Tyndale’s English New Testament

John Foxe tells that William Tyndale, disputing with a learned man who set the pope’s laws above God’s, answered that if God spared his life he would cause “a boy that driveth the plough” to know more of Scripture than his opponent did (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 5, p. 117 (Cattley)). Refused a place in the household of Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London, he concluded, Foxe continues, that there was no place to translate the New Testament “in all England”, and left for Germany (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 5, pp. 117–118 (Cattley)).

A first printing was begun at Cologne. Its surviving sheets open with a prologue: “I have here translated, brethren and sisters, most dear and tenderly beloved in Christ, the New Testament, for your spiritual edifying, consolation, and solace” (Tyndale, Cologne New Testament (1525) opening of the prologue (Parker Society edition, p. 7, note)). Johannes Cochlaeus, an opponent of Luther then living in Cologne, wrote years later that he learned of the work from the printers, that the city’s senate stopped it at his prompting, and that the two Englishmen fled up the Rhine to Worms with the printed sheets (Cochlaeus, Commentaria under the year 1526 (Arber, pp. 22–24)).

The complete New Testament came out as a small book naming neither place nor printer; the library at Stuttgart, which holds the one copy with its title page, assigns it to the press of Peter Schöffer at Worms in 1526 (Tyndale, New Testament (1526) the Stuttgart library’s description of its copy). On 11 August 1526 Georg Spalatin noted a report that six thousand copies of the New Testament in English had been printed at Worms (Spalatin, Diary 11 August 1526 (Arber, pp. 25–26)). In an address to the reader at the end, Tyndale says that he “had no man to counterfeit”, no English version to follow, and asks that his work be counted “as a thing begun rather than finished” (Tyndale, New Testament (1526) epistle to the reader (Parker Society edition, p. 390)).

In a prohibition dated 23 October 1526, Tunstall ordered every copy in his diocese to be handed in within thirty days on pain of excommunication. Supporters of Luther’s sect, he wrote, had mixed heretical articles and erroneous opinions into the translation (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 4, pp. 666–667 (Cattley)). Thomas More defended the burning of the book. It deserved to be called Tyndale’s or Luther’s testament, he argued, because it wrongly and with intent put “seniors” for priests, “congregation” for church and “love” for charity (More, Dialogue Concerning Heresies book 3, chapter 8). More added that the church’s law did not forbid an English Bible as such, and that a translation by a sound Catholic scholar, approved by the bishops, would be good (More, Dialogue Concerning Heresies book 3, chapter 16). Tyndale’s own argument, in a book of 1528, was that Scripture “ought to be in the mother tongue”, as the law of Moses and the psalms had been in Israel’s (Tyndale, Obedience of a Christian Man preface (Parker Society edition, p. 144)).

Tyndale lived mostly at Antwerp (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 5, p. 119 (Cattley)). Foxe tells that he was betrayed, held for a year and a half in the castle of Vilvoorde, condemned under the emperor’s decree, strangled at the stake and burned in 1536, crying, “Lord! open the king of England’s eyes” (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 5, pp. 123 and 127 (Cattley)).

For the later English Bible see the King James Bible.