Biography of William Tyndale – The key translator of the Bible into English
William Tyndale a 16th century scholar, a Protestant and is recognized as the main translator of the King James Bible into English. Whatever your beliefs or religion his words have had a huge influence on the world we live today and has made the English language the most used language in the world today.
The American Declaration of Independance is based around the King James Bible, which makes you realise how important the words of William Tyndale have effected us all. Below is biography of his life.
Tyndale was born around 1490, possibly in one of the villages near Dursley, Gloucestershire. Within his immediate family, the Tyndales were also known at that period as Hychyns (Hitchins), and it was as William Hychyns that Tyndale was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford. Tyndale’s family had migrated to Gloucestershire at some point in the fifteenth century – quite probably as a result of the Wars of the Roses. The family derived from Northumberland via East Anglia. Documentation shows that Tyndale’s uncle, Edward, was receiver to the lands of Lord Berkeley, and gives account of the Tyndale family origins. Edward Tyndale is recorded in two genealogies as having been the brother of Sir William Tyndale, KB, of Deane, Northumberland, and Hockwald, Norfolk, who was knighted at the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales to Katherine of Aragon. Tyndale’s family was therefore derived from Baron Adam de Tyndale, a tenant-in-chief of Henry I (and whose family history is related in Tyndall).
Tyndale began a Bachelor of Arts degree at Oxford University in 1512; the same year becoming a subdeacon. He was made Master of Arts in July 1515 and was held to be a man of virtuous disposition, leading an unblemished life. The MA allowed him to start studying theology, but the official course did not include the study of scripture. He was a gifted linguist, over the years becoming fluent in French, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, in addition to his native English. Between 1517 and 1521, he went to the University of Cambridge. Erasmus was the leading teacher of Greek there from August 1511 to January 1514, but during Tyndale’s time at the university Erasmus was away. According to Monyahan, Tyndale may have met Thomas Bilney and John Frith whilst there.
Soon afterwards, Tyndale determined to translate the Bible into English, convinced that the way to God was through His word and that scripture should be available even to common people. John Foxe describes an argument with a “learned” but “blasphemous” clergyman, who had asserted to Tyndale that, “We had better be without God’s laws than the Pope’s.” Swelling with emotion, Tyndale responded: “I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!”
Tyndale left for London in 1523 to seek permission to translate the Bible into English. He requested help from Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, a well-known classicist who had praised Erasmus after working together with him on a Greek New Testament. The bishop, however, had little regard for Tyndale’s scholarly credentials; like many highly-placed churchmen, he was suspicious of Tyndale’s theology and was uncomfortable with the idea of the Bible in the vernacular. The Church at this time did not support any English translation of scripture. Tunstall told Tyndale he had no room for him in his household. Tyndale preached and studied “at his book” in London for some time, relying on the help of a cloth merchant, Humphrey Monmouth. He then left England and landed on the continent, perhaps at Hamburg, in the spring of the year 1524, possibly travelling on to Wittenberg. This seems likely given that the name “Guillelmus Daltici ex Anglia“ (a Latin pseudonym for “William Tyndale from England”) was entered at that time in the matriculation registers of the University Wittenberg . At this time, possibly in Wittenberg, he began translating the New Testament, completing it in 1525, with assistance from Observant friar William Roy.
From an entry in George Spalatin’s Diary, on August 11, 1526, it seems that Tyndale remained at Worms about a year. A mystery hangs over the period between his departure from Worms and his final settlement at Antwerp. The colophon to Tyndale’s translation of Genesis and the title pages of several pamphlets from this time are purported to have been printed by Hans Luft at Marburg. A clear link is, however, questionable. Hans Luft, the printer of Luther’s books, never had a printing-press at Marburg.
Around 1529, it is possible that Tyndale went into hiding in Hamburg, carrying on his work. He revised his New Testament and began translating the Old Testament and writing various treatises. In 1530, he wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII’s divorce on the grounds that it was unscriptural and was a plot by Cardinal Wolsey to get Henry entangled in the papal courts. The king’s wrath was aimed at Tyndale: Henry asked the emperor Charles V to have the writer apprehended and returned to England. Tyndale made his case in An Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue. In 1532 Thomas More published a six volume Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, in which he alleged Tyndale was a traitor and a heretic.
Eventually, Tyndale was betrayed by Henry Phillips to the authorities, seized in Antwerp in 1535 and held in the castle of Vilvoorde near Brussels. He was tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and condemned 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”. Foxe gives 6 October as the date of commemoration (left-hand date column), but gives no date of death .
Tyndale’s 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.
Within four years, at the same king’s behest, four English translations of the Bible were published in England, including Henry’s official Great Bible. All were based on Tyndale’s work.
