the Reader,” in The newe Testament (1534), fol. *3.  ↩︎
32. Though from a source unconnected to Tyndale studies, this phrase describes well Tyndale’s view that, while responsible reasoning has a place, reason alone cannot guarantee the right reading of Scripture. T.D.F. Maddox, “Scripture, Perspicuity, and Postmodernity,” Review & Expositor 100 (2003), 555; see also James P. Callahan, “Claritas Scripturae: The Role of Perspicuity in Protestant Hermeneutics,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39 (1996), 353-72.  ↩︎
33. Anthony Thiselton, “Biblical studies and theoretical hermeneutics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (Cambridge: University Press, 1998), 97.  ↩︎
34. Tyndale, fyrste Epistle of seynt Ihon, F2v.  ↩︎
35. George, Theology of the Reformers, 341. ↩︎
36. Tyndale, Obedience, 175, and fyrste Epistle of seynt Ihon, A7.  ↩︎
37. Tyndale, An exposicion vppon the .v.vi.vii, fol. 89v.  ↩︎
38. Tyndale, An Answere vnto Sir Thomas Mores dialogue (Antwerp: S. Cock, 1531; STC 24437. N 3988.), B3v.  ↩︎
39. F.F. Bruce, The English Bible: A History of Translations from the Earliest English Versions to the New English Bible (Oxford: University Press, 1970), 36.  ↩︎
40. Mozley, William Tyndale, 101. ↩︎
41. David Norton, A History of the English Bible as Literature (Cambridge: University Press, 2000), 25. See also Gerald Hammond, The Making of the English Bible (New York: Philosophical Library, 1983), 36.  ↩︎
42. Mozley, William Tyndale, 88.  ↩︎
43. New Testament (1526), fol. 295r; and Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 338.  ↩︎
44. New Testament (1526), fol. 202. See the helpful discussion in Morna Hooker, “Tyndale as Translator” (accessed online, 29 August 2025): https://www.tyndale.org/journals/tsj22/ hooker.html.  ↩︎
45. New Testament (1526), fol. 119r. ↩︎
46. Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 133. See also Norton, A History of the English Bible as Literature, 25.  ↩︎
47. More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, 286-87.  ↩︎
48. Malcolm B. Yarnell III, God, vol. 1, Theology for Every Person (Brentwood: B&H, 2024), 117-21.  ↩︎
49. Tyndale, Answere vnto Mores dialogue, B3r  ↩︎
50. Throughout the Gospel of John, the author uses ἀγαπάω and φιλέω interchangeably, and in a unique instance in the Septuagint ἀγαπάω is also used to describe Amnon’s apparently erotic love for his half-sister, Tamar, which leads him to rape her. See David A. Croteau, Urban Legends of the New Testament: 40 Common Misconceptions (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2015), 85-90; and Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 96-97.  ↩︎
51. Tyndale, Answere vnto Mores dialogue, B3r. ↩︎
52. Croteau, Urban Legends of the New Testament, 88.  ↩︎
53. More, Dialogue Concerning Heresies, 286.  ↩︎
54. Tyndale, Answere vnto Mores dialogue, Fol. vii. Italics mine.  ↩︎
55. See Jamie Harmon Ferguson, “Faith in the Language: Reformation Biblical Translation and Vernacular Poetics” (Ph.D. diss.: Indiana University, 2007), 17-90.  ↩︎
56. Tyndale, Answere vnto Mores dialogue, A5r. See also Acts 14:13, where Tyndale’s translation speaks of the “church porch” of Jupiter’s temple in the city of Lystra. The KJV did not retain this rendering.  ↩︎
57. Tyndale, Answere vnto Mores dialogue, A7r. ↩︎
58. Tyndale, Answere vnto Mores dialogue, A8r.  ↩︎
59. Daniell, William Tyndale, 17. This implies that the term, “elder,” did not refer merely to old age in English usage, but sometimes also to authority or office; however, this term did not have the mediatorial connotations associated with the English, “priest,” or the Greek, ἱερεύς.  ↩︎
60. More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, 286.  ↩︎
61. Snare, “Translation and Transmutation,” 195.  ↩︎
62. New Testament (1526), fol. 176r. See also Maveety, “Doctrine in Tyndale’s New Testament,” 153.  ↩︎
63. See Darrell L. Bock, Acts, The Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 483.  ↩︎
64. New Testament (1526), fol. 176r. Indeed, this is the interpretation of Bock, Acts, 483; c.f., TDNT, s.f., χειροτονέω. Everett Ferguson suggests that, in his rendering of Acts 14:23, Tyndale was trying to “compromise between the ecclesiastical rendering and the proper meaning” of the text. See Ferguson, “William Tyndale and the Bible in English,” Restoration Quarterly 14 (1971), 129-41.  ↩︎
65. New Testament (1526), fol. 23r.  ↩︎
66. Tyndale, Obedience, 171. ↩︎
67. New Testament (1526), fol. 113v.  ↩︎
68. Tyndale, Obedience, 175.  ↩︎
69. Luke 22:38, Holy Bible: The Old & New Testaments, Holman Christian Standard Bible [HCSB] (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2004).  ↩︎
70. Tyndale, Obedience, 175. ↩︎
71. Tyndale, Obedience, 156.  ↩︎
72. Tyndale, Obedience, 156. Tyndale’s view here was not unprecedented. See G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Road to Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 50; Daniel J. Treier, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis? Sic Et Non,” Trinity Journal 24 (2003), 99; George L. Scheper, “Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 89 (1974), 552-54; Mary Jane Barnett, “From the Allegorical to the Literal (and Back Again): Tyndale and the Allure of Allegory,” in Word, Church, and State: Tyndale Quincentenary Essays, eds. John T. Day, Eric Lund, Anne M. O’Donnell (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 63-73.  ↩︎
73. For example, see Desiderius Erasmus, On Copia of Words and Ideas (De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia), trans. Donald B. King and H. David Rix (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1963), 30, 87.  ↩︎
74. Tyndale, Obedience, 159. ↩︎
75. New Testament (1526), fol. 251.  ↩︎
76. Unless otherwise noted, the Greek texts consulted here are Desiderius Erasmus, Novum Instrumentum (Basil: Johann Froben, 1516), and The Greek New Testament, eds. Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger, 4th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001).  ↩︎
77. Gal 4:24 (HCSB); Compare also to Luther’s German translation, which is simple and without the canonical/theological resonances of Tyndale’s translation: “die wort bedeuten etwas.” Compare Tyndale’s version to the 1543 Spanish New Testament of Francisco de Enzinas, as well: “Las quales [sic] cosas son dichas por otro sentido.” See also Maveety, “Doctrine in Tyndale’s New Testament,” 156.  ↩︎
78. A 1530 mention of the “mysticall sense,” in relation to levirate marriage, is cited in Bruce Boehrer, “Tyndale’s Practyse of Prelates: Reformation Doctrine and the Royal Supremacy.” Renaissance et Reforme (August 1986), 257-276. The term “mystical” refers to the spiritual sense of Scripture multiple times in the 1582 Douay-Rheims edition. See especially, the “Annotations” to Revelation 1, in The New Testament of Iesvs Christ, Translated Faithfully into English out of the authentical Latin …: In the English College of Rhemes (Rhemes: Iohn Fogny, 1582), 650.  ↩︎
79. New Testament (1526), fol. 251; see also Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians, Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker, vol. 41 (Nashville: Word, Inc., 1990), 197-219. ↩︎
80. New Testament (1526), fol. 251; Longenecker, Galatians, 212-13; and Gerhard Delling, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich [TDNT] (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), s.v. “συστοιχεω.” Following the Vulgate, the Douay- Rheims edition translates this passage as, “For Sina is a mountain in Arabia, which hath affinity to that Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children” (vs. 25). It thus leaves the “affinity” between Sinai and Jerusalem largely unexplained. Also, in contrast to Tyndale’s translation, it removes any mention of Hagar—even though the Greek text mentions Hagar in the same sentence. However, compare to the 1543 Spanish of Francisco de Enzinas, which is similar to Tyndale: “… por que Agar es un monte de Syna [sic] en Arabia, y esta çerca de aquella que agora [sic] se llama Hierusalem.”  ↩︎
81. Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians (1535), in Luther’s Works [LW], ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (vols. 1-30) and Helmut T. Lehmann (vols. 31-55), vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians (1535): Chapters 1-4, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1963), 435-38; italics added. See also similar views expressed in Desiderius Erasmus, Paraphrase on Galatians (In epistolam Paui Apostoli ad Galatas paraphrasis) in the Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. Robert D. Sider, vol. 42, New Testament Scholarship: Paraphrases on Romans and Galatians, trans. John B. Payne, Albert Rabil Jr., and Warren S. Smith Jr. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984). ↩︎
82. Tyndale, Obedience, 159.  ↩︎
83. Snare, “Reading Tyndale’s Bible,” 307.  ↩︎
84. Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 3. Italics mine.  ↩︎
85. Gergely M. Juhàsz, Translating Resurrection: The Debate between William Tyndale and George Joye in Its Historical and Theological Context (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 336. ↩︎
86. Juhàsz, Translating Resurrection, 335; see also Juhàsz, “Translating Resurrection: The Importance of the Sadducees’ Belief in the Tyndale–Joye Controversy,” in Resurrection in the New Testament: Festschrift J. Lambrecht, ed. R. Bieringer, V. Koperski, and B. Lataire (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), 109.  ↩︎
87. Juhàsz, Translating Resurrection, 335.  ↩︎
88. Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 14.  ↩︎
89. Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 14.  ↩︎
90. Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 14.  ↩︎
91. Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 14. ↩︎
92. In discussing this issue, it must be emphasized that this is only a potential problem. There will be no attempt in this essay to determine whether Joye was correct in broadening the connotations of the Greek words that were central to the controversy. The primary point in this section is to show the consistency of Tyndale’s translation philosophy. Additionally, the subject matter involved in the Tyndale–Joye debate continues among New Testament scholars today, as noted by Juhàsz, “Translating Resurrection,” 119-20.  ↩︎
93. New Testament (1526), fol. 63r. I n f ull, t he G reek reads, “Καὶ ἔρχονται Σαδδουκαῖοι πρὸς αὐτόν, οἵτινεςλέγουσιν ἀνάστασιν μὴ εἶναι.”  ↩︎
94. George Joye, ed., The new Testament as it was written/ and caused to be written/ by them which herde yt: Whom also oure Saueoure Christ Iesus commanded that they shulde preach it vnto al creatures, trans. William Tyndale (Antwerpe: By me wydowe of Cristoffel of Endhouen, In the yere of oure Lorde. M.CCCCC. and xxxiiij. in August; STC 2825), sig. K8r.  ↩︎
95. Juhàsz, “Translating Resurrection,” 112.  ↩︎
96. Tyndale, Answere vnto Mores dialogue, fol. 72v.  ↩︎
97. Juhàsz, Translating Resurrection, 394-95.  ↩︎
98. Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), 3. ↩︎
99. Juhàsz, “Translating Resurrection,” 114.  ↩︎
100. E.g., Juhàsz, “Some Neglected Aspects of the Exegetical Debate on Resurrection and the Immortality of the Soul between William Tyndale and George Joye in Antwerp (1534-1523),” Reformation 14 (2009), 10; cf., Snare, “Reading Tyndale’s Bible,” 301-302. ↩︎
101. Lewis, English Literature, 206.  ↩︎
102. Lewis, English Literature, 206.  ↩︎
103. Daniell, ed., Tyndale’s New Testament (1534), xx.  ↩︎
104. These letters are included in N.T. Wright, ed., The Works of John Frith, The Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics (Oxford: The Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978), 494-95.  ↩︎
105. Tyndale, “W.T. to the Reader,” in Tyndale’s Old Testament, 4. Italics mine. ↩︎
106. New Testament (1526), sig. Tt2v. ↩︎