Book Description
The leading personalities of his century would draw upon all their resources to stop him, from the brilliant Sir Thomas Moore to King Henry VIII; from Charles V, ruler of half of Europe, to the Pope. Both church and state hunted him relentlessly-at a time when the church held power over both soul and body and could condemn the heretic to execution by fire. His crime? Translating the words of the Bible into the "vulgar" English tongue.
He was William Tyndale, and the story of his life, told in Fire in the Bones, reads like a novel, as exciting in its facts as any fiction could be. He knew the smugglers' secret marks and their intense, fraternal loyalty. He tasted the salt of shipwreck and knew the despair of lost manuscripts buried under the waves of the North Sea. Intrigue, safe houses, bribes, spies, covert conversations, last-minute flight, aliases, imprisonment, loneliness, all wove their spell into the riddles of his hidden world. He died at last as a martyr, but not before he had bequeathed to the world some of the most beloved and sacred phrases and terms in Holy Writ, including Atonement, still small voice, and Let there be Light. Readers everywhere will be captivated by his story.
Customer Reviews:
Loved it! Loved it! Loved it!.......2007-08-02
Informative Yet Concise. Not too overloaded with the minutia so it keeps you reading. I was recommended this book by someone and, although it was hard to read at times when you learn about the suffering of many of the reformers, it helps me appreciate the bible so much more and the people who sacrificed themselves to make sure we have it. I don't care that it is written by an LDS author. He does a good job extracting the details from Foxe and other historical authors. It's reading book's like this that really help you put your life into perspective. Wow.
I'm so glad I read it!.......2007-07-06
"Fire in the Bones" was so gripping, I had trouble putting it down, and could think of nothing else as I read it. It is the true story of William Tyndale, father of the English Bible.
In 1523 Tyndale told a critic high in the Catholic church, "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 dost." Three centuries later, a fourteen-year-old plowboy in New York knelt in prayer after reflecting on the testimony of James -a testimony translated from Greek to English by William Tyndale.
During the Protestant Reformation, while Martin Luther was pushing for reform in Germany, Tyndale was translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into English --for which he was ultimately burned at the stake. To translate and print the Bible in English, Tyndale left his home in England, and went into self-imposed exile in Antwerp, Belgium where there was more religious freedom and he was less likely to be burned as a heretic. His first translation of the New Testament was smuggled into England in 1526. Those who were brave enough to buy it and read it were often burned alive, along with the book.
The Catholic church wanted to maintain control of the populace and continue to receive the money it extracted from the worshippers as penance for their sins. As people gained access to the scriptures in a language they could understand, they became aware that the New Testament taught that faith in Jesus Christ saved men, rather than sums paid to the priests ("sale of indulgences" etc). This undermined Catholic authority, and ultimately led to the Protestant Reformation and greater light and knowledge spreading throughout England.
"Fire in the Bones" chronicles how Tyndale accomplished the amazing feat of making the Bible available to the common Englishman in spite of powerful forces against him, including King Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More, and many others who prided themselves on burning "heretics" like him. His story is told by an LDS author who likens Tyndale to Joseph Smith. God had a work for him to do, and he was determined to do it regardless of the personal cost. His understanding of the gospel was sweet and pure, much like Joseph's. They are indeed kindred spirits.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough! I am dismayed that I was unaware of this hero of the faith until now.
Interesting...but repetitive.......2007-06-13
I thought the subject matter was very interesting. I got very tired of him using certain catchphrases over and over again. It was almost insulting, because it was like he thought the reader was not smart enough to remember about the plow boy knowing the scriptures...blah, blah, blah. I thinnk I figured out that Wilcox really was impacted by that quote from Tyndale. I also did not like his comparison to Joseph Smith at all. Joseph did not contrive the Book of Mormon in anyway with his own ideas of phraseology. He just translated the book. According to Bushman's biography, he used seer stones, the sentence would appear, he would read it out loud and the scribe would write it down. It only took a few months to do the majority of the work. He was not thinking of how to phrase things. That really really bothered me in this book. I mean, there wasn't even any punctuation in the manuscript he submitted to the printer. I think Wilcox got carried away and made statements that cannot be substantiated.
Besides that, I really liked the book.
Bumpy read for a history student.......2007-06-07
I was disappointed almost from the beginning, that I was not reading a history, rather, an attempt to fit a square peg (Mormonism) into a round hole (Tyndale's life, devotion, and works).
The First Vision
The first jolt came in an early chapter, where Dr. Wilcox stated Joseph Smith was in Michigan, and he "testified boldly of the visit from the Father and the Son ..." This was 1834.
Students of the First Vision know Smith was giving non-orthodox accounts of the First Vision, even in 1835. Smith wrote/dictated in 1835, of angels; a first angel then a second angel, then many angels. If in 1834, Smith "boldly testified" of the Father and the Son visiting him, why did he timidly back away from mentioning them in 1835? If Wilcox had an 1834 account of the First Vision with such details, he should have cited it. It would be a major find as all students of LDS history would be anxious to read and compare. But, alas, the only reference (Footnote 1) leads nowhere.
At this juncture, I suspected I was reading, not a history, but an historical novel in the third-person narrative, with flash-forwards to Smith's sanitized history.
The Rest of the Book
As I read on, I recalled the terror a devout Mormon can feel when important events in christian history, have nothing to do with Mormonism, 18th-Century onward, and that this book was attempting to soak a Mormon flavor into Tyndale's life and works.
The book has merit for Mormons, however, because I suspect we are minimally educated, on average, regarding those bloody decades of Henry VIII, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth I and the common man's struggles for religious liberty.
At least they will learn something new, albeit a forced interpretation of Sidney Rigdon's religious views and Joseph Smith's "Elmer Gantry" life.
good idea, poor execution.......2006-11-04
wilcox is not a historian; he's a hobbyist. this isn't necessarily bad, but in this case, he has produced a book that sounds more like an institute class or an extended fireside than a biography. the work is poorly researched. wilcox apparently didn't look up any primary sources and when he does quote them, he quotes them through another source. the author misunderstands much about the period which makes for both major and minor errors in interpretation. the main reformation participants are painted black and white rather than showing any nuance. sir thomas more is evil; tyndale is a saint. the constant comparisons to joseph smith are distracting and often misleading. tyndale was a great man, but he wasn't a prophet or a mormon.
i applaud the effort to present william tyndale to an lds audience, but i think it could have been much more accurately and effectively done. if you want to learn more about tyndale and his translation of the bible, try david daniell's 1994 biography.
Book Description
The English Bible---the mot familiar book in our language---is the product of a man who was exiled, vilified, betrayed, then strangled, then burnt.
William Tyndale left England in 1524 to translate the word of God into English. This was heresy, punishable by death. Sir Thomas More, hailed as a saint and a man for all seasons, considered it his divine duty to pursue Tyndale. He did so with an obsessive ferocity that, in all probability, led to Tyndale's capture and death.
The words that Tyndale wrote during his desperate exile have a beauty and familiarity that still resonate across the English-speaking world: "Death, where is thy sting?...eat, drink, and be merry...our Father which art in heaven."
His New Testament, which he translated, edited, financed, printed, and smuggled into England in 1526, passed with few changes into subsequent versions of the Bible. So did those books of the Old Testament that he lived to finish.
Brian Moynahan's lucid and meticulously researched biography illuminates Tyndale's life, from his childhood in England, to his death outside Brussels. It chronicles the birth pangs of the Reformation, the wrath of Henry VIII, the sympathy of Anne Boleyn, and the consuming malice of Thomas More. Above all, it reveals the English Bible as a labor of love, for which a man in an age more spiritual than our own willingly gave his life.
Customer Reviews:
The Fugitive.......2007-09-15
Moynahan's book is informative, well-written and well-produced (except for sources rather than footnotes). Despite some reviewers strained concerns, the book represents no threat to people of faith. In fact it celebrates them. It depicts the struggles and underlying genius of a gifted translator and polemicist, William Tyndale and is as exciting as a thriller. Cleverly and informatively interweaving the emergence of the new printing industry - Moynahan presents a Europe that is surprisingly cosmopolitan. Tyndale wanders from Antwerp to Cologne to Maintz to Hamburg, pursued by Wolsey's spies, ambassadors and priests. Tyndale managed because he was a polyglot - English, German, French, Dutch, Greek, Latin and Hebrew - and he had many supporters especially among the men and women of business and industry.
In celebrating Tyndale's accomplishments, Moynahan does a number on the much and overly celebrated Thomas More. I am a practicing Catholic and Englishman too boot, brought up on the presumed saintliness of Thomas More. Stimulated by C. J. Sansom's 16th Century murder mystery - Dissolution, I have read in quick order biographies of Wolsey, Cromwell and now Tyndale. I no longer think of More as "blessed". True, More stood by his principles and was erudite - but he appears fanatical, twisted and sadistic and demonstrated little belief in the sanctity of human life. After reading Moynahan's description of More's pursuit of Tyndale and other evangelicals, I defy anyone to see More's Utopia as a pleasant place.
Moynahan effectively brings to life the leading characters of this troubled, violent, vicious and generally un-Christian period. The work and genius of Master William Tyndale - who appears to have been more saintly than Thomas More - have been largely submerged in the blood and fire of the times: Blood and fire in large measure shed and stoked in the name of us Catholics. While much of the Reformation was driven by avarice, greed and geo-politics, the reality is that the Church had become wedded to form over substance, and the Rome of the Medicii Popes was closer to today's Hollywood than to Heaven. It is stunning to see the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the Bible and the laity. Great things were at stake just as they are today, but the manner in which those great things were championed and protected was intolerant, immoral and deeply un-Christian.
A MODERN HERETIC'S PROPAGANDA HIT PIECE.......2007-06-27
IT IS SO EASY TO ATTACK THE ANGLICANS, LUTHERANS , AND EPISCOPALIANS FOR THEIR HERESY THAT IT IS SELF-EVIDENT, BUT MR.MOYNAHAN'S OBSSESSIVE HATRED OF MORE IS CAUSE FOR CONCERN OVER HIS REAL IQ REGARDING THE WHOLE ISSUES OF THE SO-CALLED "REFORMATION"[ BUT MORE ACCURATELY TO BE TERMED THE PROTESTANT'S WAR ON THE ONE AND TRUE CHURCH ]PERHAPS MR.MOYNAHAN IS IGNORANT OVER THE SEVERE FRACTURING OF THE EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH IN THE USA -PERHAPS EVIDENCE THAT IT WAS HERESY AND THIS OF COURSE WILL LEAD BACK TO CANTERBURY EVENTUALLY. ACCUSATIONS ARE MADE AGAINST THE CATHOLIC THROUGH BLIND AND STUPID STORIES[ AS IF PEOPLE LEARN THEIR THEOLOGY FROM HELLISH HOLLYWOOD ] MORE IS STILL WELL KNOWN 572 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH AND IN FACT, IS OFTEN REFERRED TO AS "A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS." TYNDALE IS A CURIOUS ANSWER TO A TRIVIA QUESTION. DR. JOHNSON EVEN MENTIONED MORE IN GLOWING PRAISE. THIS BOOK IS A PIECE OF PROPAGANDA GARBAGE - BURN IT LIKE MORE BURNED THE HERETICS TRYING TO KILL THE CHURCH. WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE NO GUIDANCE AND DETERMINE THEIR OWN MEANINGS FROM THEIR VERNACULAR?AS TYNDALE WANTED [ AS MOYNAHAN DEFENDS ] THIS IS THE KORAN....
An Excellent Biography.......2006-10-24
God's Bestseller is the second biography of Tyndale I have read this year and one of only a few produced in recent decades. Written by Brian Moynahan, the subtitle provides a glimpse of the author's emphases: "William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible--A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal." Less-scholarly than David Daniell's William Tyndale: A Biography, God's Bestseller is also more readable, as evidenced by the Mail on Sunday's endorsement which suggests it is "almost worthy of LeCarre."
Though William Tyndale died almost 500 years ago, we continue to read and enjoy his Bible. The first man to translate Scripture into English, much of Tyndale's language and vocabulary continue to used commonly within the church and without. He coined words and phrases such as My brother's keeper, passover and scapegoat. Other commonly used phrases include let there be light, the powers that be, my brother's keeper, the salt of the earth and a law unto themselves. His mastery of English, though the language was still in its infancy, was unparalleled in his age. "In the begynnynge was the worde, and the worde was with God: the the word was God. The same was in the begynnynge with God. All thinges were made by it and with out it was made nothinge that was made. In it was lyfe and the lyfe was the lyght of men. And the light shyneth in the darknes but the darknes comprehended it not." Those verses passed into the King James and subsequent translations almost untouched.
Tyndale's mastery of the language is evident in passages of Scripture he was able to translate only in part before his untimely death. Read aloud these passages from Song of Solomon as they were written by Tyndale and then by the writers of the King James. "Up and haste my love, my dove, my bewtifull and come away..." The King James renders this same passage with far less skill, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Tyndale writes, "For now is wynter gone and the rayne departed and past." The King James bumbles, "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over, and gone." The cadence, the use of language, is unmatched. We can only imagine how Tyndale would have rendered the Psalms, Job and other poetic books had he been granted long life.
But as we know, Tyndale was not able to complete his translation of the Old Testament. He did not write his own epitaph as was the custom at the time. But as Moynahan points out, a passage he left from 1 Corinthians seems to serve well: "'And though I gave my body even that I burned, and yet had no love, it profiteth me nothing.' That used love and not charity was technical evidence of his heresy, of course, and the prime reason why More wanted him brunt. But Tyndale did not die for charity; he died for love, for the love of God's words and of their readers, and the most familiar work in the English language is thereby given the added grace of being a labour of love." We see this love evident in his reply to Henry VIII when offered safe passage to his native England. Were Henry to grant even a bare text of Scripture to the common people, Tyndale promised, "I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, nor abide two days in these parts after the same: but immediately to repair unto his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so this be obtained. And till that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer." The king would never submit to so audacious a demand and soon decreed that Tyndale be hunted down and killed. Though agents of Henry were never able to find Tyndale, he did eventually fall into the hands of the church authorities and was put to death. His last words, soon to be a rallying cry for English Protestants, were near-prophetic. "Oh Lord, open the King of England's eyes," he cried. Only a few short years later, Henry authorized an English translation of the Bible and, ironically, one based largely on the work of Tyndale.
Tyndale's name may not be widely known, but his influence is still felt. "Tyndale's traces are everywhere, of course. 'That old tongue, with its clang and its flavour,' as the critic Edmund Wilson wrote of the Bible, 'that we have been living with all our lives,' is Tyndale's tongue. Its cadence, its rolling and happy phrases, its consolations and the elegance of its solace, are his."
Despite his influence and his importance to the development of the English language, Tyndale is relatively unknown to both Christians and non-Christians. It is to our detriment that we forget about this great man of faith who gave his life for his conviction that the Word of God must go forth and must be made available in the common tongue. Moynahan's biography is an excellent introduction to Tyndale's life and influence. It is written in a way that will appeal to any reader, it still conveys a great deal of information and is clearly the result of meticulous research. It is one of the best biographies I have read this year and I commend it to you.
Moynahan Sells Me on Tyndale.......2006-04-26
Few history books have influenced my thinking as has Brian Moynahan's "God's Bestseller: William Tyndale" (2002). I found this 422-page (hardback) difficult to put down. I was often cheering for and, in the end, crying over the life of William Tyndale.
Moynahan portrays Tyndale as a man of rare talent and extraordinary vision. Almost from the beginning of his clerical career he wanted to offer the Bible to the English-speaking world. One feels Tyndale's early clandestine efforts for bringing Scripture into English. One is fearful as the Gloucestershire clerk quickly leaves for the continent evading royal arrest to begin his life-long passion.
Moynahan's narrative correctly shows Thomas More' villainous pursuit of Tyndale. As Henry VIII's Chancellor More had all the power, money and legal statute needed to track Tyndale down and ultimately execute him. Tyndale's short life was lived as a fugitive from royal pursuit. He was constantly on the move (Tyndale had few friends and no family by the end). Moynahan's is an exciitng and illuminating heart-in-the-throat narrative. He reveals all the nasty 16th century politics of Henry's torturous and corrupt reign.
Even as Moynahan show's William Tyndale's life as the stuff for an exciting Hollywood drama, he also takes time to explain Tyndale's evasive personal life. We learn that Tyndale may have met Martin Luther and learned German at the Protestant master's feet. We see Tyndale's various correspondences with many of the leaders of his age (the letters are still extant). We learn that Tyndale's translations were often completed in the middle of the night just hours before he was forced to flee the king's men.
We discover Thomas More's personal obsession with Tyndale (a compulsion that ultimately brought Tyndale to the fiery stake). In the end William Tyndale was captured through the duplicity of a "friend" and burned alive in Brussels (in 1526) because he was the first to translate (and publish) Scripture into English. (Ironically, Thomas More- staunch Roman Catholic- met his downfall at the hands of Thomas Cromwell- Protestant- weeks before Tyndale's capture. Cromwell's meteoric rise to power, as Henry's new Chancellor, did not allow time for Cromwell to block Emperor Charles V's- a royal Roman Catholic- execution of Tyndale.)
Moynahan offers a considerable portion of Tyndale's original translation (only three original copies survive). He reports that 84% of the King James Version New Testament and 78% of the KJV Old Testament are lifted from Tyndale's translation. (The 1611 KJV composers used Tyndale as their guide for English Scripture.)
This is a fast paced story of intrigue, arrest evasion, governmental corruption, betrayal, and divine inspiration. Through all the political turmoil in the first third of the 16th century, William Tyndale prepared a brilliant translation of God's Word for his fellow Englishmen. His was the original pioneering effort that made the Bible accessible to all English speakers.
This book in very recommendable to all: scholars, students, historians, theologians, Bible studiers, and those looking to read an exciting (real life) story. Moynahan will sell you, too, on William Tyndale.
Faith - Works - Betrayal - Death.......2005-03-20
The author, Brian Moynahan, notes that William Tyndale's translation of the Bible "....fathered what is probably the best known and certainly the most quoted work in the English language." A 1998 analysis of the King James Bible, found Tyndale's words account for 84 percent of the New Testament and for 75.8 percent of the Old Testament. The text observes that Tyndale believed English "corresponded with scripture better than ....Latin ...." The text narrates how Tyndale through faith and sheer determination translated the Bible into the English language.
The author provides a most interesting narrative of the sixteenth century printing and publishing industry in Europe and England. The printing/publishing industry in England was small and closely controlled by the Church and government. However, Lutheran books and tracts were coming into London from Germany and the Low Countries in large number and on a rising scale. This was a concern to the government and the Catholic Church in England. Thomas More began a vigorous campaign to squelch religious reform persecuting heretics and condemning them to death by burning at the stake. For his part, Tyndale began an enthusiastic and dangerous public duel in writing with More.
Though a scholar with a Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees from Oxford Tyndale related to average men who "shared ideas with him, ....made a natural constituency for reform, and ...were brave." He adopted the Reformation's efforts to provide common readers with the Scriptures in English and resented the Church's ban on translation of the Bible into English. He planned to translate the Bible, but was unable to find a patron. In addition, he adopted the new Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone and facing prosecution as a heretic, he fled England and sailed to Hamburg in April 1524. He stayed on the continent until his execution eleven years later. During his self-imposed exile in Germany and Amsterdam, he translated and printed his English translations of the New Testament and a major portion of the Old Testament. In 1526 he published a revision to his New Testament translation and another revision in 1534 in which he made an effort to correct errors while "His main aim was to strengthen his writing, to clarify meaning and bring it closer to the Greek." The author notes that Tyndale's work was complicated by the fact that "No standard spellings existed in English, and it was a common for a word to be spelt differently in a single passage:...." A steady flow of Testaments into England was maintained by smugglers so that by 1534 the Tyndale Testament was a great money-maker.
The book gives an excellent account of Tyndale's exile years. He continued his dangerous public duel in writing with Thomas More. More's malice that drove him against Tyndale "was a phenomenon, insatiable, galloping, morbific." In a manner that would do justice to a twentieth century spy novel, against Tyndale, More used "double agents, political intuition and the intricate manipulation of rulers and senior officials, the sowing of brides, flattery, and inflexible and murderous intent..." Unfortunately, as the author notes in day-to-day politics, Tyndale was inept. Throughout Tyndale's exile, Henry VIII's "pursuit of the annulment and remarriage to Ann Boleyn-weaves in and out of Tyndale's life...." To her credit, Ann Boleyn protected and promoted evangelicals, and favored Tyndale's scriptures and other writings." She was known as a protector of Tyndale's readers.
The text notes that Tyndale's sympathizers could be burnt at the stake, but Tyndale remained safe in Europe. In 1531, the king ordered that Tyndale be seized and brought to England using private or illegal means. Amazingly in November 1539 , Tyndale was contacted by a representative of the King's Secretary and offered a safe conduct back to England which he rejected. By 1534 conditions were changing in England and Tyndale might have been safer in London than in Antwerp, but politically naive Tyndale did not detect the change and stayed in Europe. On 21 May 1535, a paid bounty-hunter, Harry Phillips, coaxed him out of his safe residence and turned him over to local Low Countries authorities. Amazingly, the authorities in England no longer had any desire to harm Tyndale and two senior officials of Church and State tried hard to secure Tyndale release in Antwerp. At a castle north of Brussels, not in England, he was tried and convicted as a heretic. Tyndale....refused to try to buy his life with his conscience and remained steadfast in his beliefs." He was burnt at the stake on 6 October 1536. In death Tyndale was a success as injunctions were issued in 1536 and 1538 that every church should be provided with a Bible. His life's work triumphed as "His ploughboy soon had his English Bible."
Thomas More refused to recognize Henry as the supreme head of the Church, was arrested and executed on 6 July 1535. The author devotes Chapter 22 to a discussion of who was the paymaster who paid Phillips for locating and betraying Tyndale. Several possible paymasters are noted but there is no strong documentation that any were in fact the payee to Philips. The author notes that there is no solid evidence, but conjectures that Thomas More was the most likely paymaster.
As Moynahan writes on page 56 "The richness of his vocabulary, his verbs in place of nouns and adjectives, his free sentence constructions, his ear for vivid saying-`as bare as Job and as bald as a coot'-and his sense of rhythm profoundly affected the language of the English-speaking peoples -the global language, now-." While there are no memorials or statues to Tyndale, the author notes that the King James Bible "....is, as we have seen, overwhelmingly Tyndale's Bible. Almost any passage in the New and most of the Old Testament, can serve as his memorial.
Amazon.com
Several popular histories of the King James Bible are available to interested readers, including works that concentrate on the book's political influence Wide as the Waters) and its theological import (In the Beginning). Perhaps the most readable survey of the language of the King James Version, however, comes in the form of a biography of its primary translator. William Tyndale: A Biography by David Daniell (a University of London scholar and chairman of the William Tyndale Society) reveals all that is known of Tyndale's life, but its primary interest is in Tyndale's rhetorical style. Daniell asserts, convincingly, that Tyndale "made a language for England," in the same way that Martin Luther is acknowledged having united Germany's dialects in his German translation of the New Testament. The biography recites many widely known facts (Tyndale wrote nine-tenths of the King James Version's New Testament (the gospel Christmas stories--"there were shepherds abiding in the fields"--are Tyndale's), and half of its Old Testament ("Let there be light" is another of Tyndale's phrases). More importantly, Daniell's biography describes the development of Tyndale's skills as a linguist (he commanded eight languages, including Hebrew, at a time when Hebrew was virtually unknown in England) and parses Tyndale's adaptation of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin syntax into English. In the first sentence of his introduction to this book, Daniell states that "William Tyndale gave us our English Bible." The verb in that sentence is the key to this biography: it is a work of gratitude. --Michael Joseph Gross
Book Description
This major biography traces the dramatic life of William Tyndale, the first person to translate the Bible into English from the original Greek and Hebrew, and discusses the profound religious, literary, intellectual, and social implications of his immense achievement. Tyndale's masterful translation, which gave the laity access to God, formed the basis of all English bibles, including the "King James Bible," and made significant and lasting contributions to the English language.
Customer Reviews:
The True "Man For All Seasons".......2007-07-14
Dr. Daniell's biography of William Tyndale is sympathetic and masterful. Tyndale's influence as a translator is well-documented, as is his humble devotion to providing the Word of God in a language that laymen could understand. One marvels at how Thomas More has gained greater historical sympathy given his virulent, active persecution of early reformers. Daniell's bio is generously footnoted and includes a fine bibliography for further reading. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the early English Reformation.
An Excellent Biography.......2006-06-17
William Tyndale is a hero of mine. Just a few weeks ago I reviewed a DVD that featured an interview with David Daniell, a prominent Tyndale expert. Having watched this DVD presentation, and being intruiged by Daniell's knowledge of his subject, I knew I would have to read his biography of William Tyndale.
Considering the importance of his contribution, both to Christianity and to the English language, there are surprisingly few biographies written about William Tyndale. In the introduction to this biography, Daniell claims that "there has not been a full-scale study of him for nearly sixty years, since J.F. Mozley's biography of 1937." This leads him to conclude that "there is need for something more modern, especially as the quincentenary of Tyndale's birth in 1494 is widely celebrated." Of course this date passed some twelve years ago, for this volume was printed in 1994. Daniell fills this need with William Tyndale: A Biography.
The outline of Tyndale's life is well-known. He was, as you may know, a brilliant man who was the first to make and print a translation of the Scriptures from the Greek into English. His translation formed much of the basis for what was to become the King James version. In that way, his work continues to be in use today and is still precious to many believers. Of lesser significance, many of the words and phrases he coined, such as my brother's keeper, passover and scapegoat are still in use, even five centuries later. He dedicated his life to the great work of translation which eventually totalled all of the New Testament and the first two sections of the Old. He gave his life for the privilege of translating Scripture and was eventually martyred for the "sin" of giving the Scriptures to the common man in a common language. It is a great tragedy that his life was taken before he was able to complete the remaining books of the Old Testament and, in particular Proverbs, Psalms and other books of poetry.
Surprisingly, for a man of his stature, relatively little is known about Tyndale, for he spent many years of his life toiling in secrecy and obscurity. This book represents a compilation and analysis of most of the important facts available to historians. Many gaps remain, but it seems unlikely that we will ever know significantly more than we do today.
Perhaps the best way of describing this biography is "thorough." This is not a book for the feint-of-heart. While it is only slightly over 400 pages, it is, nonetheless, very thorough and sometimes tough-going. Thankfully, Daniell is a capable writer and he does a very satisfying job of making relevant even what may seem, at first glance, to be mundane. Beyond merely relaying the facts of his subject's life, the author expends great effort in understanding the sources Tyndale used for his translation and the results of his dependence upon particular texts. He examines particular words and phrases Tyndale chose to use, showing him to be a master communicator with a gift for expressing himself with great clarity. He describes even the religious and social implications that arose because of Tyndale's work. Truly Tyndale's influence extended far beyond a simple translation of the Bible.
I was particularly glad to see that Daniell endeavoured to present Tyndale as something more than merely the opponent of Sir Thomas More. Tragically, More has gone down in history as a noble and just man, but the reality is that he was anything but. He proved his lack of character time and again through his bitter hatred of William Tyndale. There is much more to the life of Tyndale than his ongoing confrontations with More and Daniell is careful to document this.
William Tyndale: A Biography was as thorough and interesting a biography as I could hope to read. It was not always easy to read, but it was well worth the effort. I would not hesitate to recommend it.
An in-depth treatment of Tyndale by an expert........2004-09-17
David Daniell gives a most valuable treatment of William Tyndale (1494-1536), "the first person to translate the Bible into English from its original Greek and Hebrew and the first to print the Bible in English."
Daniell provides a unique perspective on Tyndale, combining expertise in the history of the English Bible with an intimate familiarity with the development and usage of early English (Daniell's Ph.D. is in Shakespeare, whom he has written and taught on for many years). Having authored modern-spelling versions of Tyndale's New Testament and Tyndale's Old Testament, his familiarity with the details of Tyndale's translation techniques provide valuable insight into the work of this underappreciated contributor to the English Reformation and modern English Bible.
Daniell discusses Tyndales achievement as biblical translator and expositor, analyses his writing, examines his stylistic influence on writers from Shakespeare to those of the twentieth century, and explores the reasons why he has not been more highly regarded.
Like other biographies of Tyndale, Daniell provides detailed information--where it is available--concerning Tyndale's origin, his schooling, and the dates and events which comprise the history of his life. Unlike most other treatments of Tyndale, Daniell is positioned to delve into the details of Tyndale's translational work itself.
Perhaps the most valuable contribution of this biography of Tyndale is the evidence it provides regarding Tyndale's capabilities as an exegete and translator--his craftsmanlike usage of both Hebrew and Greek at a time where in-depth knowledge of the original languages was hard to come by, especially in England.
Daniell notes how Tyndale is often relegated as being secondary in importance to other more visible personalities on the stage at the time of the English Reformation:
"Tyndale is today only known in some po0werful intellectual circles as an annoyance to the blessed Saint Thomas [More], clinging like a burr to the great man's coat, as if Tyndale's life were meaningless without More. Tyndale is indeed, sometimes cited first of all as 'opponent of Sir Thomas More', with the fact that he gave us our English Bible mentioned among the also-rans, as being of little account. That is absurd."
Daniell's treatment of Tyndale does away with this inverted priority and establishes Tyndale as a talented craftsman, both theologically and philologically, among those whom God used to bring forth the Reformation. His contribution to the Reformation in England could hardly be overstated.
Throughout Daniell's treatment of Tyndale, one sees a man who is dedicated to producing the Scriptures in the native tongue of his own land while consistently underestimating the negative reaction his work would engender:
"It is possible for the late twentieth-century reader [of the first page of Tyndale's New Testament] to see it as unexceptional, even mild, and even rather over-obvious, and begin to patronise Tyndale. Yet the page, printed in English in 1525, contained high explosive. Inside the reasonableness of tone, stating the need for a New Testament in English as, to borrow a phrase, a truth universally acknowledged; a truth so obvious that it would be superfluous to explain, and only those who were blind or malicious or mad could deny it, as it would be mad to say that the Bible in English would cause evil, darkness and lying--inside that mildness was found an attack so dangerous that it could only be countered by the most vicious burnings, of books and men and women. These first sentences of Tyndale have a calm that suggests that Tyndale himself does not understand yet that his work, and he himself, will be answered with hatred and burning."
Daniell spends considerable time examining the textual work of Tyndale in light of the sources available to him at the time: the Vulgate, the Septuagint, Luther's works, Erasmus' New Testament, and others. He makes a convincing case that Tyndale was not overly dependent upon these other works, but like any good translator, made use of them where and when it made good sense. He pays particular attention to various lines of evidence which show that Tyndale was not slavishly dependent upon Luther:
"The question must now be put: how much of all of that Hebrew-into-English in Genesis is Tyndale's own work? Is it not, as has so often been said, cribbed from Luther? The answer, for example, in that passage from Genesis 42, is absolutely not."
On other occasions:
"Tyndale sometimes follows Luther closely in grammar and vocabulary. That is not surprising given the limited nature of the Hebrew grammars and lexicons available. The brief comparisons here, however, have shown Tyndale independent in passages in Genesis, and a strong case begins to emerge for detaching Tyndale from Luther even more firmly as translator of Hebrew."
As an authority on Shakespeare and the usage of early English, Daniell provides great service in an analysis of Tyndale's translational style. Daniell believes that Tyndale's translation work wed a careful knowledge of the original languages together with a overriding desire to render the result in an English which was understandable.. He gives copious examples throughout the work which bring this point home. Thus, Tyndale's translation method could be to said to stand somewhere between formal equivalence (a close adherence to the words of the original) and dynamic equivalence (taking some liberty with the words in order to better convey the sense of what is being said). With few exceptions, Daniell favors Tyndale over the work of alternative translators.
As Tyndale continued his translation work in the Hebrew of the Old Testament--which was to be interrupted by his untimely martyrdom, his visibility of the Hebrew idiom and thought behind the Greek of the New Testament improved. This contributed to changes in his revision of the New Testament published in 1534.
Daniell is no unattached scholar examining the history of Tyndale's time at-a-distance. He correctly understands the importance of Tyndale in the events of his day and the enduring value of his work both as evidenced in the reality of Protestantism in our day and the heritage of the English Bible. The many hours that Daniell has spent in the presence of Tyndale through his works is evident in his reaction to Tyndale's untimely death:
"We have, at this point to utter a cry of grief. It was a scholar of this towering stature, leading all Europe in his knowledge of Greek, matched now by an equal command of Hebrew, uniquely gifted in tuning the sounds of the English language, who had achieved so much but who still had some of his greatest work to do, who was, soon after this, by a vicious, paltry and mean villain tricked to death. It is as if Shakespeare had been murdered by a real-life jealous Iago half-way through his life, and the great tragedies had never been written. Had Tyndale gone on to the poetic books and prophecies of the Old Testament, we should not only have had them in English far surpassing Coverdale's: we would surely also have had even finer tuning of the New Testament, so much of which is directly entwined with those very poems and prophecies. Tyndale's 1534 New Testament is a triumph; but another New Testament, after another eight years or so, would surely have followed. As Tyndale constantly notes, the work of translation never ends."
Daniell's biography of Tyndale may be unique in the balance which is given to both the historical setting of Tyndale's life and the philological work of the man in translation. Considering the countless hours which Tyndale must have spent and the priority of his translation work in his own mind, this approach to understanding Tyndale provides great balance. The result is an enduring thankfulness for the sacrifices and dedication of this English Reformer who paid the ultimate price so that we might have the Bible in our vernacular: English. We highly recommend this book which will appeal to those with an interest in the events of the Reformation, the history of the English Bible, or an interest in Bible translation in general.
Tyndale's Enormous Contribution to the Modern English Bible.......2003-06-09
David Daniell's authoritative biography gives William Tyndale the recognition he deserves as the pioneer of the modern English Bible, and inadvertently, the writer of most of the King James or Authorized Translation. His contribution to the English language has been largely overlooked, and Daniell labors to correct that oversight. William Tyndale worked almost alone, unaided by his church, virtually exiled from his homeland, to translate the Bible from the original Greek (and later, Hebrew) into the English vernacular of the common working man, and at the risk and eventual cost of his life. Before Tyndale's affordable printed English New Testament, the only copies of the Bible available in England were either in Latin, which very few people understood, or a few copies of Wycliffe's Lollard Bible, an awkward handwritten version based on the Latin Vulgate.
Tyndale bucked the incredible power of the 16th century church, burdened by its bias against a vernacular English translation, and showed outstanding scholarship in producing one the most remarkable Bible translations in the history of the English Bible. He was outspoken in courageously opposing both the official church policy and the hypocrisy of its clergy. He owed a great debt to Luther, yet, as Daniell so well demonstrates, he remained independent from Lutheran bias and dogma, despite the persecution he undeservedly received as a result of the prevailing anti-Lutheran (and anti-Lollard) sentiment.
One area that the book clearly demonstrates is the bitter and virulent opposition to Tyndale from Thomas Moore - it transcended all reason, reducing the renowned scholar Moore ("A Man for all Seasons") into a foul-mouthed firebrand. History has painted Mr. Moore far tamer than his anti-Tyndale writings would indicate.
The book is a treasure, and all students of textual transmission, and the history of the English language, owe a large debt of gratitude to Mr. Daniell. It does have a few weaknesses worth mentioning: the book gives us Tyndale the translator, but alas, Tyndale the man remains an enigma. This is not Daniell's fault, but the result of the dearth of biographical material on the man who so often lived and worked in clandestine anonymity. And one might well accuse Daniell of overstating his case from time to time, but I suppose history's oversight of Tyndale's true accomplishments may well merit the sometimes heavy-handed treatment.
Overall, well worth the read, and one that you will come away from with a newfound appreciation for the faith and Christian humility of this great and largely overlooked scholastic genius.
Outstanding!.......2002-01-17
This book covers the life of a man who was instrumental in bringing the English-speaking peoples of the world a copy of Holy Writ. The book is wonderfully written, although some trudging through the translation issues is necessary. It is worth the dig, though. On the other side of the road we see a man who knew what God wanted him to do and did it! I think anyone who is a believer or historian should read this monumental work. The courage, fortitude, and scholarship that Tyndale displayed should be an example to all who follow Jesus. I would also recommend the author's publications of Tyndale's New Testament and Pentateuch.
Customer Reviews:
Good Book To Learn By.......2000-05-08
I found this book to be an excellent read and one that taught me a lot about Wm. Tyndale. The film of the same name is well-worth the watching and is quite entertaining given that it is set in the 15th century.
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