One hundred years exactly after the death of Wiclif, William Tindale was born.He was eight years old when Columbus discovered America.He had already taken a degree at Oxford, and was a student in Cambridge when Luther posted his theses at Wittenburg.Erasmus either was a teacher at Cambridge when Tindale was a student there, or had just left.Sir Thomas More and Erasmus were close friends, and More's Utopia and Erasmus's Greek New Testament appeared the same year, probably while Tindale was a student at Cambridge.
But he came at a troubled time.The new learning had no power to deepen or strengthen the moral life of the people.It could not make religion a vital thing.Morality and religion were far separated.The priests and curates were densely ignorant.We need not ask Tindale what was the condition.Ask Bellarmine, a cardinal of the Church: "Some Years before the rise of the Lutheran heresy there was almost an entire abandonment of equity in ecclesiastical judgments; in morals, no discipline; in sacred literature, no erudition; in divine things, no reverence; religion was almost extinct." Or ask Erasmus, who never broke with the Church: "What man of real piety does not perceive with sighs that this is far the most corrupt of all ages? When did iniquity abound with more licentiousness? When was charity so cold?" And, as a century before, Wiclif had felt the social need for a popular version of the Bible, so William Tindale felt it now.He saw the need as great among the clergy of the time as among the laity.In one of his writings he says: "If you will not let the layman have the word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it, which for the great part of them do understand no Latin at all, but sing and patter all day with the lips only that which the heart understandeth not."[1] So bad was the case that it was not corrected within a whole generation.Forty years after Tindale's version was published, the Bishop of Gloucester, Hooper by name, made an examination of the clergy of his diocese.There were 311 of them.He found 168, more than half, unable to repeat the Ten Commandments; 31 who did not even know where they could be found; 40 who could not repeat the Lord's Prayer; and nearly as many who did not know where it originated; yet they were all in regular standing asclergy in the diocese of Gloucester.The need was keen enough.[1] Obedience of a Christian Man.
About 1523 Tindale began to cast the Scriptures into the current English.He set out to London fully expecting to find support and encouragement there, but he found neither.He found, as he once said, that there was no room in the palace of the Bishop of London to translate the New Testament; indeed, that there was no place to do it in all England.A wealthy London merchant subsidized him with the munificent gift of ten pounds, with which he went across the Channel to Hamburg; and there and elsewhere on the Continent, where he could be hid, he brought his translation to completion.Printing facilities were greater on the Continent than in England; but there was such opposition to his work that very few copies of the several editions of which we know can still be found.Tindale was compelled to flee at one time with a few printed sheets and complete his work on another press.Several times copies of his books were solemnly burned, and his own life was frequently in danger.
There is one amusing story which tells how money came to free Tindale from heavy debt and prepare the way for more Bibles.The Bishop of London, Tunstall, was set on destroying copies of the English New Testament.He therefore made a bargain with a merchant of Antwerp, Packington, to secure them for him.Packington was a friend of Tindale, and went to him forthwith, saying: "William, I know thou art a poor man, and I have gotten thee a merchant for thy books." "Who?" asked Tindale."The Bishop of London." "Ah, but he will burn them." "So he will, but you will have the money." And it all came out as it was planned; the Bishop of London had the books, Packington had the thanks, Tindale had the money, the debt was paid, and the new edition was soon ready.The old document, from which I am quoting, adds that the Bishop thought he had God by the toe when, indeed, he found afterward that he had the devil by the fist.[1]
[1] Pollard, Records of the English Bible, p.151.
The final revision of the Tindale translations was published in 1534, and that becomes the notable year of his life.In two years he was put to death by strangling, and his body was burned.When we remember thatthis was done with the joint power of Church and State, we realize some of the odds against which he worked.
Spite of his odds, however, Tindale is the real father of our King James version.About eighty per cent.of his Old Testament and ninety per cent.of his New Testament have been transferred to our version.In the Beatitudes, for example, five are word for word in the two versions, while the other three are only slightly changed.[1] Dr.Davidson has calculated that nine-tenths of the words in the shorter New Testament epistles are Tindale's, and in the longer epistles like the Hebrews five-sixths are his.Froude's estimate is fair: "Of the translation itself, though since that time it has been many times revised and altered, we may say that it is substantially the Bible with which we are familiar.The peculiar genius which breathes through it, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur, unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars, all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man, William Tindale."[2]
[1] The fourth reads in his version, "Blessed are they which hunger and thirst for righteousness"; the seventh, "Blessed are the maintainers of peace"; the eighth, "Blessed are they which suffer persecution for righteousness' sake."[2] History of England, end of chap.xii.
