Buttons and ribbons, hartgoats and hedgehogs, soleams and stellios: a wayward courtesy lecture for laborious fainty snoutnosed runagates on some words in Tyndale's Old Testament but missing from the Authorized Version

David Norton
Victoria University of Wellington

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Translated into the words of the Authorized Version (A.V.), my title reads, 'taches and fringes, wild goats and ferrets, bald-locusts and chameleons: a heavy little reading for servile faint fugitives with flat noses'.[1] This may not properly describe either lecture or audience, but it does give a sample of my subject: words Tyndale used in translating the Old Testament which are either not to be found, or not found in the same sense or use, anywhere in the Authorized Version. No theory lies behind this choice of subject. Simply I was working on the Old Testament and had a hunch that these words would provide a manageable and illuminating sample of Tyndale's language. Illuminating they certainly are, but hardly manageable: I am far from learning all they have to teach, and this paper is no more than an introduction to them.

One might well expect a high proportion of archaism or obsolescence to emerge, and therefore that there would be a good deal of overlap with the vocabulary of the Wycliffite versions. To deal with this latter point first: only thirty-one of these words are also found in the Wycliffite versions. Tyndale's declaration of independence is verified: he indeed was not helped 'with English of any that had interpreted the same or such like thing in the Scripture beforetime'.[2]

As for archaism, at most sixty-five of these 414 words were no longer usable by the time of the making of the A.V.[3] Half of these sixty-five are not recorded outside Tyndale's work, yet they include readily understood coinages or oral uses not found elsewhere in written English. such as 'firstbornship', 'headbald', 'light-brained' and 'squaring-line'. The other half, words last cited by the OED no later than 1611, also includes readily understood words such as 'clouden' or 'famishment'. Now, as with most of my points, a fair degree of caution is needed. Citations in the OED are only generally indicative of currency. Except with coinages, they necessarily misrepresent currency because they give the first written usage the compilers could find, and because written usage can continue long after a word has ceased to have general currency.[4]

Tyndale's 'the king of Egypt ...merced the land in an hundred talents of silver' (2 Chronicles 36:3) affords an example of the difficulties of lists based on citations (and also of the degree to which speculation is involved in a study of these words).[5] The OED cites 'merce' from 1483-1661, so one would say any of the subsequent translators could have adopted it from Tyndale. Yet Coverdale, Geneva and the A.V. all read 'condemned the land in an hundred talents of silver'. The Geneva translators recognize that this is vague, unsatisfactory English, so they add in the margin, 'to pay this as a yeerely tribute'. The A.V. notes against 'condemned', 'Hebr. mulcted'. 'Mulct' is first cited from 1591. Here I think the probability is that 'merce' was no longer sufficiently current for the A.V. translators to use it, and that 'mulct' had yet to become current enough for them to risk changing the received reading.[6]

On a longer historical view of these words' currency, about two-fifths (153 out of 414) are still current English and are used by Tyndale much as we would use them. Some are as homely as 'hedgehogs', while some of those no longer current are as obscure as 'soleam' or 'stellio'. All three are creatures. The problem the various translators had with creatures was simple: they did not know what they were. The Geneva Bible is candid enough to admit this in its note on 'solean' (Leviticus 11: 22): 'these were certaine kindes of grashoppers, which are not now properly knowen'.[7] Sometimes Tyndale resorted to what is, for him, a rare expedient, and transliterated, whence 'arb', 'hargol' and 'soleam'. Sometimes he hazarded a guess, usually with a common or garden result, though 'stellio' and 'taxus' are exceptions.[8] Later translators often thought they knew better, but they were still guessing. 'Hedgehog', for instance, becomes 'rat' and, finally, 'ferret'. Obviously the translators could vary from each other not through considerations of English but because they disagreed about the meaning of the original. Such variations are not of special interest here. What I will concentrate on are the changes that seem to involve questions of English vocabulary.

'Buttons', used for part of the furnishing of the tabernacle in Exodus 26, involves curious questions of vocabulary. It is obviously current English, and is attested from c.1340. By contrast, the A.V.'s 'taches', introduced by the Geneva Bible and meaning some sort of fastening device, never had the same currency.[9] Why the change? Did the Geneva translators, knowing that they were a recent invention, take 'buttons' as an anachronism? Or did they, perhaps, object to the implications of vain frippery, since buttons were first used as decorations?[10] Motives rather of this kind may have led them to remove Tyndale's references to luck, for luck is no part of a divinely ordered world. So 'it fortuned that', 'misfortune', 'luck', 'luckily' and 'lucky' all disappear, as does 'for a wager'. However, I suspect such motives did not apply here. The subject is the precious decoration of the ark, and the OED's citations for 'tache' associate the word with gold, silver and rubies.

I think a third explanation more probable. First, Strong notes that the Hebrew word means 'a knob or belaying-pin (from its swelling form)'. This is also the basic meaning of 'button' before such knobs became fastening devices. But the context also demands the sense of fastening, for these knobs are used to couple the curtains together. I suggest that Tyndale used 'buttons' in spite of the dangers of anachronism and frippery because it best rendered the two meanings of the Hebrew demanded by the context. This shows a sharp lexical awareness and a willingness to play with the meaning of English words.

The Geneva translators, still possibly troubled by those dangers, had a further reason for changing the word, especially if they were less sensitive to its double meaning. Their image of the covering of the tabernacle, as represented in the diagram inherited from their French predecessors, makes it difficult to visualise buttons as the method of fixing the curtains together because the curtains are draped over a rectangular framework, and some of the taches are shown as being on the angle of the framework. 'Taches', which had the generalized meaning found in the New English Bible's 'fasteners', avoids the possibilities of an incongruous image while keeping the sense demanded by the context and the connotations of preciousness. It is also general enough not to deny the implication of the Hebrew word that some sort of knob was involved. The marginal alternative, also found in the key to the diagram, 'hooks', confirms that they thought carefully about how the curtains were fixed. I suggest that they relegated 'hooks' to the margin, although it was an easier word for their readers, because it went against the full sense of the Hebrew word, was too precise as to the manner of fixing, and lacked the precious associations.

If there is a grain of truth in this, it shows both Tyndale and the Geneva translators considering the exact meaning of their words with care and sensitivity. Moreover, it suggests a special talent on Tyndale's part for finding, on occasion, English words that sharply matched the range of meaning of the Hebrew.

Another of the words on the list leads to similar suggestions, though the element of speculation is still greater. It is a word one might never have spotted but for Daniell's editorial care, 'plage'. Had he modernized the spelling and not glossed it as a 'blow, stroke or wound', an obsolete sense of 'plague', it would have been taken as meaning 'pestilence'. Now, it comes in a context where translators have frequently differed, Deuteronomy 17:8: three problems of judging are specified, in the words of Coverdale and the A.V., 'between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke'. This makes sense: cases of 'murder, legal rights or assault' (Jerusalem Bible). Instead of 'stroke and stroke', Tyndale reads 'plage and plage', which Daniel] and the OED invite us to read in the same sense as 'stroke'. Geneva also reads 'plague and plague', but spelt in the modern way, as if the meaning is 'pestilence'. There are two problems here. The first lies in the Hebrew: Strong tells us it means a 'blow' and implies a 'plague', and few translators can avoid making a choice between these meanings.

The second problem lies in the limitations of historical lexicography already noted. According to the OED, 'plague' meaning 'stroke' originates with the Wycliffite version of Ezekiel 24:16, which comes directly from Jerome's use of 'plaga', 'a blow, stroke or wound' (Lewis and Short). It was last used in 1538. Since both senses of 'plague' were current in Tyndale's time, I suggest that he is doing as he did with 'buttons', reflecting the lexical range of the Hebrew. In short, he is punning (and surely he had no objection to the consequent alliteration).[11] Coverdale felt obliged to differ: he settled for one sense only and simple English to render it, 'stroke'. Do we couple this with the OED's evidence and conclude that 'plague' as 'stroke' was losing its currency when Tyndale used it? If so, the Geneva Bible understands the Hebrew differently and is using 'plague' in the sense of 'pestilence'.[12] Consequently, if the Geneva translators are following Tyndale, they misunderstood him.

There is an alternative: 'plague', 'stroke', was still possible English in 1560; more sensitive to English vocabulary and to the nuances of the Hebrew than Coverdale, the Geneva translators restored Tyndale's pun. If this is so, the OED must be modified because, as often happens, the English Bible tells us more about the history of English than has been so far recognized. Moreover, we have another insight into Tyndale's sensitivity to Hebrew and English words, a sensitivity that the Geneva translators were intelligent enough to recognize. By the time of the A.V. translators, the pun had become impossible. They, perforce, had to adopt Coverdale's rendering.

At least one more of these words seems to be used punningly, this time without reflecting multiple possibilities in the original. The A.V. reads simply and literally: 'carie downe the man a Present, a litle balme, and a litle home' (Genesis 43:11). Tyndale uses 'curtesie' for 'litle'. The idea of courteousness suggested by what is really a form of 'curtsy' is obviously apt and fits with Tyndale's 'according to the courtesy showed him' (2 Chronicles 32:25). But Tyndale underlines the pun by varying the grammar: 'a curtesie bawlme, and a curtesie of honey'. He has drawn on colloquial usage (which is what I guess 'curtesie' meaning 'little' is) to produce English that reveals his full imaginative engagement with his text. He had no intention of making a literary translation by his or his age's standards, but here, as so often, he produces English his successors do not match. He is, as perhaps only Thomas More of his contemporaries recognized, one of the great writers of English.[13]

One of the most notable of Tyndale's words rejected by later translators is 'arses' in 1 Samuel 6. This was not deleted for reasons of propriety.[14] The two Hebrew words involved mean tumours, swellings or boils. Tyndale's 'five golden arses with emerods' is therefore, in Hammond's phrase, 'a sophistication of the original' (p. 23) that makes full English sense of it, again revealing a full imaginative engagement with the original; elsewhere the sense does not demand this addition, so he gives 'emerods' without elaboration. Geneva (and the A.V. after it) sticks to the literal sense of the original, 'fiue golden Emerods'. This makes Daniell's point that Tyndale 'is determined to be clear whenever it is possible' (p. xiv), whereas his successors are more likely to be literal at the expense of clarity, a point that any comparison of obscurities in the A.V. with Tyndale's renderings will bear out. But what interests me as much here is what the inclusion of a word such as 'arses' tells us about Tyndale's biblical English. It is indeed an English for ploughboys. They know what arses are just as they recognize a hedgehog when they see one. A substantial number of Tyndale's vanished words belong with 'arses' as what we might call basic English.

Let me put the point the other way round before proceeding. About sixty, that is, one in seven, of this selection of words is of Latin origin. Of these no more than ten, at the outside, date from the sixteenth century. In short, there is almost no sign in his Old Testament work of Tyndale resorting to Latin coinages or inkhorn terms.[15] Rather, his coinages are either like 'firstbornship', made from native English words, or transcriptions from Hebrew. Tyndale's linguistic resourcefulness lay not in ransacking Latin but in marshalling the contemporary, often oral and dialect, resources of English.[16]

In general terms, here lies Tyndale's most important contribution to the history of the English language and literature: he made what became the most-read of all English books into a repository of native English, giving that part of the English language an importance and legitimacy it might otherwise have lacked. He hints at what he was doing when he writes, 'which was a watch word as we say' in the 'Prologue to Jonas' (Daniel), p. 634): constantly he draws on 'what we say'.[17] Now, this is essentially a familiar point, but a concentration on these words which did not survive through to the A.V. brings it out with special force because so many of them draw on common English.

But it is worth finishing with two more specific considerations. First, this group of little more than 400 words, few of them occurring very frequently, nevertheless contributes substantially to Tyndale's attractiveness for modern readers. Many of these .kords have a fresh, energetic quality that is lost in the later versions. Take, for instance, his colloquial 'and for a wager we get the better of them' (1 Kings 20:25). This, made up of two phrases from the list, is obviously more lively than the A.V.'s 'and surely wee hall be stronger then they'. 'For a wager' again renders the spirit of the text, not the very letter. 'Get the better of them' has the authentic ring of spoken English missing from wee shall be stronger then they'.

Rachel is given a similar idiom after the birth of Naphtali. She says: 'God is turned, and I haue made a chaunge with my sister, & haue gote̅ y^e vpper ha̅de' (Genesis 30:8). The obscurity of the first part of this is clarified by the A.V., following Geneva's lead: noting in the margin that 'Naphtali' means 'my wrastling'. it reads, 'with great wrastlings have I wrastled with my sister'. But then the A.V. makes a change of its own, 'and I haue preuailed'. This loses the colloquial energy of 'haue gote yvpper hade'. I suspect that the reason for the change is that 'gotten the upper hand' was judged to give an image not found in the Hebrew, which is a verb meaning 'to be able'. I have prevailed' is therefore a closer translation. What is more, it is Tyndale and the A.V.'s usual translation for this Hebrew word in this sense. Nowhere else does Tyndale use 'gotten the upper hand', so we need to look at what is special to this context. There are three things. Because the phrase has a verb and an object, 'gotten the upper hand' can only be used where the original verb was intransitive, and preferably where that verb was not followed by a phrase ('prevayle agaynst him' [Genesis 32:25 is surely preferable to 'get the upper hand against him'). Second, 'get the upper hand' can only be used in the context of ongoing struggle, whereas 'prevail' is often used in a context of completed victory, as in 'thou hast wrastled with God and with men ad hast preuayled' (Genesis 32:28). Here the implicit wrestling image of getting the upper hand would have been thoroughly apt but for the sense that the wrestling is finished. Third, 'gotten the upper hand' is especially suitable to a colloquial context. Rachel's words are almost the only context where all three conditions are met. The one other possibility is Exodus 17: 11, but there an impossible play on 'hand' would have been created: 'when Moses helde vp his hande, Israel got the upper hand'. In short, this and the previous example not only show Tyndale's liking and ear for colloquialism where direct speech is involved, but also his sensitivity to contextual meaning. The other versions miss the distinction between continuing and completed struggle. In passing, there is one other difference between Tyndale and the A.V. here that is redolent of Tyndale. His omission of 'I' — 'and have gotten' — increases the concision and therefore, in this case, the spoken directness of the statement.

As well as this occasional energy of colloquialism, Tyndale's version has something of the energy of a dialect version.[18] I guess that dialect is responsible for 'the ryuer shall scrale with frogges' (Exodus 8:3), and that the A.V. revised this because it was not their London dialect, standard English (there was no need to revise for accuracy: the Hebrew is a single verb, not a phrase). An adverb is left to do the job of the unfamiliar yet effective verb, and the force is lost: 'and the riuer shall bring foorth frogges abundantly'.

Second, though there is no evidence of contemporary popular response to Tyndale's language, I suggest that Tyndale gave his common readers the best possible service by using their language rather than the resources of educated, written English. These words really do suggest not just an English for ploughboys but an English of ploughboys. Now, Tyndale was a remarkable student of language, whereas many of his readers were barely literate. Yet nowhere does he seem to be writing down to his audience. I suggest that colloquial, native English was his natural medium and that this contrasts with, particularly, the A.V. translators. A quick scan of the AV's chapter summaries, to say nothing of a reading of its Preface, would reveal a preference for Latinate subordination and vocabulary when the translators are not constrained by the original and by the example of their predecessors. Not so with Tyndale: his Prefaces to his translations have the same colloquial energy and urgency as his translation. No Bible translator's normal prose is more like his translation prose. And yet that translation prose was usually a good literal rendering of the Hebrew.[19] No wonder he thought that the Hebrew and English 'manner of speakynge is both one': for him, but for few other translators, it was.[20]

(David Norton's Appendixes appear on pp. 289-344.)

Bibliography

Bibles

Forshall, Josiah, and Madden, Frederic, The Holy Bible ... in the Earliest English Versions... by John Wyclif and his Followers, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1850).

Mombert, J. I. ed., intro. F. F. Bruce, William Tyndale's Five Books of Moses Called The Pentateuch (1884; Centaur Press, Fontwell, 1967).

The Matthew Bible (1537).

Daniell, David ed., Tyndale's Old Testament (Yale U.P., New Haven and London 1992).

Coverdale, Myles, The Holy Scriptures (1535; London, 1838).

The Great Bible (Grafton and Whitchurch, 1539; Whitchurch, April 1540).

Berry, Lloyd E., intro., The Geneva Bible. A facsimile of the 1560 edition (U. of Wisconsin P., Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1969).

Brown, Michael H., intro., The Geneva Bible. A facsimile of the 1599 edition (= A. S. Herbert, Historical Catalogue of the English Bible [British and Foreign Bible Society, London; American Bible Society, New York, 1968], 248). (Geneva Publishing Co., David W. Kleis, Buena Park, CA, 1991).

The Bishops' Bible (1568).

Pollard, A. W. ed., The Holy Bible. A Facsimile ... of the Authorized Version Published in the Year 1611 (Oxford U.P., Oxford, 1911).

Other Works

Hammond, Gerald, The Making of the English Bible (Carcanet, Manchester, 1982).

Lewis, Charlton T., and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Clarendon Press, Oxford [1879], 1962).

Strong, James, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. 1890. As given by: WORDsearch (NavPress Software, Colorado Springs, CO, 1993).

The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford U.P., Oxford, 1971).

Abbreviations

a. Ante

A.V. Authorized Version (or King James Bible) B. Bishops' Bible

C. Coverdale, century

G. Geneva Bible, 1560

G 1599 Geneva Bible, 1599

Gt First and second Great Bible

Gt¹ First Great Bible, 1539

Gt² Second Great Bible, April 1540 LXX Septuagint

OED Oxford English Dictionary

T. Tyndale

W. Both Wyclif versions, Wyclif

W¹ Wyclif Early Version, c.1382

W² Wyclif Later Version, c. 1388

Notes

[1]	'Reading' is the only New Testament word here (Acts 13:15).

[2]	'To the Reader', New Testament, 1526, in Doctrinal Treatises (Henry Walter ed., The Parker Society, Cambridge, 1848), p. 390. These words are given as group 6 of Appendix 2. That some come from one version, some from the other, further proves Tyndale's independence.

[3]

Appendix I pretends to be a complete list of these words but there are bound to be omissions. Equally, I have included some words which others may judge should have been omitted. Particularly rough is the tagging of words as obsolete or archaic in relation to modern English, but I have attempted it since it helps to focus attention.

[4]

Monumental achievement as it is, the OED is incomplete in its work on the English Bible. Perhaps its most serious limitation is its failure to deal properly with Tyndale, especially with his Old Testament work. Tyndale's Pentateuch and the Matthew Bible of 1537 are rarely referred to; the 1551 edition of the Matthew Bible receives more attention without recognition that it repeats both of these. Daniell discusses some of the OED's failings with regard to Tyndale, p. xxi. A simple example of the general limitation is the phrase 'in heat' used of animals. The OED's first citation is from George Washington in 1768: 'Music was also in heat and served promiscuously by all the Dogs' ('heat' sb. 13). Yet, 208 years earlier there is this in the Geneva Bible: 'the sheepe were in heate before the rods' (Genesis 30:39). Historical lexicographers are at the mercy of the written evidence they happen to find. Here Washington was the first writer they found using a phrase that was evidently hundreds of years old. I doubt if the Geneva Bible invented the phrase: probably it had already existed for years, perhaps centuries, in spoken English. The Bible not only gives English new words and phrases; it also draws valuably on the oral founts of English. The most substantial antedating among the words and phrases on my list is 'wipe out': the OED's first citation is a. 1842.

[5]	Quotations from Tyndale's Pentateuch are taken from Mombert's old-spelling edition, quotations from the Matthew Bible from Daniell's modern-spelling edition.

[6]

Tyndale uses 'merce' elsewhere. At Deuteronomy 22:19 the A.V., unprompted by Coverdale or Geneva, reverts almost exactly to Tyndale, reading, 'they shall amearse him in an hundred shekels of siluer'. The OED cites 'amerce' ('to punish by an arbitrary fine; to fine, mulct [a person]') from c.1375 to 1863, and from 1500 'with the penalty or amount expressed'. This verse from the A.V. is cited as the first example of a subgroup using 'in', though the A.V. is following Tyndale's 'merce him in'. Perhaps the distinctions involved here are so fine that the first Westminster group of the A.V. translators, working on Deuteronomy, found 'merce' acceptable in its adjusted form, 'amerce', whereas the first Cambridge group, working on 2 Chronicles, found it unacceptable.

[7]	The vegetable world was similarly problematic. The Bishops' Bible notes of 'mandragoras', 'what kynd of fruite this was, it is not certayne' (Genesis 30:14, marg.).

[8]	The Wyclif translators took 'stellio' straight from the Vulgate; they explain it as 'a werme depeyntid as with sterris', and as 'a worm that hath many briȝt iemmes in the bak' (Leviticus 11:30). 'Taxus' (badger) is medieval Latin, 'formerly sometimes used in English' (OED).

[9]	OED cites 'taches' from the fifteenth century to 1668, and then in 1867 with direct reference to the Bible.

[10]	The OED's first unambiguous citation for 'buttons' as fastenings rather than as ornaments is from King Lear, 'pray you undo this button'.

[11]

Hammond, who describes Tyndale's 'greatest quality' as 'his matching of simple and direct English to a care for the essential meaning of the original text' (p. 38), gives a number of examples that support this line of argument (e.g., pp. 38-9, 54 and note); among them he notes a pun, also on 'plague' (p. 39). A notable example of Tyndale's liking for alliteration, revealed by this list of words, is 'the pagiantes which I haue played in Egipte' (Exodus 10:2).

[12]	This is the sense found in both the Vulgate and the Wyclif Bibles, which have 'lepram' and 'lepre'.

[13]	'These wordes walke lo very goodly by the herers Bare, & they make a man amased in a manner & somwhat to studye and muse' (The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer [ 1532, 15331; The Complete Works of St. Thomas More [New Haven and London, Yale U.P., 1963 etc.], VIII, 725).

[14]

Although the Bishops' Bible translators were instructed 'that all such wordes as soundeth in the Olde Translacion to any offence of Lightnes or obscenitie be expressed with more convenient termes and phrases' (Pollard, p. 126), all the translators placed fidelity to the original ahead of propriety wherever this might be an issue. The Wycliffite versions are especially open to the charge of obscenity in view of later refinements of English. For instance at Deuteronomy 28:27, W1 bluntly writes: 'the paart of the bodi bi the which toordis ben sheten out'; W2 may perhaps show 'more convenient termes': 'the part of the bodi wherbi ordures ben voyded'. Among the later translators, 'piss' is not deleted even though Coverdale, not knowing what Tyndale had written, offered his successors the alternatives of 'maketh water' (1 Samuel 25:22 etc.) and 'stale' (2 Kings 18:27, Isaiah 36:12). Geneva introduces 'buggerers' (1 Corinthians 6:9). Tyndale's 'siege', for which Coverdale offers the alternative of 'preuy house', is changed to 'jakes', and finally to 'draughthouse' (2 Kings 10:27); it would take a fine scholar to distinguish degrees of euphemism here. I have discussed later attempts to euphemize the Bible in 'The Wicked Bible and the Lexicographer' (Of Pavlova, Poetry and Paradigms: Essays in Honour of Harry Orsman, [Laurie Bauer and Christine Franzen eds., Victoria U.P., Wellington, 1993], pp. 50-69).

[15]

I have suggested elsewhere that, for mid-sixteenth-century readers, 'the English of the Bible, in spite of Tyndale's desire to be understood by ploughboys, had a real element of the inkhorn in it' (A History of the Bible as Literature, I: From Antiquity to 1700 [Cambridge U. P., Cambridge, 1993], p. 106). This is not a point to be pressed where Tyndale's vocabulary is concerned. In general terms, the people did have difficulties with the language of the Bible, but few of the specific difficulties with Latinisms can be ascribed to Tyndale. The following words of Latin origin are those most likely to have had an inkhorn flavour: 'abstainer', 'adjuration', 'excommunicate', 'executer', 'inclosers, 'interpretate' and 'uninhabited'. I have not included in Appendix II a list of Latinisms since too many fine etymological judgements are needed to determine whether a word is taken directly from Latin, particularly to determine whether a word of Latin origin had not already become a familiar English word.

[16]	A.C. Partridge notes Tyndale's use of the dialect 'loweth' for 'low-lying country' (English Biblical Translation [Deutsch, London, 1973], p. 48). This comes among a number of valuable observations on Tyndale's vocabulary; see also pp. 55-6.

[17]	Unsurprisingly, the OED's first citation of 'watchword' in Tyndale's sense of a cautionary word or speech dates from his lifetime, c.1475.

[18]	I discuss dialect versions and show some of their attractions in A History of the Bible as Literature, II: From 1700 to the Present Day (Cambridge U. P., Cambridge, 1993), pp. 256-61.

[19]	The extent and nature of Tyndale's fidelity to the Hebrew is finely explored the Hammond's first two chapters. My general point here is hinted at, pp. 25-6.

[20]	The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528); facsimile (Scolar, Menston, 1970), to]. xvv.