Tyndale's (Heretical' Translation

William Tyndale's success as a translator of the Bible can be attributed to two qualities, which equipped him superbly for the task: on the one hand, his knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and on the other, his brilliant mastery of the English language. But in addition to these two essential gifts, two external factors were equally important in making his translation significant: first, the recent production of Erasmus's editions of the Greek New Testament, and, second, the invention of the printing press. There had, of course, been other translations into English before Tyndale's, but they had not been from the Greek and they had not been printed. It was the fortunate conjunction of the means of mass communication and Erasmus's learning with Tyndale's genius that gave the latter's work its unique significance. Of the printing press, I need say no more. But of Desiderius Erasmus, we ought to take note. Erasmus was not the only scholar, of course, to have brought the love of the new learning and the knowledge of Greek to England. The influence of John Colet and others at Oxford must still have been felt there when Tyndale was a student, even though Tyndale is scathing about theology in that university. Whether in Oxford or in Cambridge, he learned Greek. And though, if he did spend some time in Cambridge, he was too late to sit at the feet of Erasmus; nevertheless that university was buzzing with new ideas. But the crucial event was the publication of Erasmus's edition of the New Testament, first in 1516 and then in its revised versions of 1519 and 1522, which were the ones Tyndale used. What makes Tyndale's translation of the New Testament so important is that it was made from the Greek, not from the Latin Vulgate; and when he turned to the Old Testament, he learned Hebrew in order to translate that, too, from the original. Bymodern standards, Erasmus's edition of the New Testament was not, in fact, a very good one, since it was based on only six or seven