Rev. Angus Stewart
In the honourable history of the translation of the Bible into English, there is one heroic man and there is one magnificent version that stand out. The former is William Tyndale of Gloucestershire (c.1494-1536) and the latter is the Authorised Version (AV) or the King James Version (KJV) of 1611, named after King James VI of Scotland (1567-1625), who became King James I of England and Ireland (1603-1625). A helpful way to understand both better is to compare them, considering both their striking differences and their highly significant similarities.
Differences
It could be said that, in the minds of both parties of Bible translators, the idea of their translations started with British monarchs—one providing a tenth-century example and the other issuing a seventeenth-century directive. At an early age, William Tyndale was impressed by the history of the long dead King Æthelstan (c.894-939), a grandson of Alfred the Great, who ordered the translation of part of the Bible from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate into Anglo-Saxon.1 The desire to translate the Scriptures burned deeply in the heart of Tyndale the more he studied God’s Word and realised the terrible spiritual ignorance of his fellow countrymen. In 1604, James I, prompted by John Reynolds, the head of the Puritan delegation to England’s recently crowned monarch at Hampton Court, commissioned a new version of the Scriptures that would bear his royal name.
The role of the contemporary English kings varied immensely. On the one hand, Henry VIII (1509-1547), of the Welsh Tudor dynasty, sought to destroy William Tyndale and his translations of Scripture, such that he had to flee the realm never to return. On the other hand, James I, of the Scottish Stuart dynasty, not only initiated the King James Version, but also wrote 15 rules or principles for its translation and authorised it as the official Bible for use in the Church of England. Whereas the English establishment was mortally opposed to William Tyndale in the 1520s and 1530s, both church and state heartily supported the production and promotion of the King James Version less than a century later.
The King James men translated all the 66 books of the Bible, plus the uninspired Apocrypha. However, William Tyndale only did 42 scriptural books before his martyrdom, leaving 24 books undone. He translated the 27 books of the New Testament (published in 1525, 1526 and 1534), the Pentateuch (1530), Jonah (1531) and the historical books from Joshua to II Chronicles (1537).
Who did the translating? There were 54 men appointed to produce the King James Bible, though most reckon that only 47 of them were actually involved in the work. All were Anglican clergymen except one, Sir Henry Savile. They were arranged in six “companies” or committees, each with a “director.” William Tyndale, of course, was just one man and so he is to be ranked with other worthy individuals who translated God’s Word, such as Jerome (Latin Bible) and Martin Luther (German New Testament).
Who funded these men during their arduous and lengthy translation work? King James’ men were financed not by the monarch but by the Church of England, with the bishops finding “livings” for those translators who needed additional income. William Tyndale was supported economically by his friends, many of whom were involved in the cloth trade.
Where did the translators do their work? The King James men worked in England, with two of the committees based in Oxford (covering Isaiah-Malachi; the Gospels, Acts and Revelation), two of the committees based in Cambridge (I Chronicles-Song of Solomon; the Apocrypha) and two of the committees based in Westminster in London (Genesis-II Kings; the Epistles).2 Though Tyndale started his translation work in England, most of it was done in continental Europe in what are now Germany (Cologne and Worms) and Belgium (Antwerp).
Just as one man, William Tyndale, translated most of the Scriptures into English, so he performed the work of editing and checking it more or less on his own. With the King James Bible, it was a collegial affair. The drafts produced by each of the 6 committees were thoroughly compared and revised for harmony with each other. Then a general committee met in London to review all the translations. Richard Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1604-1610), made fourteen further changes.
Living relatively early in the Reformation age, Tyndale’s literary resources for translating the Scriptures from their original Hebrew and Greek texts were limited to a few key books. Even though he was on the run, he apparently had access to Hebrew and Greek dictionaries and grammars, the ancient Greek Septuagint (Old Testament), the late fourth-century Latin Vulgate Bible of Jerome, Erasmus’ Latin translation of the Greek New Testament (1522), Luther’s German New Testament (1522) and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ French New Testament (1523).3 From Tyndale’s death to the publication of the King James Version, Hebrew and Greek scholarship had come a long way, and the Stuart translators were able, for example, to consult the libraries of the two oldest and greatest universities in England and in the whole of the British Isles: Oxford and Cambridge, at both of which Tyndale had studied nearly a century before. They were also able to compare their work with recent translations of the Bible in other modern European languages, as well as earlier English versions: the Coverdale Bible (1535), Matthew’s Bible (1537), Taverner’s Bible (1539), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva Bible (1560) and the Bishops’ Bible (1568).
What about the printing and distribution of the respective translations? The Authorised Version was produced by the royal printer, Robert Barker of London, and distributed publicly throughout the realm. It was very different with the translations of Scripture by William Tyndale. These were printed clandestinely by deliberately unnamed or misnamed foreign publishers on the River Rhine (Cologne and Worms) and the River Scheldt (Antwerp) in order to be shipped across the North Sea.4 This contraband was smuggled into ports on the east coast of England in bales of cloth. Though some copies were discovered and burnt by the authorities, Tyndale’s books were disseminated and read with alacrity throughout England.
The circumstances of the two parties of translators could hardly have been more different. William Tyndale was a fugitive from his earthly king for the latter part of his adult life, as was David the son of Jesse during the early part of his adult life. The Gloucestershire man was hounded and hunted by the English state, the Romish church and the Habsburg Empire, whereas King James’ translators were honoured by the English church and state of their day. Tyndale was betrayed for money by Henry Phillips, a thief and a gambler, who had squandered his inheritance; imprisoned for a year and a half in a cold, dark cell in the castle of Vilvoorde near Brussels in Belgium; and strangled to death while tied to a stake, before his dead body was burned. None of the Anglican churchmen who translated our Authorised Version were martyred.
What about their respective places in the history of the English Bible? Tyndale produced the first English translation of the whole of the New Testament directly from the Greek and the first English translation of 15 of the 39 books of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. Moreover, Tyndale’s were the first English translations of Scripture that were mass-produced by the relatively new invention of movable-type printing. If, as a first-generation Reformer, Tyndale’s work of translation was that of a pioneer in the field, the King James Version marked the culmination of almost a century of interest and labour in English Bible translation since the beginning of the Reformation in 1517.
Similarities
This relatively short article has given a considerable amount of space to the differences in the origin, scope, editing, printing and distribution of the Authorised Version compared to William Tyndale’s translations of the Scriptures. It has also contrasted the numbers, locations, financial support, literary resources, and political and religious circumstances of the respective translators. This has highlighted some aspects of the fascinating and colourful stories of these two Bible translations.
It remains, however, to state their main similarities, and stress the essential unity between Tyndale and the King James Version in the clear and refreshing river of faithful English Bible translation. Though they are presented more briefly than the differences, theologically and with a view to the Bible translations themselves, the similarities are the most important things for the child of God to know.
First, both translations used essentially the same source texts. Both employed the Hebrew Masoretic Text for the Old Testament. For the New Testament, Tyndale used Erasmus’ Greek text, while King James’ men used a later version of it, the Textus Receptus. This is not the case with most modern English Bible translations.
Second, both parties of translators held the biblical and orthodox doctrine of Scripture. Its inspiration is both plenary and verbal (II Tim. 3:16; II Pet. 1:21). Therefore, God’s written Word is inerrant, infallible, perspicuous and supremely authoritative. By Jehovah’s “singular care and providence,” it has been “kept pure in all ages” (Westminster Confession 1:8). This God-honouring conviction, though essential for a Bible translator, is very rare in recent times.
Third, Tyndale and the King James men shared the same Reformed philosophy of translation: formal equivalence, which prioritizes fidelity to the wording, grammar and structure of the Hebrew and Greek originals. Sadly, most modern translations of the Bible employ dynamic equivalence, which claims to provide a rendering that is more natural to the target language (e.g., the New International Version).
Fourth, both William Tyndale and King James’ men used italics in their Bible translations to indicate words or phrases added for clarity or grammatical necessity in English that were not explicitly present in the Hebrew or Greek texts. Tyndale’s use of italics was innovative for its time and reflected his deep commitment to the inspired sources.
Fifth, Tyndale and the King James men translated with one eye on the ears of the listeners, considering those who would hear the Word of God read aloud. The explanation is simple: this was part of their Reformation goal to make the Bible accessible to English-speaking men, women and children. The early sixteenth-century English ploughboy, who was included in Tyndale’s target audience, was illiterate and the Anglican churchmen who translated the Authorised Version were thinking of the public reading of sacred Scripture in divine worship services.
Sixth, in light of the preceding five points, it ought to come as no surprise that Tyndale heavily influenced the King James Bible. Citing a thorough 1998 analysis, Brian Moynahan states, “Tyndale’s words account for 84 per cent of the New Testament [of the Authorised Version], and for 75.8 per cent of the Old Testament books that he translated.”5 Many articles and books have been written detailing the profound impact of both translations on the English language and the religious culture of the English-speaking world. With the King James Bible in our hands, we hold an inestimable treasure: the infallibly inspired Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek, faithfully preserved by our heavenly Father, and coming to us in His gracious providence through the pioneering work and sacrifice of Tyndale, and the scholarship and majestic style of those 47 translators from the early Stuart period—the Word of God in our mother tongue “which [is] able to make [us] wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 3:15)!
1 Benson Bobrick, Wide As the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired (USA: Penguin, 2002), p. 80.
2 These last two committees met in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey, where the Westminster Assembly deliberated (1643-1653) and produced all three of the creeds that constitute the Westminster Standards.
3 Besides his native English and the ancient languages of Hebrew, Greek and Latin, Tyndale was also skilled in German, French, Italian and Spanish.
4 The cover page of some of Tyndale’s books even claimed that they were published in Utopia (literally, no place) as a windup of his nemesis, Sir Thomas More, who wrote a famous work in 1516 with this as its title.
5 Brian Moynahan, Book of Fire: William Tyndale, Thomas More and the Bloody Birth of the English Bible (London: Abacus, 2002), p. 1.
A lecture on “William Tyndale: English Bible Translator” is available on-line free in video and audio.
