Tyndale as Translator

Professor Morna Hooker
This is the full text of the seventh annual Hertford Tyndale Lecture 19 October 2000

Webmaster's Note: This article contains Greek. If characters are not displayed correctly in your browser, consider downloading the Gentium fonts from SIL, and consider using the Firefox browser.

I have on my shelves at home a book which I confess I have rarely opened entitled ‘The Bible designed to be Read as Literature’. It was given to me many years ago by a kind and well-meaning but misguided neighbour. ‘Misguided’ because, of course, the Bible was not designed to be read as literature, and to present it with the sole aim of appreciating its literary impact is to obscure its original purpose, which is unashamedly theological. The editor of the book, in his Introduction, protested against the fact that the Bible had ‘for centuries been studied apart from its literary form and value’,[1] the poetry being printed as prose, the prose arbitrarily broken up into verses and chapters. For all his protests, however, the translation he was presenting — the Authorised Version — is still valued by many for its literary merit, rather than for its theological message, which is so often difficult to discern.

In any debate concerning the value of literary prose and poetry on the one hand and theological meaning on the other, there can be no doubt as to the position which would have been taken by William Tyndale. Tyndale’s primary purpose was to convey the meaning of scripture; what moved him to translate the New Testament was, he tells us, the fact that he

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.[2]

It was a happy accident that Tyndale’s literary skills were such that his translation was a literary masterpiece and had an immense impact on the English language. His primary purpose was eloquently expressed in his famous declaration to a learned opponent: ‘If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest.’[3] His words echo those of Erasmus in the preface to his first edition of the Greek New Testament (1516).[4]

I disagree very much with those who are unwilling that Holy Scripture, be translated into the vulgar tongue .... I would that even the lowliest women read the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles. And I would that they were translated into all languages... that as a result, the farmer sing some portion of them at the plow, the weaver hum some parts of them to the movement of his shuttle, the traveller lighten the weariness of the journey with stories of this kind!

David Norton has recently argued that while literary and religious enjoyment here seem inseparable, Tyndale’s words say nothing about pleasure, and are apparently concerned only with knowledge of the scriptures.[5] Whether or not that distinction is a fair one, it seems to be true that Tyndale’s primary concern was with meaning. When he writes of his concern to translate into ‘proper English’, he is thinking of accuracy, not quality.[6] Yet his arguments that Hebrew can be more easily translated into English than into Latin, and that it must be done ‘well-favouredly, so that it have the same grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding’,[7] show his awareness of the power of language to convey meaning. If the medium is not itself the message, it certainly has a large part to play. In Tyndale, meaning and medium were perfectly wedded, and his work had a profound influence on both the theology and the literature of this country.

Critics of modern translations of the Bible frequently protest about the banality of their everyday language, which jars on those who are accustomed to the language of the Authorised Version. The latter transports us with its beauty; the former brings us down to earth with a bump. Yet part of Tyndale’s genius was that he used the everyday language of his own day — the language spoken and understood by the boy driving the plough. He was doing for his time precisely what modern translators are attempting to do today. If the results are very different, is it simply because Tyndale was a genius and modern translators are not, or is it because of the changes in our English language over the past 500 years, which mean that the cadences are now totally different?

Tyndale himself was accused by Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London in the 1520s, of ‘attempting to ... profane the majesty of Scripture ... and craftily to abuse the most holy word of God’. The accusation sounds familiar: was Tunstall simply protesting against replacing the beauty of the Latin (however little it might have been understood by the ordinary people) with a vulgar, down-to-earth, English version? The answer to that question is in fact ‘No’, for Tunstall’s real objection is more fundamental: it is not simply that Tyndale has substituted meaningful words for magical, and attempted to express in comprehensible words that which is beyond comprehension, but rather that he has corrupted the sense and introduced false doctrines. In short, he is a Lutheran:

Many children of iniquity, maintainers of Luther’s sect, blinded through extreme wickedness, wandering from the way of truth and the Catholic faith, have craftily translated the New Testament into our English tongue, intermeddling therewith many heretical articles and erroneous opinions, seducing the common people; attempting by their wicked and perverse interpretations to profane the majesty of Scripture, which hitherto had remained undefiled, and craftily to abuse the most holy word of God, and the true sense of the same.[8]

We shall find that the gravest charge brought against Tyndale in his lifetime was not that he was deficient in his understanding of the Greek and Hebrew languages, but that he was a heretic, and had introduced heretical teachings into his translation. It was not the last time that a translation would be condemned outright because of the suspect views of those who produce it. As recently as 1952, in the USA, opponents of the RSV sought to undermine it by accusing its translators of being communists or communist sympathisers; their allegations were treated with the utmost seriousness by Senator Joseph McCarthy.[9]

That Tyndale produced, in his translation, a work of literary genius cannot now be doubted. But that was not his aim. His aim was to translate the scriptures faithfully. How successful was he? Did he convey the true meaning of the text, or were his detractors right in accusing him of abusing its meaning?

It has to be recognized straight away that there must always be an element of truth in the charge that translators distort the original meaning. Every language is unique. Sometimes it is easy – especially when languages are related – to find an exact equivalent to translate a particular term; often, however, a word in one language has a range of meanings that cannot be conveyed in another, and any translation will inevitably restrict its meaning and so distort it. The Greek word δικαιοσύνη is a good example. It can mean ‘righteousness’ or ‘justification’, even ‘vindication’. Translating the words πίστις and πιστεύω, meaning ‘faith’ and ‘to believe’, into English involves a variety of English terms: faith, faithfulness, trust, belief, to believe. Translate them into German and you also have a variety of terms – Glaube, Treue, Vertrauen – but their relation to the Greek is just as complex, and they do not correspond to the English words. Here, incidentally, is one reason why English and German theology have often developed in very different ways, and why, to this day, English and German scholars often fail to understand one another. Differences in syntax multiply the problems. There are, for example, constructions in English that are impossible in German, and constructions in German that one would never wish to reproduce in English. There is much truth in the Italian proverb: traduttore traditore – ‘the translator is a traitor’. Distortion is inevitable. Nevertheless, the task of translation has to be undertaken.

There are, I suggest, four important factors that contribute to the success or otherwise of a translation. They are, first, the accuracy of the text that is used as the basis for the translation, second, the knowledge of the original language available at the time, third, the ability of the translator, and fourth, the method of translation that is adopted.

Tyndale’s first edition of the New Testament in English was published early in 1526. Its uniqueness lay not simply in being the first English printed New Testament, but in the fact that it was based on the Greek text. The earlier Wycliffe Bible had been translated from the Vulgate, the Latin text in use throughout Western Christendom. Tyndale was fortunate, in that Erasmus had published his Greek and Latin New Testament in 1516 – quickly followed by a second edition in 1519 and a third in 1522. For the first time, the Greek text was easily available. One hesitates, however, to refer to the text he published as ‘the original Greek text’. Certainly it represented the underlying Greek text rather than a later Latin translation, but Erasmus’ text had been hastily edited on the basis of six or seven very late manuscripts, most of which dated from the twelfth century. The manuscripts he used were those that happened to be available in Basle, where he was working at the time, and unfortunately they were not only late but full of mistakes. Erasmus appears to have ‘corrected’ the text in places from the Latin Vulgate, though without explaining his reasons for doing so, and thus made things worse. In one manuscript a whole page was missing, and he re-created the text on the basis of the Vulgate. The printed edition introduced further mistakes, in the form of typographical errors. By modern standards, the text was unreliable and corrupt – from time to time less accurate than the Vulgate, which Tyndale’s opponents maintained was the only proper text to use.

The haste with which Erasmus had produced his text seems to have been largely due to the urgent request of his publisher that he do so before a rival edition appeared on the scene. In those days too, careful research could be curtailed by deadlines and publishing schedules. But even with more time, the result might not have been very different. Early manuscripts were rare and widely distributed; the complexities of textual corruptions were not yet understood. Above all, Erasmus was not even trying to produce a critical edition of the New Testament. His aim was to publish his extensive annotations of the Vulgate, together with his own Latin translation; the Greek text was required in order to justify this translation.

However imperfect, the Greek text was nevertheless a godsend to Tyndale. Without it, his work would hardly have been possible. He was able to translate directly from the Greek and though, by modern standards, his Greek text is poor, yet at the time and for centuries after, it was the best available. Tyndale used both the second edition of Erasmus’ text, published in 1519, and the third, published in 1522, but it is difficult to decide whether he deliberately switched from the earlier to the later or used whichever happened to be available to him. The former explanation seems more likely[12]; yet there is a puzzle. The clues come in 1 John 5:7 and in James 4:2. In 1 John 5, unlike Luther, Tyndale includes the explanatory gloss ‘For there are three which bear record in heaven, the father, the word and the holy ghost. And these three are one’. The words, present in the Vulgate, are missing from Erasmus’ earlier editions but were included in the 1522 edition because he had rashly promised to restore them if a Greek manuscript were found which contained them. Unfortunately one such manuscript was conveniently discovered, and Erasmus therefore added them to the text of the 1522 edition.

We know, then, that Tyndale was using that edition when he translated 1 John. In James 4:2, Erasmus’ 1519 Greek text runs φθονηῖτε, meaning ‘you are jealous’, a reading which appears to have been a conjecture on his part, and his Latin translation is invidetis. In the 1522 edition, he changes φθονεῖτε to φονεύετε, meaning ‘you kill’, but, remarkably, keeps the same Latin, invidetis! Tyndale translates ‘ye envy’; either he was using Erasmus’ 1519 text at this point or, if he had the 1522 edition before him, he must have been influenced by the Latin; or was he perhaps simply following Luther’s translation, which runs ‘ihr hasset und neidet’? The logical conclusion might be that he was using the 1519 edition for James and that when he came to 1 John he had acquired the 1522 edition – except that in his New Testament he follows Luther’s ordering of the books, and 1 John comes before James.

When Tyndale turned to the Old Testament, he used the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, which had been published in 1488. Like the Greek text, this incorporated the mistakes of generations of copyists. Unlike the Greek text, however, it was regarded as fixed, and modern translators work from the same text, though aware of many more alternative readings.

Tyndale’s grasp of the biblical languages would have been greatly aided by the publication of Greek grammars at the end of the fifteenth century, and by the appearance of Hebrew lexica and grammars at the beginning of the sixteenth. He was able to use the best tools of the day. He came to the New Testament with a classical education, but much of the New Testament vocabulary is colloquial rather than classical: the discovery of papyri and inscriptions enables modern translators to understand some texts rather better. One example will suffice. In Matt 6:27, Jesus asks the somewhat strange question: ‘Which of you could put one cubit unto his stature?’ Were there so many people at the time eager to be taller than their neighbours? But the word ἡλικία, here given by Tyndale its classical sense of ‘stature’, never has that sense in the papyri, where it means ‘age’. Jesus was thinking of the common anxiety to prolong one’s life, but Tyndale could not have known that.

Translating from Hebrew presents a very different set of problems. Here, there are no classical texts to help or to confuse the issue. Some of the vocabulary occurs only once, and it is frequently necessary to guess at a word’s meaning. Once again, the modern translator is at an advantage. Inscriptions, similar texts in cognate languages, and the discovery of older manuscripts and translations of the text, have all helped to elucidate the meaning. Tyndale could use only what was available at the time.

How able was Tyndale as a translator? From time to time questions have been raised about his scholarship, but these seem to have sprung from ignorance and prejudice. It has been said, for example, that Tyndale knew only German and Latin. The charge is extraordinary. Tyndale’s translations were clearly made from Greek and Hebrew, and he was described in his lifetime as learned in seven languages[11]. Greek he must have learned at Oxford: as proof of his qualifications to translate the New Testament he produced a translation of one of Isocrates’ orations – no mean achievement, since Isocrates was a master of rhetoric. Hebrew he must have learned later, for it was not taught in England until 1524. If Tyndale studied at Cambridge after Oxford, as is often claimed, it was too late for him to learn Greek from Erasmus, too soon to learn Hebrew. He probably taught himself Hebrew on the continent, where the language was already studied. His translations from the Old Testament indicate that he had a good understanding of the language.

Perhaps the best testimony to Tyndale’s skill as a translator is the fact that though his contemporaries accused him of countless faults, they were able to list very few actual errors. Thomas More, to be sure, claimed that to do so would be to rehearse ‘the whole book, wherein there were found and noted wrong or falsely translated above a thousand texts by tale’. Pressed to enumerate them, he listed three: Tyndale’s ‘mistranslation’ of three Greek terms which should, in More’s view, have been rendered ‘priest’, church’ and ‘charity’.[12]

The terms in dispute – πρεσβύτερος, ἐκκλησία and ἀγάπη – reveal the real issue. Tyndale’s ability in Greek could not be doubted, but he had been corrupted by Lutheran doctrines. His fault was to introduce ‘wicked and perverse interpretations’ into Scripture. Instead of translating the Greek ἐκκλησία by ‘church’, Tyndale used ‘congregation’; instead of ‘priest’ for πρεσβύτερος, he used ‘senior’ or ‘elder’; and instead of ‘charity’ for ἀγάπη, ‘love’. Behind all these changes, More sees the influence of Luther. Protesting that the terms Tyndale uses do not express in the English tongue the things that are meant by them, he concludes that Tyndale has a ‘mischievous mind’ in changing them.

That Tyndale was influenced by Luther there can be no doubt. The prologues he attaches to the epistles and the marginal glosses in the 1534 edition of his translation lean heavily on Luther’s, and make his debt plain. Presumably this is why it has been argued from time to time that his translation of both the New Testament and the Old Testament was made from Luther’s German rather than the original Greek and Hebrew. Certainly Tyndale knew and used Luther’s translation. Like any canny translator he would have kept an eye on the German version, just as he referred to the Vulgate and to Erasmus’ Latin version for the New Testament, the LXX for the Old Testament. But his primary texts were Erasmus’ Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Masoretic text. The fact that his translation of certain words was branded by More as heretical was due to the fact that he was translating from Erasmus’ Greek text, not the Latin, and that he was translating correctly. For More, faithful translation was that which faithfully represented the meaning of the Vulgate.

Like so much else in this story, there is considerable irony in this devotion to the Vulgate, since the Vulgate itself, when it was first edited by Jerome, produced protests just as great as those that greeted Tyndale’s translation. Jerome had described his critics as ‘two-legged asses’ and as people who thought that ‘ignorance is equivalent to holiness’. Centuries later, his text was now regarded as unchallengeable.

More’s complaints about Tyndale’s shortcomings centred on his translation of three key terms. The word that Tyndale translated by ‘senior’ or ‘elder’ (though in the 1534 edition he wisely decided to use ‘elder’) is in Greek πρεσβύτερος. The basic meaning of the term is ‘an older person’, as More himself recognized. In the New Testament, however, it is most commonly used in one of two special senses: firstly, of the elders in the Jewish Sanhedrin, and secondly of people exercising some kind of authority within the Christian community: what exactly they did is not clear, though they probably took decisions and exercised discipline over the community. The word πρεσβύτερος is never used of the Jewish priests, and these priests have no equivalent in the New Testament. More protested that ‘senior’ and ‘elder’ were bad translations into English, because not all old men were priests and not all priests were old; that, of course, was true, but underlying his objection lies the assumption that the word πρεσβύτερος refers to a priest, whose function was to offer the sacrifice of the mass, whereas underlying Tyndale’s translation is the recognition that in the New Testament a πρεσβύτερος was not a priest in that sense. I have not checked every use of the term in the New Testament, but I find that both Erasmus, in his Latin translation, and the Vulgate, commonly transliterate presbuteros, or else use the Latin senior. To the modern ear, ‘senior’ does seem an inappropriate term: there is more to being a πρεσβύτερος than simply being a senior citizen; ‘elder’ seems more appropriate – but perhaps that is because Tyndale’s choice of it gave the word a life of its own, and ‘elder’ became a recognized office in some churches. Perhaps in the sixteenth century, the term ‘elder’ would have seemed as strange as ‘senior’. But Tyndale was certainly right to reject the term ‘priest’ here: the word πρεσβύτερος, did not mean what More wanted it to mean, and even the Vulgate does not support him here.

More’s objection to Tyndale’s translation of ἐκκλησία by ‘congregation’, rather than ‘church’, is understandable: to him, the Church meant the institution established by Christ and entrusted with authority and doctrine, the infallible source of divinely-revealed truth. By using ‘congregation’ rather than ‘church’, Tyndale appeared to be denying the authority of the Catholic Church.13 On philological grounds, however, one must uphold Tyndale’s translation here also. The term ἐκκλησία means, literally, the company of those who have been called out. When Paul wrote to the ἐκκλησία in Corinth, he was not writing to an institution, to a building, or to the clergy, but to a company of people united in their common faith in Christ.

Tyndale’s use of ‘love’ instead of ‘charity’ for ἀγάπη is interesting. His rendering of 1 Corinthians 13 seems much more up-to-date than the translation found in the Authorized Version. More attacks him on the grounds that ‘charity’ has a more particular meaning than ‘love’, and that the word ‘love’ did not convey the proper sense of the word to the English mind. Today, the meaning of ‘love’ has been debased, and one has a certain sympathy with More’s objection to it. But of course, the word ‘charity’ is today totally unsuitable as a rendering for the Greek ἀγάπη. And it was the narrower meaning of the word ‘charity’, with its implication of good works, that commended it to More. To what extent this was the dominant meaning of the word in the sixteenth century I am not clear: it is often said that the word ‘charity’ has changed its meaning since the time of the Authorized Version, but clearly it must have been more even then than a simple synonym for love, or More would not have advocated it. This comes out in the Dialogue. He writes:

‘The cause why [Tyndale] changes the name of charity, and of the church, and of priesthood, is no very great difficulty to perceive. For since Luther and his fellows among their other damnable heresies have one that all our salvation standeth in faith alone, and toward our salvation nothing force of good works, therefore it seemeth that he laboureth of purpose to minish the reverent mind that men bear to charity, and therefore changeth the name of holy virtuous affection into the bare name of love.’[14]

The real debate, then, is not between the alternative translations of ‘love’ and ‘charity’, but between the principles of faith and good works. The translation ‘love’ is, in More’s eyes, a deliberate attempt by Tyndale to exclude the notion of good works, and so leave room for the principle of salvation sola fide. In support he appeals to 1 Corinthians 13 itself: ‘if a man have so great faith that he might by the force of his faith work miracles, and also such fervent affection to the faith that he would give his body to the fire for the defence thereof, yet if he lacked charity, all his faith sufficed not.’[15]

Other terms, also are seen by More as ‘mistranslations’. One of these is the verb μετανοέω, meaning ‘to repent’ – which is the way Tyndale translated the term; but according to More, he should have rendered it ‘do penance’. The notion that what John the Baptist proclaimed was the Catholic practice of penance is, of course, absurd. What he demanded was a change of heart. Here More is clearly doing precisely what he had accused Tyndale of doing – reading the text in the light of his beliefs. The Greek means, literally, to change one’s mind, not to perform acts of contrition. Erasmus, following the Vulgate, used poeniteo, ‘to repent;’ Luther, strangely, seems here to support More, since he translates ‘Thut Busse’.

More’s complaint that Tyndale uses ‘acknowledge’ instead of ‘confess’ to translate the Greek ἐξομολογέω, is difficult to substantiate. I found only two places – Rom 14:11, where ‘confess’ is hardly appropriate, and James 5:16, where there is little difference in meaning; More’s insistence on the translation ‘confess’ is once again based on a particular theological understanding of the word ‘confess’.

Another of More’s complaints was that in translating the Greek term χάρις, Tyndale substituted ‘favour’ for ‘grace’. ‘Favour’ is a less specific term than ‘grace’, and was in More’s view capable of an evil sense. In fact, there is little real difference between the terms. The expression ‘grace and favour’ sounds well, but the two words appear to be synonyms. Nor does Tyndale use ‘favour’ often, since he normally prefers grace. Although in Rom. 4:4 we find him writing of Abraham: ‘To him that worketh, is the reward not reckoned of favour; but of duty’, he consistently uses the term ‘grace’ throughout the following chapter.

The real issue here is in fact a rather different one. Tyndale does not always use the same English term to translate a Greek word, preferring to vary the translation. Since words in different languages rarely have an exact equivalence, this variation is often appropriate. More complained that Tyndale mistranslated the verb ἐξομολογέω. In Phil. 2:11, in a reference to Isaiah 45, Tyndale translates ‘that in the name of Jesus should every knee bow ... and that all tongues should confess that Jesus is the Lord’. The modern NRSV follows suit. This was, in fact, the translation that More wanted.[16] In Rom. 4:11, on the other hand, in another echo of the same Old Testament passage, the verb is followed by a noun, not a clause. Here Tyndale translates: ‘as truly as I live saith the Lord, all knees shall bow to me, and all tongues shall give a knowledge to God’ – or, as we would put it in modern English, ‘acknowledge God’. The NRSV, noting in the margin that the verb means ‘confess’, translates: ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God’ – much further from the Greek than Tyndale’s version.

Attempts to use the same English word every time to translate a Greek term are not simply wooden, but distort the meaning. Tyndale was right to vary his terms, even if he may not have made the correct choice every time. On occasions, however, he seems to have used different terms in the interests of euphony. There is, for example, a story in the Gospels where the Greek term ἐξουσία is used twice in one verse. In Mark 11:28, Tyndale translates this accurately: ‘by what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority, to do these things?’ He does the same in Luke. In the Matthaean parallel, however (21:23), he varies the translation: ‘By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this power?’ Presumably, he thought the variation would sound more effective. In fact, however, the questions are considerably more forceful in Mark than Luke.

In this last example, Tyndale was clearly aiming for something that would sound good, since accuracy alone would have dictated that the word ἐξουσία was translated in the same way in each case. So was he aiming primarily for accuracy or for English idiom? Anyone who has struggled to translate from one language to another knows that the two objectives must be constantly balanced. A good translation should read well – in other words, the result should be good English – but it must also attempt to convey the original meaning as faithfully as possible. Balancing accurate translation and pleasing translation is a difficult art. Tyndale’s repeated revisions show his concern for philological and textual accuracy as well as for English idiom. He describes his aims as seeking ‘proper English’,[17] meaning ‘accurate English’, and as finding ‘the right English word’,[18] but also as aiming for ‘good English’.[19] But what he was translating was rarely good, literary Greek. Much of it was everyday, colloquial Greek, some of it was uncouth. Tyndale’s English is also colloquial – at times anachronistic, as in his use of words such as ‘Easter lamb’ and ‘Sunday’. Modern translators sometimes do the same, referring, for example, to metres or to miles. A great deal of the Greek showed the influence of the Hebrew scriptures, as Tyndale himself noted. One interesting indication of Tyndale’s intention to convey accurately the feel of the Greek is seen in his use of the simple word καί, meaning ‘and’. Faithful translation of the innumerable uses of this word by ‘and’ can become exceedingly monotonous. Modern translators, aiming to produce something more elegant, frequently omit many of them, rearranging the sentences in order to produce something that will sound like contemporary English. So should one, for example, faithfully translate all Mark’s ‘καί’s, or should one tidy him up? There is much to be said for retaining his breathless style, conveying eagerness and urgency, but the result is certainly not polished English. In his own translation, Tyndale omitted a considerable number of the ‘καί’s, but some of these were restored in later editions.[20] He had presumably decided that the rhythm of the original Greek was more important than English idiom. Was it, perhaps, the fact that he had now learned Hebrew, and was aware of the source of this peculiar characteristic of New Testament Greek, that led him to believe that the ‘and’s should not be ignored? Certainly his famous preface to the 1534 edition indicates that he had become aware of ‘the Hebrew phrase or manner of speech left in the Greek words’.

The Hebrew underlying the Greek is an important factor in another case where Tyndale uses different English words to translate one Hebrew root. In classical Greek the verb δικαιοῦν, ‘to do justice’, is frequently used in a negative sense, meaning ‘to condemn’. In the LXX, however, it is used to translate the Hebrew sadaq, which has a much more positive meaning, and is used of acquitting and declaring to be in the right. The cognate noun can thus be used as a synonym for salvation. This positive sense spills over into the New Testament. In Rom. 3:4, we even find that God himself is said to be ‘justified’, since he is shown to be righteous.

But the complexities of translating Hebrew into Greek are made far greater when we try to translate into English. Take, for example, Tyndale’s translation of Rom. 1:17:

By [the Gospel] the righteousness which cometh of God is opened, from faith to faith. As it is written: the just shall live by faith.

Here we have the theme of Romans in a nutshell. But we also have the linguistic problem in a nutshell. Tyndale has translated the noun δικαιοσύνη, by ‘righteousness’, the cognate adjective, δίκαιος, by ‘just’. To complete the list – and to add to the confusion – there is also the verb, δικαιοῦν. Because of the different nuances of the verb in classical and biblical Greek, a Latin word justificare had been coined to translate it in its biblical setting. With one exception (in Gal 3:24), Tyndale consistently uses the equivalent Anglicized verb ‘justify’ to translate δικαιοῦν. while, just as consistently, he uses the Anglo-Saxon word ‘righteousness’ to translate the noun δικαιοσύνη. As for the adjective, δίκαιος, he uses various terms – ‘just’, ‘righteous’, ‘good’, perfect’, according to the context, where the Vulgate consistently uses justus.[21]

As a Pauline scholar, I am bound to say that I regard Tyndale’s use of two roots, ‘just’ and ‘righteous’, as unfortunate, since it has obscured much of Paul’s logic. In German there is no such problem – verb, noun and adjective are all based on the root ‘Recht’. The difficulty is that in English the two roots are defective. One can use the words ‘just’, justification’, justify’, but the verb is essentially forensic, and there is no equivalent noun to express what we mean by ‘righteousness’. In modern English the problem with the root is intensified, since the verb ‘to justify’ has fallen out of usage – except, that is, when my computer asks me whether I wish to justify my margins, or when politicians attempt to justify themselves.

There is a similar problem with ‘right’ and ‘righteousness’; for the verb, we have to use ‘to put things right’ or ‘to make righteous’, which may or may not be what we mean. But in Tyndale’s day there was a verb ‘to rightwise’, which had been used in some of the Psalters, and which would have served his purpose well. Why did he here – unusually – prefer a verb derived from Latin? The word ‘justify’ had, indeed, been used already in the Wycliffe translation, and it has been suggested that the meaning it had acquired – to acquit, to show someone to be in the right, to vindicate – seemed preferable to a word that suggested that the sinner was made righteous.[22] For behind the choice of words lies the Reformation debate as to whether righteousness was imparted, and the sinner made righteous, or imputed, the sinner being reckoned as righteous on the basis of Christ’s death. Tyndale’s choice of the verb ‘justify’ certainly conveys the latter sense rather than the former, and so helped to exacerbate the conflict. It has to be added that today, Catholic and Protestant scholars are agreed that both sides in this Reformation dispute were right and both were wrong! Wrong, that is, on insisting on one aspect of the truth. Paul held that righteousness was indeed ‘reckoned’ to sinners – that is, to those who died and rose in Christ – but, in Christ, they shared his righteousness – became like him. It seems to me that the old English verb ‘to rightwise’ conveys both aspects of this process admirably: would that Tyndale had chosen to use it!

I have argued that Tyndale, though he kept an eye on Luther’s translation, had no need to translate from the German, since he was fully competent in Greek and Hebrew. Nevertheless, one has to admit that there are times when he seems to have kept more than one eye on the German. To discover the extent of his debt to Luther would involve a very long investigation, but one passage in Romans struck me immediately for its remarkable similarity to Luther’s version. Perhaps it is significant that the passage is from Romans, which formed the basis of Luther’s theology, and perhaps it is significant also that the passage I have in mind comes from Romans 3, where Paul sums up the principle we know as ‘justification by faith’ – or, more properly, ‘justification by grace’. The passage I have in mind is Rom. 3:21-31.

What struck me immediately about Tyndale’s translation of this passage is his repeated use of an explanatory phrase after the noun ‘righteousness’. He begins with a reference to ‘the righteousness that cometh of God’ – a fair enough translation of δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ. But then we have ‘the righteousness no doubt which is good before God’, ‘the righteousness which before him is of valour’, ‘the righteousness that is allowed of him’ – all very expansive ways of translating δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ. A similar phrase in v.23 turns the simple ἡ δόξα τοῦ Θεοῦ, the glory of God, into ‘the praise that is of valour before God’. These glosses all give the translation a clear spin in the direction of Reformation principles. But the spin was unnecessary, and obscures Paul’s meaning. Paul is not talking here about a righteousness acceptable to God, but about God’s righteousness and God’s glory: it is his righteousness that is displayed, his righteousness that is offered to believers and that is active in their salvation.

So why did Tyndale expand the translation in this way? When we turn to Luther, we find exactly the same phenomenon. According to his translation, the passage is about ‘die Gerechtigkeit, die vor Gott gilt’, or which is ‘vor Gott’. Luther, too, expands the translation of δόξα Θεοῦ: it is ‘der Ruhn, den sie an Gott haben sollten’. Further evidence of Luther’s influence on Tyndale is found in Rom. 3:25, where ἱλαστήριον is rendered ‘Gnadenstuhl’ by Luther, ‘a seat of mercy’ by Tyndale. Luther and Tyndale both appreciated the Old Testament background of this term, which is used in the LXX to refer to the cover of the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s presence with his people. Sadly, later translations, from the Authorised Version onwards, failed to understand this link and followed the Vulgate, rendering the term ‘propitiation’. Commentators have from time to time upheld the translation ‘mercy stool’, and one of my own research students has recently completed a PhD. dissertation on Paul’s use of the term, which to my mind convincingly demonstrates that Luther and Tyndale here got it right.[23]

All this might suggest that Tyndale was, as his critics say, simply copying Luther. But he was not. For when we come to Rom. 3:28, we find him translating ‘For we suppose that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law’, which is about as close as one can get to the Greek. When we turn to Luther’s version, we find that this is the passage where he added the famous allein to the text, so making it declare that man is justified by faith alone. The Reformation principle of sola fide has coloured his interpretation of the text, but Tyndale does not follow suit.

The way in which Luther and Tyndale handled the text here raises interesting hermeneutical principles – for translating is, indeed, always a matter of hermeneutics, that is of interpretation. Over-literal translations are not only ugly from an aesthetic point of view, they can frequently fail in their purpose, since they are often difficult to understand. But any attempt to convey the meaning in a more dynamic way will inevitably introduce the translator’s understanding of the text into the translation, and often topple over into paraphrase. The glosses that Luther and Tyndale put onto the expression δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ made plain what they felt was the real meaning of the text – but that is the job of the commentator, not the translator.

Finally, what of Tyndale’s translation of the Old Testament? Here again, there has been considerable debate as to the extent of Tyndale’s dependence on Luther.[24] On the whole, the consensus is that he translated directly from the Hebrew,[25] even though, as Gerald Hammond has argued, he seems to have ‘relied heavily on Luther’.[26] He clearly had a good grasp of the language and was aware of its subtleties. He reproduces many of the quirks of Hebrew – the frequent use of the infinitive, for example, where ‘normal’ English would use a finite verb. Thus in Gen. 9:16, in contrast to both Luther and the Vulgate, Tyndale translates:

The bow shall be in the clouds, and I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting testament between God and all that liveth upon the earth.

Again, Tyndale often includes repetitions in Hebrew which seem redundant in English. Thus Gen. 35:12, expressed succinctly in the Vulgate, is, like the Hebrew, far more sonorous in Tyndale:

And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, will I give unto thee and unto thy seed after thee will I give it also.

Another clear indication of the influence of the Hebrew text is in Tyndale’s faithfulness to the word order, which often leads to apparent inversions in the English. Thus in Gen. 47:3-4, Pharaoh asks Joseph’s brothers

What is your occupation? And they said into Pharao: feeders of sheep are thy servants, both we and also our fathers. They said moreover unto Pharao: for to sojourn in the land we are come, for thy servants have no pasture for their sheep.

Here, incidentally, we see one of the reasons for the rhythmic quality of Tyndale’s prose. It sounds so much better than the down-to-earth ‘thy servants are feeders of sheep’ and ‘we are come to sojourn in the land’.

Once again, this raises a fascinating question of the principle of translation. Tyndale’s version produces something close to the original syntax of the Hebrew: but if the inversion of order is normal in the Hebrew and abnormal in German and English, who is producing the closest translation of the effect of the original – Luther, who changes the order, or Tyndale, who keeps it?

Another feature of Tyndale’s translation is what Hammond terms his ‘literalness in the rendering of minutiae’.[27] As an example, he points to Gen. 7:11, where Tyndale translates literally:

In the six hundredth year of Noe’s life, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, that same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

The result is far more dramatic than in the Vulgate and Luther, who compress the text. At times, however, one feels that this literalness goes too far. Gen. 21:3 informs us that Abraham called his son Isaac, but Tyndale ponderously reproduces the repetition of the Hebrew:

And Abraham called his son’s name that was born unto him which Sarah bare him Isaac.

By contrast, his faithfulness in translating pronouns can be effective. There are twelve second person pronouns in Deut. 7:13, where Moses says that the Lord

will love thee, bless thee and multiply thee: he will bless the fruit of thy womb and the fruit of thy field, thy corn, thy wine and thy oil, the fruit of thine oxen and the flocks of thy sheep in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.

In the Old Testament, as in the New Testament, we find the same word repeated within a single verse. I suggested earlier that Tyndale slipped up when translating Matt. 21 by substituting ‘power’ for ‘authority’. In Gen. 3:15 we find him redeeming himself. The Hebrew verb shapak is used to describe first Eve’s seed stamping on the serpent’s head and then the serpent biting man’s heel. The Vulgate and the German both resort, as I have done, to using two different verbs. Tyndale, appreciating the force of the repetition, translated ‘and that seed shall tread thee on the head, and thou shalt tread it on the heel’. Not perhaps, a very good translation, but at least he tried! The NRSV and REB do better: ‘he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.’

One cause of repetition in Hebrew is the use of the cognate accusative, and this is often echoed in Tyndale’s translation. An obvious example, ignored by Luther, is found in Ex. 32:30, where Moses tells his people ‘Ye have sinned a great sin’. These are just a few examples of the ways in which Tyndale shows himself to be fully aware of the character of the Hebrew original.

The task of translation is, I have suggested, an impossible one – which is why no one translation can ever be perfect, and why attempts to translate the Bible will continue ad infinitum. Only those who have themselves struggled with the task are fully aware of the complex problems and the pitfalls. As one who has, in a very minor way, experienced the problems and fallen into the pits, I have to say that I have the profoundest admiration for William Tyndale as translator.

Notes and References

[1]	The Bible designed to be Read as Literature, ed. E.S. Bates, London: Heinemann, no date, p. vii.

[2]	‘W.T. to the Reader’; see David Daniell, Tyndale's Old Testament, New Haven & London: Yale, 1991, p.4.

[3]	Quoted by J.F. Mozley, William Tyndale, London: SPCK, 1937, p. 34.

[4]	Paraclesis (preface to New Testament). See John C. Olin, ed., Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus, New York: Fordham University Press, 1975, p. 97.

[5]	David Norton, A History of The English Bible as Literature, Cambridge: CUP, 2000, p.19.

[6]	Ibid, p.20.

[7]	Doctrinal Treatises, ed. Henry Walter, Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1848, p.149.

[8]	Quoted by David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography, New Haven & London: Yale, 1994, p.190.

[9]	Bruce M. Metzger, in Bruce M. Metzger, Robert C. Dentan and Walter Harrelson, The Making of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1991, pp. 50-51.

[10]	Cf. W. F. Moulton, An Abridged Edition of the History of the English Bible, London: Epworth, 1937, p.59. For a fuller discussion, see W. F. Moulton, The History of the English Bible, 1911[5], pp. 75-7.

[11]	The comment is attributed to the humanist Buschius.

[12]	T. More, Dialogue iii.8.

[13]

According to C.P. Thiede, ‘Tyndale and the European Reformation’, Reformation 2, 1997, pp. 283-300, Erasmus used congregatio in his Latin text (p.289). In fact, he normally uses ecclesia, and only occasionally does he use congregatio. In one or two Pauline texts he uses it of a congregation meeting in a house: Rom. 16:5; Col. 4:15 and Phm. 2. Other examples are Acts 5:11 and 11.26; 1 Cor. 14:4, 33; 2 Cor. 1:1 and 3 John 10. Elsewhere he translates ἐκκλησία by ecclesia.

[14]	Dialogue concerning Heresies, III.8.

[15]	Dialogue concerning Heresies, IV.11.

[16]	More insisted that the verb should be translated ‘confess’ whenever it is used. Tyndale in fact commonly uses this translation, with the exception of Rom 4:11 and James 5:16.

[17]	See Norton p.20, quoting from 1526 NT.

[18]	See Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography, p.120, quoting from 1525 NT.

[19]	See Norton p.21.

[20]	Cf. Moulton, op. cit., pp. 57f.

[21]	E.g. Matt. 13:43; Luke 23:47; Matt 13:49; Mark 2:17.

[22]	Brian Cummings, ‘Justifying God in Tyndale’s English’, in Reformation 2, 1997, pp. 143-172.

[23]	Daniel P. Bailey, Jesus as the Mercy Seat: The Semantics and Theology of Paul’s Use of Hilasterion in Romans 3:25, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999.

[24]

Argued, e.g., by J.I. Mombert, ed., William Tyndale’s Five Books of Moses Called the Pentateuch, 1884 (Fontwell, 1967); Dahlia Karpman, ‘Tyndale’s Response to the Hebraic Tradition’, Studies in the Renaissance 14, 1967, pp. 110-130, questions Tyndale’s competence in Hebrew, while maintaining his familiarity with Hebrew scholarship.

[25]	B.F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible, London,1905[3], p.154, W.F. Moulton, The History of the English Bible, London 1911[5], pp. 88-9; J.F. Mozley, ‘Tyndale’s Knowledge of Hebrew’, JTS 36, 1935, p.392-6.

[26]	‘William Tyndale’s Pentateuch: Its Relation to Luther’s German Bible and the Hebrew Original’, Renaissance Quarterly 33, 1980, pp. 351-85, at p.354.

[27]	Op. cit., p.373.

About the author

Professor Hooker was until her recent retirement Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University Cambridge, a chair of which the second holder was Erasmus. She is a most distinguished New Testament scholar: her edition of St Mark’s Gospel (1991) is definitive. She was Chairman of the Revised English Bible, published by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses in 1989.

Members of the Society who were at the second International Tyndale Conference in Oxford in 1996 will recall with great pleasure and admiration her lecture there on a similar subject. That was printed in Reformation 2, which we intend eventually to bring back into print; meanwhile, many members will be glad to see this revised version of her lecture.