_A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN, BUT WITH MANY IMITATORS._
“This Book, this Holy Book, in every line
Marked with the seal of high Divinity,
On every leaf bedewed with drops of love
Divine and with the eternal heraldry
And signature of God Almighty stamped
From first to last; this ray of sacred light,
This lamp from off the everlasting throne,
Mercy took down, and in the night of time
Stood casting in the dark her gracious bow,
And ever more beseeching men with tears
And earnest sighs to read, believe, and live.”
--POLLOCK.
CURIOSITIES OF TRANSLATION--ANCIENT VERSIONS--THE BOOK THAT TURNS THE
HEART INSIDE OUT--TYNDALE’S QUALIFICATIONS--HIS PUNGENT GLOSSES.
A few pages may perhaps be devoted to those who had preceded Tyndale in
the work of translation, but for all practical purposes, as it will be
seen, they were of no aid to the work of Tyndale.
As an example of the errors of translators a few specimens may be
subjoined, without any attempt at preserving the order of time.
Although of a later date, they indicate the difficulties that beset the
work and the dangers into which the unwary were liable to fall.
Among singular editions of the Scriptures there is one that was printed
in London in 1551, and which is called the Bug Bible because Ps. xci. 5
is printed, “Thou shalt not be afraid of the bugges by night.”
In 1561 an edition of the Bible was printed at Geneva; it is called
the Breeches Bible because of its translating Gen. ii. 7 thus: “They
sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves breeches.” But this was
also done by an edition printed in 1568, in which also Jer. viii. 22
is rendered, “Is there no treacle in Gilead?” This word treacle was
afterwards altered into rosin, and in 1611 rosin gave place to balm.
In one edition of the Bible which was printed in 1717, the first line
of Luke xx. is misprinted into “The parable of the vinegar” instead of
“The parable of the vineyard.”
It is evident that God left much to the learning and common-sense of
the men who translated the Scriptures, and yet He has so overruled
things, that, upon the whole, no serious mistake has long continued in
the Book of Truth. Yet, as an instance of the need of care, we are told
that Eliot, the apostle of the Indians, when translating the Scriptures
required the Indian word for lattice in Judges v. 28. He crossed his
fingers to represent a lattice and asked one and another what word
that meant. They told him, and he put it into his Bible. But when he
acquired more of the language he found that he had actually said, “The
mother of Sisera looked out of a window and cried through the eel
pots.” Now, as language constantly changes, there thence arises a need
for a continuous revision of the translation. In our English tongue,
for example, all-to once meant altogether or entirely; anon meant
immediately; bravery meant finery and not courage; carriage stood for
baggage or that which could be carried by the hand. As men constantly
change their speech, it is evident that we must vary the translation,
if it is to be the living voice of God to men.
The Scriptures probably reached England with the Roman army, and they
probably penetrated thence into Scotland. Of course, they were in
Latin. The earliest attempt to render this Latin Bible into Saxon was
that of Cædmon, a monk of Whitby, who lived about the seventh century.
His work was indeed more of a paraphrase than anything else. The same
may be said of what are called Alfred’s Dooms, which were a free
translation of the Ten Commandments by that King.
In the British Museum there is the celebrated Durham Book. It is most
beautifully written, and is also ornamented by curious portraits of the
evangelists and others. Among other stories that are related of this
book, it is said that the monks of Lindisfarne were once flying from
the Danes; their ship was upset and the Durham Book fell into the sea.
But through the merits of the patron saint, the tide ebbed out much
farther than usual, and the book was found three miles from the shore,
lying upon the sands, but unhurt by the waves! It was thereupon placed
in the inner lid of St. Cuthbert’s coffin, where it was afterwards
found when, in 1104, the monks settled at Durham and built the
Cathedral. This book is a Latin text, beneath which two hundred years
later an interesting Anglo-Saxon translation was added.
Of translations proper the earliest we know of is that of the Venerable
Bede, who died in 735. He was a monk of Jarrow, on the banks of the
Tyne, and there his shattered high-backed chair is still preserved.
He is said to have been one of the most learned men of his time; to
which fact we may attribute the legend that once while he was preaching
the stones cried out, “Amen, Venerable Bede!”
An eye-witness has left us an account of his closing days. The scribe
was writing the translation from the dictation of the dying man, when,
as he finished the last verse of the twentieth chapter, he exclaimed,
“There remains now only one chapter; but it seems difficult for you to
speak.” “It is easy,” said Bede; “take your pen, dip it in ink, and
write as fast as you can.” And he did so as rapidly as might be, for
life was ebbing fast from the venerable teacher. “Now, master, now,
only one sentence is wanting.” Bede repeated it. “It is finished,” said
the writer, laying aside his goose-quill. “It is finished,” said Bede.
“Lift up my head; let me sit in my cell, in the place where I have been
accustomed to pray; and now glory be to the Father, and the Son, and
the Holy Ghost.” And so he passed away! His work was done; other men
could copy his translation, and the Book that never dies could tell the
sweet story of old to men who were then unborn!
One is reminded of Moffat’s story after that he had rendered the Word
of God into the Sechwana tongue. When the heathen beheld the converts
reading the new book, they inquired “if their friends talked to the
book.” “No,” was the answer; “it talks to us; for it is the Word of
God.” “What, then,” was the astonished question, “does it speak?”
“Yes,” said the Christian, “it speaks to the heart.” It indeed became
a proverb among this African people that the Bible turned their hearts
inside out! This is its privilege and function; it speaks to the heart,
and it turns the heart inside out!
The Reformers were accustomed to point to the Anglo-Saxon versions as
an argument against the Church of Rome, who then permitted what she
afterwards forbade!
Sir Frederick Madden says, though, of several MSS. of Anglo-Saxon
Gospels that are still in existence, “None appear to give the version
in its original purity.”
“It is very remarkable,” says Dr. Stoughton, “that the Psalms have in
all ages drawn towards them the affections of devout minds, and have
been a true cardiphonia to mankind in general, so that in this fact we
have a satisfactory answer to objections brought against them in modern
times.” It is no wonder, therefore, that more attention was paid to
them than to other parts of the Sacred Book, just as a correct instinct
leads men now to bind up the Psalms with the Gospels.
We pass now to John Wycliffe, the morning star of the Reformation. It
is indeed difficult to estimate the magnitude of his wonderful work.
All men could see the evil of Romanism, but he alone saw the true
remedy, and that was the Book of God in the speech of the people!
He was born about 1320, in Yorkshire, and died at Lutterworth in 1384.
The carved oak pulpit in which he preached, the plain oak table upon
which he wrote, the rude oak chair in which he sat, the robe he used
to wear, are all preserved in the little town of Lutterworth, in the
church of St. Mary, on the bank of the river Swift. Of this church he
had been appointed rector by King Edward, as a reward for his services
as ambassador when he met the representative of the Pope at Bruges.
This was in 1374.
“One loves to picture this remarkable man pursuing his Biblical toils,
now in his Lutterworth rectory, then in his college at Oxford, working
in the winter nights by his lamp, and early in the summer’s morn as
the sun beamed through his window. We see him with his long grey beard
sometimes alone bending over the parchment manuscript, carefully
writing down some well-laboured rendering; and sometimes in company
with others who sympathised in his sentiments and loved to aid him in
his hallowed enterprise.”[3]
He is supposed to have commenced his work about 1378, and to have
finished it about 1380, though the latter date is by some assigned to
the New Testament alone. He began with a translation of the Book of
Revelation; then came the Gospels in English with a commentary, and the
other sacred books followed at unknown periods. This translation was
from the Latin Vulgate by Jerome. It was multiplied and widely read by
the people; preachers went up and down the country explaining it to the
crowds who attended them; it seemed, indeed, as if the Reformation were
to come in the fourteenth century instead of two hundred years later.
But, just as in spring we often see a frost nip off the plentiful
blossoms, so persecution put back the fair promise of fruit for a long
time.
An attempt was made to destroy these translations of the Scripture, and
yet, in spite of the many which were then destroyed, nearly 170 MSS. of
this period remain to us.
After escaping the malice of his enemies, Wycliffe died at home.
“Admirable,” says Fuller, “that a hare so often hunted with so many
packs of dogs should die at last quietly sitting upon his form.” The
Council of Constance, in the next century, after burning Wycliffe’s
disciple Huss, ordered that Wycliffe’s bones should be disinterred
and burned, and with contemptible spite they further decreed that the
ashes were to be thrown into the river Swift. “Thus,” says Fuller,
“this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn
into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of
Wycliffe are the emblems of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all
the world over.” John Purvey or Purnay, who had lived with Wycliffe,
revised his master’s work. It was Purvey who first termed the Sacred
Book by its now familiar name of Bible.
This version had even a wider circulation than the first, and from its
influence arose the Lollard movement. This was both a religious and a
political revolution; it was an attempt to obtain reform both in the
Church and in the State. It was a movement of all ranks, even among
monks and nuns--alas! without success.
In 1408 a Convocation at Oxford enacted a law which forbade a
translation of Scriptures into English, and warned all persons against
reading such books under penalty of excommunication.
At this time a New Testament was worth £2, 16s. 8d., or about £45, 6s.
8d. of our money! At this period we are told that a decent, respectable
man could live well upon £5 per year. Writing was tedious, slow, liable
to error, and expensive, so that the number of copies were limited; but
about 1440 A.D., or sixty years after Wycliffe, the printing-press was
invented. One of the first books that were printed was a Latin Bible;
one of this edition was sold some years ago for £3400; another realised
£2000.
In 1477 William Caxton brought this new art to England, and in
Westminster Abbey he printed books under the protection of King Edward
IV.
We have thus sketched briefly the history of the previous versions, and
have come in the order of time to Tyndale’s version of the Testament
which Tyndale translated under so many difficulties. F. W. Faber (a
Romanist) says:--“Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous
English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the strongholds of heresy
in this country? It lives on the ear like music that can never be
forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly
knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things
rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the
anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive
idolatry, in extenuation of whose gross fanaticism its intrinsic beauty
pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory
of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are
stereotyped in its phrases. The power of all the griefs and trials of
a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best
moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle,
and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his
English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed and
controversy never soiled. It has been to him all along as the silent,
but oh how intelligible! voice of his guardian angel; and in the length
and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of
religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon
Bible.”
To which may be added the testimony of the present Bishop of Durham,
who speaks of Tyndale’s work thus: “In rendering the sacred text,
he remained throughout faithful to the instincts of a scholar. From
first to last his style and his interpretation are his own; and in the
originality of Tyndale is included in a large measure the originality
of our English Version. For not only did Tyndale contribute to it
directly the substantial basis of half the Old Testament (in all
probability) and of the whole of the New, but he established a standard
of Biblical translation which others followed. It is even of less
moment that by far the greater part of his translation remains intact
in our present Bibles, than that his spirit animates the whole. He
toiled faithfully himself, and where he failed he left to those who
should come after the secret of success.... His influence decided that
our Bible should be popular, and not literary, speaking in a simple
dialect, and that so, by its simplicity, it should be endowed with
permanence.”
Mr. Froude’s testimony may perhaps be added here, not because it is
requisite, but as the historian’s tribute to a noble man: “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 all familiar. The peculiar genius--if such a word may
be permitted--which breathes through it, the mingled tenderness and
majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur, unequalled,
unapproached in the attempted improvements of modern scholars, all are
here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man--William Tyndale.”
As an example of this identity we take a passage from Tyndale’s
version; the words in italics remain as Tyndale placed them in both the
Authorised and Revised Versions. The passage that we select is Matt.
xviii. 19-27:--
“_Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree_ in _earth_ in
_any_ manner _thing_ whatsoever _they shall_ desire, _it shall be_
given _them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them._
“_Then came Peter to him, and said_, Master, _how oft shall my brother_
trespass _against me and I_ shall _forgive him_? shall I forgive him
_seven times_? _Jesus_ said _unto him, I say not unto thee seven times,
but seventy times seven_ times. _Therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven
likened unto a certain King which would_ take account of _his servants.
And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed
him ten thousand talents: but_ when _he had_ nought _to pay_, the _lord
commanded him to be sold, and his wife and his children and all that he
had, and payment to be made. The servant fell down and_ besought _him
saying_, Sir, give _me_ respite, _and I will pay_ it every whit. Then
had _the Lord_ pity on the _servant_ and loosed _him and forgave him
the debt_.”
It has been estimated that there are not more than 350 words in the
whole book that are strange to us now, so that Tyndale may be justly
regarded as one of the builders of our language.
Of the quarto testaments which were completed at Worms, after the
hurried flight from Cologne, only one fragment remains, and that is
deposited in the British Museum. It consists of thirty-one leaves only,
and terminates at the 12th verse of the 22nd chapter of St. Matthew. It
was discovered in the year 1836 by a London bookseller bound up with a
tract by Æcolampadius. This fragment is all that remains of the three
thousand copies in quarto that were commenced at Cologne and completed
at Worms.
Of the three thousand octavo Testaments which, although commenced at
Worms, were issued probably before the quarto, one perfect copy is
preserved in the library of the Baptist College in Bristol. This
book was purchased for the Earl of Oxford about the year 1740, and he
rewarded the agent who discovered the treasure with a donation of ten
pounds, and an annuity of twenty pounds per year. This latter annuity
was paid for fourteen years, so that the total cost of the book to the
Earl was £290. At the death of the Earl of Oxford, his library was
purchased by Osborne, the bookseller, for less money than the bindings
had cost their collector. Osborne, in turn, sold the book for fifteen
shillings; then it came into the hands of Dr. Gifford, a Baptist
minister, who bequeathed it to the college in his native city. In the
same college, amongst many other Biblical treasures and curiosities,
is a copy of what is called the Droll-Error Tyndale. It is a handsome
volume, well printed upon good paper, but full of printers’ blunders.
Amongst them is that which has given a name to the edition; thus, 2
Cor. x., instead of “Let him that is such think on this wise,” the
printer has put “Let hym that is foche (long _s_) think on his wyfe.”
This book is supposed to be later in date than either the octavo or
quarto editions, but it may be perhaps most conveniently referred to
here.
The spirit in which the work of translation was undertaken by Tyndale
appears in his prologue:--
“I have translated, brethren and sisters most dear and tenderly beloved
in Christ, the New Testament for your spiritual edifying, consolation,
and solace, exhorting instantly, and beseeching those that are better
seen in the tongues than I, and that have higher gifts of grace to
interpret the sense of Scripture and the meaning of the Spirit than I,
to consider and ponder my labour, and that with the spirit of meekness,
if they perceive in any places that I have not attained the very sense
of the tongue or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the right
English word, that they put to their hands to amend it, remembering
that so is their duty to do. For we have not received the gifts of God
for ourselves only or for to hide them, but for to bestow them unto the
honouring of God and Christ, and edifying of the congregation which is
the body of Christ.”
Of Tyndale’s qualifications for his work there can be no doubt
whatever. Buschius, a distinguished German scholar, speaks of him as
“so skilled in seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish,
English, French, that whichever he spoke you would suppose it his
native tongue.”
The Greek text that he followed in his translation was, of course,
that which Erasmus had given to the world, and although Tyndale was
evidently more familiar with the second, he now and then uses the
third edition. At the same time, it has been shown by Demaus that, “as
he proceeded in his undertaking, Tyndale had before him the Vulgate,
the Latin version of Erasmus, and the German of Luther, and that, in
rendering from the original Greek, he carefully consulted all these
aids; but he did so not with the helpless imbecility of a mere tyro,
but with the conscious independence of an accomplished scholar.”
At the same time, it is but justice to bear in mind that some of the
alleged faults of our version are due to Tyndale. For example, the
manner in which he translates the same Greek word differently in the
same connection, and sometimes in the same verse, adds indeed to the
beauty, but it diminishes the force of the book.
But the most heinous offence in the eyes of the Papists, after his
translating the Scripture at all, was the putting of notes in the
margin.
Of these we select a few examples:--
“Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;” Tyndale says,
“Here _all_ bind and loose.” Beside the words, “If thine eye be single,
all thy body is full of light,” he writes, “The eye is single when a
man in all his deeds looketh but on the will of God, and looketh not
for land, honour, or any other reward in this world; neither ascribeth
heaven nor a higher room in the heaven unto his deeds: but accepteth
heaven as a thing purchased by the blood of Christ and worketh freely
for love’s sake only.”
“All good things cometh of the bountifulness, liberality, mercy,
promises, and truth of God by the deserving of Christ’s blood only.”
“He that hath,” he thus expounds. “Where the Word of God is understood,
there it multiplieth and maketh the people better; where it is not
understood, there it decreaseth and maketh the people worse.”
These notes, as we shall see, were subsequently omitted, but it is easy
to see that they were calculated to give serious offence to the Romish
authorities.