version that Tyndale turned when he set himself to his task. The young scholar who came up to London to push his fortunes with Bishop Tunstall on the strength of a translation which he had made from Socrates, would appreciate the man who, of all others, gave color to the statement that in that age of quickened intellectual life "Greece had risen from the grave with the New Testament in her hand." The title-page of Tyndale's revised New Testament runs thus: The New Testament, diligently corrected and compared with the Greek, by William Tyndale, and finished in the year of our Lord God, 1534, in the month of November. What he understands by correction and comparison he explains in his "Epistle to the Reader," from which a few sentences may be quoted: "Here hast thou, most dear reader, the New Testament or Covenant made with us of God in Christ's blood, which I have looked over now again at the last, with all diligence, and compared it unto the Greek, and have weeded out of it many faults, which lack of help at the beginning or oversight did sow therein." There is a touch of humor in what follows: "If any mind find fault, either with the translation or aught beside (which is easier for many to do than so well to have translated it themselves of their own pregnant wits at the beginning without an ensample), to the same it shall be lawful to translate it themselves, and to put what they lust thereto. If I shall perceive, either by myself or by the information of others, that aught be escaped me, or might more plainly be translated, I will shortly after cause it to be mended." Probably he had the piratical incursions of Joye in his mind when he wrote this, for in a further address "yet once again to the Christian reader," he says: "Wherefore I beseech George Joye, yea, and all others too, for to translate the Scriptures for themselves, whether out of Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. Or, if they will needs, . . . let them take my translations and labours, and change, and alter, and correct, and corrupt at their pleasure, and call it their own translations and put their own names, and not to play bo-peep after George Joye's manner." Tyndale did well to be angry, for Joye's alterations were such as of his own will he himself would never have made, "though the whole world," as he says, "should be given me for my labour." 2 ... With Hebrew, Tyndale was not familiar in his early life. He was leaving his native land forever when the chair of Hebrew was revived at the University of Cambridge. Four years later, however, when maintaining the duty of the translator to turn to the original languages for his authority, he says: "The Greek tongue agreeth 1 Demaus' "Tyndale,” p. 392. 2 Westcott, p. 69. E more with the English than the Latin, and the properties of the Hebrew tongue agree a thousand times more with the English than the Latin."" It is probable that he learned his Hebrew from Jewish scholars at some of the German cities where he lived. We remember how, from his prison in Vilvoorden Castle, he sent for his Hebrew grammar and dictionary. This suggests that he was studying to the very last, and aspiring to merit the character which had been given him ten years before: "An Englishman who was so complete a master of seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, and French, that you would fancy that whichever one he spoke in was his mother tongue." The disputes between Tyndale and Joye add pungency to the history of the quarrels of authors. Our sympathy is enlisted on the side of the guileless student who saw his own familiar friend and scholar arrayed in his robes, and bringing discredit on their rightful owner. But for one forward step in the annals of our Bible we seem to be indebted to Joye. He pleaded for the book to be published without note or comment. In a vigorous defense of his course, he says: "As for me, in good faith, I had as lief put the truth in the text as in the margent; and except the gloss expand the text, or where the text is plain enough, I had as lief 1 Westcott, p. 174. 1 leave such frivole glosses clean out. I would the Scriptures were so purely and plainly translated that it needed neither note, gloss, nor scholia, so that the reader might once swim without a cork." The hint was not thrown away upon one who had declared years before that "to give the people the bare text of Scriptures, he would offer his body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death His Grace (Henry VIII.) would, so that this be obtained." A prisoner himself, and only to be set free by the executioner, Tyndale's last act was to give the Bible liberty, and to trust it to defend itself. The edition of 1535, in which for the first time headings were prefixed to the chapters in the Gospels and the Acts, was happier than any of its predecessors, in being issued without marginal notes. Joye was right. The reader of the Bible could be safely trusted to swim without corks. But an immense advance was made when the book was put into the hands of the people in their own language, and left to its own simple, unaided strength. They could tell now for themselves what authority their preachers had for their loose paraphrases and ingenious perversions of the Scripture. The revised New Testament, with which William Tyndale crowned his life of singlehearted devotion, was a plea for the right of private judgment as well as for the authority of the Script 1 Demaus, p. 410. |