Bible translation #5

On November 30th last year I promised to continue the work I began in November seeking to get to the bottom of the controversy concerning William Tyndale and John Wycliffe. To my shame, I have not done what I promised. And, honestly, I had forgotten about my promise.

Last night, "Anonymous" pricked my memory and my conscience by "Commenting" on my November 30th post via a further quote from the article I had referenced in my November 30th post.

By way of retrospect: On November 30th, I began to interact with Newsome's "Tyndale's Heresy," a brief Catholic perspective concerning Tyndale--why, the author believes, Tyndale's work should be abhorred and not prized.

[Note that I have just implicitly reduced what I am willing to grant without examination concerning the validity of the author's viewpoint. I have said the article conveys what the author believes. I have deliberately avoided suggesting that the article conveys, necessarily, either official Church dogma or "the Truth."

I do not claim to know official Church dogma or absolute historical Truth in the matter. Though I want to come as close to both as possible: I want to come as close as possible to understanding Catholic dogma and the Truth as well as to expressing Catholic dogma and the Truth.

(Please note, lest you mistake my meaning. I have spoken as I have of "Catholic dogma and the Truth" in an attempt to avoid presuming that Catholic dogma is the Truth. Yet I wish to avoid the opposite presumption: that Catholic dogma, as it were, "by definition," must not be the Truth. I spoke this way "merely" to note that, in my opinion, Catholic dogma and the Truth may or may not be one and the same. . . .

And while we're on that subject, maybe I should note that, if my understanding is correct, historically, back in the days of John Wycliffe (late 1300s) and William Tyndale (early 1500s), no one--certainly no public figure--in Western Europe could have spoken of "merely" noting such a thing as I just said: that "in my opinion, Catholic dogma and the Truth may or may not be one and the same." To even question such an identity would be to court capital punishment! . . .

But let us get on with our subject.)]

On November 30th, I quoted, and since then I have never moved beyond, the "first" of "several reasons" Newsome suggests for why "[t]he Church denied [Tyndale the right] . . . to make his own English translation of the Bible." (See my post from November 30th for my response to that first reason.)

Anonymous' Comment last night consisted of the following quote from Newsome:

[I]f the Church had decided to provide a new English translation of Scripture, Tyndale would not have been the man chosen to do it. He was known as only a mediocre scholar and had gained a reputation as a priest of unorthodox opinions and a violent temper. He was infamous for insulting the clergy, from the pope down to the friars and monks, and had a genuine contempt for Church authority. In fact, he was first tried for heresy in 1522, three years before his translation of the New Testament was printed. His own bishop in London would not support him in this cause.

Finding no support for his translation from his bishop, he left England and came to Worms, where he fell under the influence of Martin Luther. There in 1525 he produced a translation of the New Testament that was swarming with textual corruption. He willfully mistranslated entire passages of Sacred Scripture in order to condemn orthodox Catholic doctrine and support the new Lutheran ideas. The Bishop of London claimed that he could count over 2,000 errors in the volume (and this was just the New Testament). . . .

When discussing the history of Biblical translations, it is very common for people to toss around names like Tyndale and Wycliff. But the full story is seldom given. [The] case of a [modern,] gender-inclusive edition of the Bible is a wonderful opportunity for Fundamentalists to reflect and realize that the reason they don’t approve of this new translation is the same reason that the Catholic Church did not approve of Tyndale’s or Wycliff’s. These are corrupt translations, made with an agenda, and not accurate renderings of sacred Scripture.

I should note--what Anonymous did not--that this was the "last" (actually, third) reason Newsome listed for why the Church denied Tyndale the right to translate the Bible into English. And Newsome included one last sentence in his article following the section Anonymous quoted and that I have quoted from Anonymous, above:

And here at least Fundamentalists and Catholics are in ready agreement: Don’t mess with the Word of God.

I think this final sentence is important for at least two reasons:

1) Because Newsome shows good grace in recognizing and pointing out for all to see those places where faithful Protestants and Catholics should recognize agreement.

2) Because it is, at root, what I understand the Catholic objection is to what both Wycliffe and Tyndale were all about. At root, if I understand correctly, the Catholic Church objected to what it viewed as these men's "mess[ing] with the Word of God"--their attempts to make a mess of God's holy Word.

It disturbs me, as I know it disturbs Catholics who are in the know (for example, the woman who first brought this issue to my attention), that too many Protestants are unaware of these charges against Tyndale and Wycliffe.

So questions remain: Were Wycliffe and Tyndale messing with God's Word? If so, in what ways? Supposing they were messing, was their messing worthy of a death sentence?

Sadly, I am completely out of time this morning to answer these questions. So I will have to make a promise--and seek more diligently to fulfill it!--to return to these issues at a later date, but sometime much sooner than two months from now.

The case of William Tyndale: How "possible" was it for someone to make an authorized translation of the Bible in the early 1500s?

In my immediately preceding post, I noted that my correspondent said it was possible to have an authorized vernacular Bible back in William Tyndale's day. And I said I question that: Was it possible? And, supposing it had been possible, just exactly how possible?

I ask that second question because it is possible--and I want to pursue this--that the possibility of acquiring a vernacular translation was in the same league as the possibility that I will be hit by an asteroid tomorrow morning. The event really and truly is possible. But its likelihood is exceedingly small.

With that question in mind, I want to note that my correspondent referred me to two articles. One of them was Matthew A. C. Newsome's "Tyndale's Heresy"--what, I discovered, is a modernized, substantially condensed reworking of Chapter 13 in Henry Graham's Where We Got the Bible.

Newsome writes,

Tyndale was an English priest . . . who desperately desired to make his own English translation of the Bible. The Church denied him for several reasons.

First, it saw no real need for a new English translation of the Scriptures at this time. In fact, booksellers were having a hard time selling the print editions of the Bible that they already had. Sumptuary laws had to be enacted to force people into buying them.

I would like to note, first, that, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia article about "Versions of the Bible: English Versions,"

No part of the English Bible was printed before 1525, no complete Bible before 1535, and none in England before 1538. . . . William Tyndale was the first to avail himself of the new opportunities furnished by the press and the new learning.

So Newsome's claim against Tyndale, that "booksellers were having a hard time selling the print editions of the Bible that they already had," bears no weight. As the Catholic Encyclopedia itself acknowledges, there were no print editions of the English Bible before Tyndale. Tyndale was the first to avail himself of the press to publish the English Bible.

But then more to the point of making authorized translations.

My correspondent writes,

. . . The Church was making authorized vernacular translations. We already had English Scriptures. The RCC's German Bible came out on the printing press before Luther's.

Understood and accepted: there were authorized vernacular translations. Indeed, as Graham amply demonstrates, there were quite a number of authorized English translations of the Bible available throughout England. They weren't relatively low-cost editions. They weren't easily transported, nor ready to hand as virtually all printed versions of the Bible are today. They were the truly ponderous tomes as would be chained to a lectern in a cathedral. After all, they were all manuscript versions. And, I daresay, due to the recent and still ongoing rapid transition of the English language, most of them, I expect, were at least quaint.

But they were, most definitely, available. Indeed, again, as Graham notes, contemporary (or near contemporary) Protestant commentators on the situation in England at that time happily acknowledge the fact that there were many manuscript copies of English Bibles available in England at the time. Even the King James/Authorized Version translators acknowledged as much in their Preface to the 1611 KJV.

However.

I think the history of English translations from Tyndale's era to the early 1600s is instructive.

The following is from the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Versions of the Bible: English Versions" (all emboldened text has been emboldened by me):

In 1524 [Tyndale], . . . [a]ssisted by William Roye, . . . translated the New Testament, and began to have it printed in Cologne in 1525. Driven from Cologne, he went to Worms where he printed 3000 copies, and sent them to England in the early summer of 1526. The fourth edition was printed at Antwerp (1534). In 1530 Tyndale's Pentateuch was printed, in 1531 his book of Jonas. Between the date of Tyndale's execution, 6 Oct., 1536, and the year 1550 numerous editions of the New Testament were reprinted, twenty-one of which Francis Fry (Biographical Descriptions of the Editions of the New Testament, 1878) enumerates and describes (see Westcott, Hist. of the English Bible, London, 1905). . . .

After 1528 we find [Miles Coverdale] on the Continent in Tyndale's society. . . . He prepared a complete English Bible, the printing of which was finished 4 Oct., 1535. . . .

The London booksellers now became alive to the ready sale of the Bible in English; Grafton and Whitchurch were the first to avail themselves of this business opportunity, bringing out in 1537 the so-called Matthew's Bible. . . .

In 1539 the Matthew's Bible was followed by Taverner's edition of the Bible. . . .

About 1536 Cromwell had placed Coverdale at the head of the enterprise for bringing out an approved version of the English Bible. The new version was based on the Matthew's Bible. . . . The work was ready for the press in 1538. . . . In April of the following year the edition was finished, and owing to its size the version was called the Great Bible. Before 1541 six other editions issued from the press.

During the reign of Mary a number of English reformers withdrew to Geneva, the town of Calvin and Beza, and here they issued in 1557 a New Testament with an introduction by Calvin. . . . [This] work was soon superseded by an issue of the whole Bible, which appeared in 1560, the so-called Geneva Bible. . . . The handy form and other attractive features of the work rendered it so popular that between 1560 and 1644 at least 140 editions were
published.

After the accession of Elizabeth an attempt was made to improve the authorized Great Bible and thus to counteract the growing popularity of the Calvinistic Geneva Bible. . . . The resultant version was ready for publication on 5 October, 1568, and became generally known as the Bishops' Bible. Several editions were afterwards published, and the Great Bible ceased to be reprinted in 1569. . . .

Now, please notice: eight full unauthorized versions of the Bible were produced--and almost every one in numerous editions--and the Church, apparently, had yet to "[see a] real need for a new English translation of the Scriptures."

Who was right? The men who were making the unauthorized editions . . . or the Church?

Personally, as a businessman, I think the Church made a mistake! It "saw no real need" until the "proof of concept" was unmistakable. . . .

In October, 1578, Gregory Martin [and a number of co-workers] . . . began the work of preparing an English translation of the Bible for Catholic readers. . . . [T]he New Testament was published at Reims in 1582. . . . The Old Testament was published at Douai (1609-10). . . .

Doing a little math, we realize the Church was 54 years--far more than a single average lifetime--behind Tyndale in deciding it "needed" an English print translation. It was 74 years behind Coverdale in issuing the first authorized complete Bible!

******

Lots of questions yet to answer (see the end of my previous post). . . . But I needed to begin somewhere. So I started here.

. . . To be continued.

Heroes and rebels

M, a Catholic friend, wrote concerning my A history of Bible translation post:

The authors of Hero Tales are (perhaps unconsciouly) biased against Catholics. This bias shows in their writings. [You know] this, which is why [your Sonlight Curriculum] notes for Hero Tales indicate some of the inaccuracies. (Thank you for this.)

If the book were part of a higher Core, I could understand its inclusion, because Sonlight wants to teach people how to detect this sort of thing for themselves. However, Core K, by its very name, indicates 5 year-olds as its main audience. I don't think 5 year-olds can weigh boring notes (which the parents may or may not read, and if they do read it themselves, may or may not pass on to their kids) vs. an exciting, dramatic story.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood claims "Until the age of about 8, children do not understand advertising's persuasive intent" and cites Kunkel, D (2001). Children and television advertising. In: D. G. Singler & J. L. Singer (Eds.) The handbook of children and media (pp. 375-393). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage which I don't have time to track down and read myself right now.

But if kindergarten age children can't understand persuasive intent in advertising, they probably can't understand bias in writing either. Our brains continue to mature and develop until the 20s, and with the physical changes come more ability to reason abstractly. Your own testimonials show that children are remembering inaccurate [historically, not necessarily textually] and anti-Catholic summaries of the stories in the book.

Its anti-Catholic bias and its inaccuracy make Hero Tales an inappropriate book for this age group and it should be replaced.

I replied:

Whoa, M___! You just made the most powerful "argument" I have heard yet against inclusion of Hero Tales in the K curriculum: "I don't think 5 year-olds can weigh boring notes (which the parents may or may not read, and if they do read it themselves, may or may not pass on to their kids) vs. an exciting, dramatic story" and, "Your own testimonials show that children are remembering inaccurate [historically, not necessarily textually] and anti-Catholic summaries of the stories in the book."

When M referred to "[y]our own testimonials," she was referencing the comments of a young man quoted in our company's ezine, A Beam of Sonlight. The editor the the Beam chose a few weeks ago to include the following letter from a mom. Indeed, this is the letter, I believe, that inspired my original correspondent to object to Hero Tales' retelling of the Tyndale story:

[My son] Samuel said, "Somebody said that war is always bad.”

I told him that, "yes, war is always bad, but sometimes it is necessary. We can't let bad people get away with doing bad things; the good people need to stand up for what is right, even when it's hard."

Samuel said, "Ya, just like that guy in Germany who knew that the church was doing things that weren't right and he stood up for what the Bible says even though they could have killed him for it. And that other guy in England who said that everyone should have a Bible that they could read and he had to escape to Germany so he could put the Bible in English!"

Despite what I have written so far, I see where M and my original correspondent are coming from. Samuel's comments are not quite accurate historically. Or, should I say, they don't indicate any nuanced sense of the arguments and battles that surrounded what the "guy in Germany" and the "other guy in England" were trying to do.

As I wrote to M:

I see the problems. I'm not sure how far I'm going to get in overcoming them.

I can just hear Sarita now: "So what book(s) am I supposed to use instead of Hero Tales?!? . . . We want our kids to hold godly men and women before them as heroes they can emulate."

*****

What I am seeing not only here, but in other cases as well, is how rampant are the attitudes or
behaviors of (I think the best word to use is) rebellion among those who are commonly viewed as heroes. You can't become a hero unless you step out from the crowd, do something significantly against your culture or against societal norms. And whenever you do that . . . well . . . you immediately mark yourself as "enemy" (and note that I said you mark yourself as "enemy"!) and you engender animosity among the leaders among the party/ies most motivated to oppose you.

[I make this latter comment as I do because while, obviously, the "hero" has (by my definition) placed him- or herself in opposition to the culture or to societal norms, and, therefore, the press of the culture or society as a whole will be against the hero, that doesn't mean the majority of people will actively and strenuously oppose him or her. In fact, most people will gladly stay out of the line of fire from both sides. Kind of like Martin Luther King and the marches for racial justice. There were hotheads on both sides. But most people just wanted to "go along to get
along."]

I wrote to M:

You have convinced me, M___, that, if at all possible, we need to replace the book. What I am sorely missing right now is a decent book with which to replace it--or, as you put it so well: an age-appropriate, well-written book filled with "exciting, dramatic stor[ies]" of heroes against which no one will object. I'm afraid that is a very tall order!

Any suggestions?

I will be glad for any suggestions from my readers here on my blog as well. . . .

Who owns the Bible? (More on Tyndale and Bible translation)

As I continued to study the sources my correspondent sent me in criticism of William Tyndale and/or the Jackson's retelling of the story of William Tyndale, I realized there is a fundamental difference of viewpoint concerning the Bible and how one should consider the Bible's publication between Protestants and at least some--some officially/magisterially approved--Roman Catholics.

I was first shocked into the realization by a subordinate, parenthetical clause in Chapter 12 of Henry Graham's Where We Got the Bible. Graham refers to the Bible as the Catholic Church's "own book"--as if it were, in essence, "Copyright AD___ by the Roman Catholic Church."

"The Catholic Church certainly could never allow a version of Holy Scripture, (which is her own book) like that of Wycliff to go forth unchallenged, as if it were correct and authoritative, and bore her sanction and approval," Graham writes. [Note: the odd punctuation, including comma immediately preceding the parenthetical remark, is in the original. I have added the bold italics for emphasis --JAH.]

Graham continues:

Rome claims that the Bible is her book; that she has preserved it and perpetuated it, and that she alone knows what it means; that nobody else has any right to it whatsoever, or any authority to declare what the true meaning of it is. She therefore has declared that the work of translating it from the original languages, and of explaining it, and of printing it and publishing it, belongs strictly to her alone; and that, if she cannot nowadays prevent those outside her fold from tampering with it and misusing it, at least she will take care that none of her own children abuse it or take liberties with it; and hence she forbids any private person to attempt to translate it into the common language without authority from ecclesiastical superiors, and also forbids the faithful to read any editions but such as are approved by the Bishops.

All this the Catholic Church does out of reverence for God’s Holy Word. She desires that the pure, uncorrupted Gospel should be put in her people’s hands as it came from the pen of the Apostles and Evangelists. She dreads lest the faithful should draw down upon themselves a curse by believing for Gospel the additions and changes introduced by foolish and sinful men to support some pet theories of their own; just as a mother would fear lest her children should, along with water or milk, drink down some poison that was mixed up with it.

Stated again (actually, immediately preceding the above two quoted paragraphs):

[W]hile the Church approves of the people reading the Scriptures in their own language, she also claims the right to see that they really have a true version of the Scriptures to read, and not a mutilated or false or imperfect or heretical version. She claims that she alone has the right to make translations from the original languages (Hebrew or Greek) in which the Bible was written; the right to superintend and supervise the work of translating; the right of appointing certain priests or scholars to undertake the work; the right of approving or condemning versions and translations which are submitted to her for her judgment. She declares she will not tolerate that her children should be exposed to the danger of reading copies of Scripture which have changed or falsified something of the original Apostolic writing; which have added something or left out something; which have notes and explanations and prefaces and prologues that convey false doctrine or false morals. Her people must have the correct Bible, or no Bible at all.

I guess, based on that last statement, the Church claims not only to "own" the Bible, but to own certain people as well. They are its servants, subject entirely to its laws and decrees, no matter how the magisterium may decide.

I find this entire "line of argument" . . . at least disturbing. I'm not sure what else to say about it. The entire concept is . . . rather shocking, honestly. The bald-faced brazenness of such a claim!

I guess since the Roman Catholic Church "owns the Bible," Jews, the direct descendants of those who wrote it, have no rights to the Tanakh ("Old Testament"--or, as the three primary consonants of the word Tanakh reference: the Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings))?!?

"[The Church] has preserved [the Bible] and perpetuated it, and . . . she alone knows what it means"?!? --God couldn't possibly speak to anyone else?

"[N]obody else has any right to it whatsoever"?!? --It's not a book given by God to mankind as a whole--like the annunciation: "I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you . . ." (Luke 2:10-11; NIV) or, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests" (Luke 2:14; NIV)?!?

"[N]obody else has . . . any authority to declare what the true meaning of [the Bible] is. [The Roman Catholic Church] therefore has declared that the work of translating it from the original languages, and of explaining it, and of printing it and publishing it, belongs strictly to her alone." --Wow! I appreciate the concern for people's souls, but is it truly better that we follow the model of a command-and-control, top-down economy than the more open policies of the free market? Better that the millions of people for whom the Bible has been made available due to efforts of "unauthorized" translaters . . . --Better that they should have lived and died without the Bible than that they had an imperfect Bible?

I think, maybe, I've been too influenced by my understanding and experience of the modern marketplace to "buy" this kind of mentality.

A history of Bible translation

A few weeks ago, a woman wrote to complain about the content of one of the stories told in a book our company carries.

"Hero Tales in Core K starts our students out with a prejudice against the Catholic Church without all the facts needed to make a determination, in my opinion," she wrote.

That [our children] should be learning half the story in Sonlight is not expected, but that is precisely what Hero Tales divulges--half the story.

I recommend Tyndale's Heresy to you.

At a minimum, students should be told that Tyndale did not produce the first Bible in English. Exploring the heretical aspects of his version would also be prudent, I think.

It is a fact usually ignored by Protestant historians that many English versions of the Scriptures existed before Wycliff, and these were authorized and perfectly legal (see Where We Got the Bible by Henry Graham, chapter 11, "Vernacular Scriptures Before Wycliff"). Also legal would be any future authorized translations. And certainly reading these translations was not only legal but also encouraged. All this law did was to prevent any private individual from publishing his own translation of Scripture without the approval of the Church.

I have to confess, it is not always easy to maintain openness to "new information." How can I afford the time?

But, as I replied to my correspondent, "Really great article recommendations and points. (I found Graham's book on the web and, so far, have read both Chapter 11 and Chapter 1.) . . . I am going to have to think how to "talk" about these things. . . ."

Well, I think it is time for me to begin to "talk." And, I'm afraid, I probably need to modify my comment about the article recommendations being "really great."

In one sense I really do believe them to be great: they were greatly informative. But they may, actually, have been more informative than my correspondent intended. So they are "really great" in an alternative sense as well that she may not appreciate as much as my original communication with her may have implied.

But before I get into that level of detail, let me note that I think all of us--Protestant, Catholic, whoever--should be very careful to understand and teach history accurately. And as I have found, too often, a lot of "history" is non-historical: it isn't accurate; it isn't true . . . or, should I say, isn't accurate and true enough (for my tastes, anyway!).

So let me begin by offering the most positive aspects of my correspondents' critique.

Tyndale did not produce the first Bible in English.

The book she is criticizing, Hero Tales by Dave & Neta Jackson, is a collection of biographies for children. One chapter, titled "William Tyndale," is subtitled, "The Man Who Gave Us the English Bible."

I will admit the subtitle is at least potentially misleading . . . if you read nothing else in the story and you make certain assumptions about the broader meaning of the (sub)title. What I mean by that is this: It is about as wrong to say "Tyndale gave us the English Bible" as it would be to say "Columbus discovered America."

In one sense--or, depending on how far you want to nuance your words, in many senses--Columbus did not discover America. For example,

1) Columbus was by no means first to "discover" America. Clearly, the aboriginal peoples--the so-called "Indians"--had been in the land we now call America for well over a thousand years before Columbus arrived. Anthropologists would say they had been in "America" for thousands of years. Moreover, as research in the last century has made almost incontrovertibly clear:

2) Leif Ericson came to North America about AD1002; Chinese junks visited North America in 1421; and others, too, from distant lands, found their way to North America before Columbus did.

3) No place named "America" existed when Columbus "discovered" the land mass we now call America.

4) Columbus never used the word "America" to refer to the land mass now known by that name.

5) And so forth. . . .

But still, most people I know say Columbus discovered America. And that's certainly what they were taught.

Why?

Because it was his explorations and his reports that first truly opened the continents we now know as North and South America to exploration by Europeans and--as a result of the Europeans--the rest of the world. Prior to Columbus, the land masses we now know as North and South America remained largely, if not completely, unknown to those who lived outside. Their prior discoverers never reported their findings or reported them so poorly that "no one" followed up on their reports.

So is it fair to criticize those who say Columbus discovered America? Sure. Mildly. For the reasons stated and by way of proving one's superior grasp of historical realities.

But for all practical purposes, I have no serious difficulties with anyone saying Columbus discovered America.

Well, so it is, I'm afraid, with criticism of the Jacksons' article about Tyndale.

"At that time [i.e., when Tyndale was alive], it was illegal to translate the Scriptures into English without official approval," the Jacksons write. And that is correct. It had been illegal since 1408 when, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says (last sentence in section C.(2)), the Synod of Oxford "forbade the publication and reading of unauthorized vernacular versions of the Scriptures, restricting the permission to read the Bible in the vernacular to versions approved by the ordinary of the place, or . . . by the provincial council."

It was, as the Jacksons note, Tyndale's dream to make it possible for every man, woman and child in England, whether rich or poor, to read the Bible in English.

I need to stop here for the moment. But the story is . . . to be continued. . . .