The
Tyndale Society Journal
No. 38 Spring 2010
About the Tyndale Society Registered UK Charity Number 1020405 Founded by Professor David Daniell in 1995, five hundred and one years after Tyndale’s birth. The Society’s aim is to spread knowledge of William Tyndale’s work and influence, and to pursue study of the man who gave us our English Bible.
Membership Benefits
• 2 issues of the Tyndale Society Journal a year • Many social events, lectures and conferences • Exclusive behind-the-scenes historical tours • Access to a worldwide community of experts • 50% discount on Reformation. • 25% advertising discount in the Journal
For further information visit: www.tyndale.org or email tyndale.sec@btinternet.com or see inside the back cover of this edition of the Tyndale Society Journal.
Trustees
Mary Clow; Dr Paul Coones; Charlotte Dewhurst; Philip Dickson; Rochelle Givoni; David Green; Revd David Ireson; Dr Guido Latré; Revd Dr Simon Oliver; Dr Barry T. Ryan; Jennifer Sheldon. .
Patrons
His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury; Rt. Rev. and Rt. Hon. Lord Carey of Clifton; Baroness James of Holland Park; Lord Neill of Bladen QC; Prof. Sir Christopher Zeeman, former Principal, Hertford College, Oxford; Mr David Zeidberg.
Advisory Board
Sir Anthony Kenny; Anthony Smith, Emeritus President, Magdalen College; Penelope Lively; Philip Howard; Anne O’Donnell, Catholic University of America; Professor John Day, St Olaf ’s College, Minnesota; Professor Peter Auksi, University of W. Ontario; Dr David Norton, Victoria University, Wellington; Gillian Graham, Emeritus Hon. Secretary.
Other Tyndale Society Publications Reformation
Editor: Dr Hannibal Hamlin Humanities, English & Religious Studies, e Ohio State University, 164 West 17th Ave, Columbus, OH 43210-1370, USA. Phone: 1+614 292 6065 fax: 7816 email: hamlin.22@osu.edu Commenced Publication 1996 • 1 issue a year • ISSN: 1357 - 4175
Contents e Tyndale Society Journal ♦ No.38 Spring 2010 Editorial
Articles
Submission Guidelines Neil Inglis
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Andrew Hope Brian Buxton Christopher Wilkins Anne Richardson R Magnusson Davis
Who was William Tyndale? Identifying John Tyndale The Poyntz of Iron Acton John Fisher vs William Tyndale Tyndale’s Humble Messiah
25 35 42 54
Event Reports
15th Annual Lambeth Tyndale Lecture Celebrating the life of Carsten Peter Thiede
61 65
Eunice Burton Valerie Offord
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Letters to the Editor
67 68
Book Reviews
70 71 72 73
Anthony Mitchell Peter Hancock Mary Clow Bill Cooper Mary Clow Anne Richardson
A History of Christianity William Tyndale - An Introduction The Last Knight Errant Burning to Read
What are you Reading?
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Forthcoming Events
8th - 10th April: 28th April: 4th - 5th July:
RSA Conference, Italy Charterhouse Tour and London Walk, London John Frith Celebrations, Sevenoaks, Kent
83 44 83
2011 5th - 7th May:
400th Annversary of the King James Bible, Ohio
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2012 6th - 8th September:
Tyndale and the New Learning, Antwerp
Mary Clow
Wolf Hall
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How I Met William Tyndale Valerie Offord Mary Clow
Out of the Trashcan How I Met Tyndale
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Society Notes Mary Clow
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Obituary Peter Raes
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Notices
44 53 66 77
London Charterhouse Tour and Walk Moreana - Special Offer The New Testament 1526 - Special Offer Ohio State University Conference - 2011
Dates for Your Diary Advertising Rates and Specifications Membership/Subscription Form - USA & Canada Membership/Subscription Form - UK & EU Key Contacts
83 34 84 86 87
Please note that neither the Tyndale Society nor the Editors of this Journal necessarily share the views expressed by contributors. Copyright of all material remains with the contributors.
Guest Editor for Tyndale Society Journal No.39:
Neil Inglis We invite your contributions for the next Journal by 15th June 2010 please (see p. 9 ) –––––––––––––––––––– ♦ ––––––––––––––––––––
Especially Welcome... contributions on: ‘How I Met William Tyndale’ Journal Commenced publication 1995 • 2 issues a year • ISSN: 1357-4167 Cover illustrations by Paul Jackson • Cover design by Paul Barron Graphics
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Editorial Neil Inglis
Guest Editor - TSJ Nos. 38 and 39
In the Autumn of 2009, I attended a lecture on the History of the English Language, delivered at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. This is, of course, a vast topic, and the speaker (Professor Seth Lerer) focused on the changeover from Old English to Chaucer, an endlessly fascinating subject in its own right. Plainly a man comfortable in front of large groups, Lerer fielded questions from his audience, in one instance (this is a great skill) expertly rephrasing one rather dense observation and making it sound like a profound insight. Lerer’s handouts summarized the historical background as follows: ‘What is English? In its earliest forms, known as Old English, the mix of dialects spoken in the British Isles from the 6th century until about 1100. A highly inflected language, characterized by many case endings, flexible word order in sentences, and a vocabulary rich in noun Neil Inglis compounds. Middle English: the form of English spoken after the Norman Conquest (…), taking hold during the 12th century. It borrows much vocabulary from the French of the conquerors. It loosens many of the inflections and case systems of Old English. Word order, rather than word endings, becomes the primary determiner of meaning in the sentence. Middle English is spoken and written in England until about the year 1450, when a radical series of changes in pronunciation gives rise to Modern English. Modern English: the form of the language spoken and written after about 1500. Characterized by a voracious appetite for loan words from other languages; by a complete loss of a case system of inflections; and by the widespread use of idioms.’
Lerer’s analysis of the opening lines of Canterbury Tales brought home how Chaucer had achieved not just a fusion, but also a kind of reconciliation,
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Detail of Pilgrims in procession, from the Chaucer Window at London’s Southwark Cathedral
between the Saxon and Norman traditions, with French words used for abstractions of mythology and inspiration, even as the landscape (‘every holt and heeth’) remained quintessentially English. Concluding with a comparison of an excerpt from Matthew from an Old English version of the Gospel, the Wycliffe Bible, Tyndale’s translation, and the King James Version, Lerer pointed out that the KJV was sometimes more oldfashioned than Tyndale, preferring archaizing forms. If Lerer was no Tyndale expert (during Q&A I heard him say that both the Tyndale and Wycliffe Bibles were translated from the Latin), what exactly did I expect? That is what the Tyndale Society is for—to correct such misconceptions. –––––––––––––––––––– ♦ ––––––––––––––––––––
On a tip from Society member Vic Perry, I wanted to bring to your attention the fact that Hendrickson publishers have reissued what Banner of Truth magazine describes as an ‘improved version’ of the University of Wisconsin facsimile of the Geneva Bible, originally published in 1969. The relevant information can be found at this link: www.hendrickson.com/html/product/562125.trade.html?category=all The link provides the following concise overview of the importance of English Bible translation:
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‘The Bible of the Protestant Reformation - Sixteenth century English Protestant scholars were determined to make the scriptures understandable to common people, so that, as William Tyndale famously put it, ‘the boy that driveth the plough should know more of the scriptures’ than the educated man. However, Queen Mary’s (1553–1558) persecution of her Protestant subjects caused many to flee to the continent to avoid imprisonment or execution. Geneva, Switzerland soon became a center for Protestant biblical scholarship. It was there that a group of the movement’s leading lights gathered to undertake a fresh translation of the scriptures into English, beginning in 1556. Published in 1560, the Geneva Bible’s popularity kept it in print until 1644— long after the advent of the Authorized Version (a.k.a. King James Version). It was an English Bible that met the needs of both clergy and laity. Perhaps the Geneva Bible’s greatest contribution was its commentary, which undergirded the emerging practice of sermonizing and helped foster scripture literacy (…). The Geneva Bible accompanied English settlers voyaging to the new world. It is probable that the Geneva Bible came to America in 1607 and was used in the Jamestown colony. Thirteen years later the Pilgrims brought it with them on the Mayflower’s perilous voyage to religious freedom. The Geneva Bible stands as a landmark in the history of English Bible translation.’ –––––––––––––––––––– ♦ ––––––––––––––––––––
The current issue of TSJ focuses on two broad areas of Tyndale scholarship, the historical and the linguistic. As we review the Tyndale saga, we realize how much is cloaked in mystery, how much we still do not know. Happily, TSJ No.38 readers are in for a treat: in their two magnificent papers, Andrew Hope and Brian Buxton have cast piercing searchlights into the questions surrounding Tyndale’s early life, his family, and his kinship ties. Christopher Wilkins takes us on a journey back to the late 1400s and the political and military ferment in England at the dawn of the Tyndale era (his new book The Last Knight Errant is also reviewed by Mary Clow).
Moving on to issues of language, our readers will rejoice in the splendidly perceptive articles written by Ruth Magnusson Davis and Anne Richardson (who analyzes the altercation between John Fisher and William Tyndale ). I am grateful to Moreana for granting us permission to reprint Anne Richardson’s review of John Simpson’s Burning to Read. I wrote my own review of Simpson’s work in TSJ No.36, but felt that there was more to say on the subject. As a result, I am grateful to share with you Anne’s incisive assessment of this
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scholarly but baffling publication, and its attempt to craft its very own pathbreaking interpretation of the Tyndale/More feud. Mary Clow also reviews the enormously successful Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel) and the magisterial A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch, who is well known to Tyndale Society members. Eunice Burton, our events reporter, provides us with her customarily invaluable account of the 15th Annual Lambeth Tyndale Lecture. I want to spend a little time discussing a new feature of the TSJ —namely, the How I Met William Tyndale section. I inaugurated this column in TSJ No.37 when I discussed what has passed down in Inglis family lore as ‘The Cold Chicken Incident’. Said incident arose when a disastrous meal at a once beloved restaurant sent your editor fuming into the nearest second-hand bookstore, there to discover the late Richard Marius’s biography of Thomas More. In that biography, rather than brushing aside two subjects that were plainly not to his taste (More’s heresy-hunting, and William Tyndale), the author bravely and honestly tackled these topics in detail, not in footnotes. Thanks in part to his treatment of the subject, a lifelong interest with Tyndale was stirred in my heart and soul, and I have devoted much time to rescuing Tyndale from footnotes ever since. In this spirit, Mary Clow and Valerie Offord contribute their Tyndale epiphanies to the current issue, and I invite our readers to do likewise. While it is likely that some of you encountered WT in connection with the ‘Let There Be Light’ exhibition, if you have any special memories associated with that occasion, we would be happy to hear those too. –––––––––––––––––––– ♦ ––––––––––––––––––––
Speaking of Thomas More, I wish to point out that we at TSJ have good relations with the Thomas More community, as exemplified by our reprint of Anne Richardson’s review from Moreana, noted above. I and my predecessors do acknowledge the existence of, and review, revisionist academic scholarship, as well as books which treat Reformation history from a Roman Catholic perspective. Blessed are the peacemakers! That said, however, one cannot pretend that the ideological confrontations of the 16th century have melted away. The ripple effects of the Reformation Era are all around us. David Virtue took up the story at (www.virtueonline.org) on 28th December 2009:
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‘On October 20, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced a new provision responding to the many requests
that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church. The Apostolic Constitution ‘Anglicanorum coetibus’ introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow those groups to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.’
One cannot know what William Tyndale would have made of these latest developments. But one can feel sure that he would have addressed the subject in his typically incisive fashion, getting to the very pith and marrow of the matter. Neil L. Inglis Bethesda, Maryland
Submission Guidelines
Tyndale Society Journal No. 39 Guest Editor: Neil Inglis Please send all article submissions (via email where possible) to Neil at: tyndale.sec@btinternet.com Articles may be supplied either via Word Document, or as plain text in the message body of your email. Alternatively, we can accept typewritten copy (for scanning in) or clear, hand-written copy submissions. Artwork and photographs may be supplied electronically either via email or on CD-R (minimum resolution for all digital images: 300dpi). Alternatively, these can be supplied in hard copy form, for scanning. All type-written/hand-written copy, digital artwork on CD-R/hard copy artwork for scanning should be sent to: K Wortley, Tyndale Society Journal No.39 Barnyard, Purdy Street, Salthouse, Norfolk, NR25 7XA Deadline for submission of articles to the next issue: 15th June 2010
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Society Notes
Compiled by Mary Clow
Newborn: Jen Sheldon, in Dubai, has added another beautiful daughter, Alexandra Christabel to her family.
Wellcome news: Valerie Offord, Editor Emeritus of this Journal, has sent the wonderful news that the Mintaka Foundation for Medical Research in Geneva, where her husband Robin is Executive Director, has just won a substantial grant from the Wellcome Trust. This will enable testing of their anti-HIV microbicide, designed to protect women in the developing world. Success in this product would empower families and save untold lives.
Jen and Alexandra Christabel
Sadly missed: We commemorate with sadness the loss of long-standing member Peter Raes, who died on January 1st at his home in Denmark. Proud to be a graduate of Hertford College, Oxford, Peter was a contributor and participant in many Tyndale Society events and conferences in England and on the Continent. He was a bibliophile with special knowledge of early Danish bibles and printing: our very successful Cambridge library tour of April 2009 was suggested by him. Members fortunate enough to have known him will remember Peter's charm, Peter Raes courtesy and sense of fun.
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Dates for Your Diary 2010 ♦
ursday 8th April to Saturday 10th April, 6-8pm Conference of the Renaissance Society of America Venice, Italy ‘omas More and his Circle in the Cities of Europe’ 56th Annual meeting of the RSA, to be based at the Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli and also at The Fondazione Giorgio Cini on Isola San Giorgio Maggiore. (For information see website: www.rsa.org). ♦
Wednesday 28th April, 11am-4pm London Walk including tour of the Charterhouse Conducted by Brian Buxton Meeting in the Crypt of St Paul’s, Guided Tour of the Charterhouse for 25 persons maximum. See notice on page 44 and enclosed leaflet & booking form for full times and pricing.
♦
Sunday 4th July to Monday 5th July Celebration of the Life and Martyrdom of John Frith at Sevenoaks, Kent Conducted by Brian Raynor Sunday: 3 pm meeting at Westerham with visit to Frith's birthplace followed by Evensong at St Mary's Church. Monday morning: Visit to Frith's childhood home and Sevenoaks School for presentation on his life, and lunch: Monday afternoon: Special tour of Knole House including portraits of Wycliffe, Cranmer and many others. For registration form, full details & prices please send sae to: K Wortley, Membership Secretary, e Tyndale Society, Barnyard, Purdy Street, Salthouse, NR25 7XA –––––––––––––––––––– ♦ ––––––––––––––––––––
Dates for Your Diary 2011 ♦ ursday 5
th
to Saturday 7th May Conference: 400th Annversary of the King James Bible, Ohio, USA See notice on page 77 for further details.
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The Ty nda l e So c i et y ( US /Can )
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New US Membership Applications 2010-11 Please complete & return to: The Tyndale Society (USA), PO Box 643, Unionville, PA19375, USA
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Joining the Tyndale Society Frequently Asked Questions: What is the Tyndale Society? The Tyndale Society is a registered charity which exists to tell people about William Tyndale’s great work and influence, and to stimulate study of the man who gave us our English Bible. Who can be a Member? Membership of the Tyndale Society is open to all who share an interest in the life and work of William Tyndale. Where are Members based? Our membership is worldwide, with a large proportion of members based in the UK and the USA and some as far afield as Japan and Australia. What are the categories of Membership? Individual Membership (£22.50/$45 per year) Reformation Membership (£45.00/$90 per year) What will I receive if I join? All members receive: Two issues of the Tyndale Society Journal per year Regular invitations to conferences, lectures and social events Invitations to tour historical sites not generally open to the public 25% Discount on advertising in the Tyndale Society Journal In addition, Reformation (US ‘Scholarly’) Members receive: One issue of Reformation per year (representing a 50% discount) What Payment Methods are Accepted? Standing order, Cheque payment in £ (GBP) or $ (US Dollars) Cash (if you join the Society at a membership event) So how do I apply to become a Member? Fill in the form opposite or overleaf (depending on country) and send it to: UK/EUR/ROW: Karen Wortley, Membership Secretary, The Tyndale Society, Barnyard, Purdy Street, Salthouse, NR25 7XA. US/CAN ONLY: The Tyndale Society (USA), PO Box 643, Unionville, PA 19375, USA email: tyndale.sec@btinternet.com
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T h e T y n da le S o c ie t y ( U K / E U)
New UK Membership Applications 2010-11
Please complete & return to: K Wortley, Membership Secretary, The Tyndale Society, Barnyard, Purdy St., Salthouse, NR25 7XA
Member Name: _______________________________________________ Member Address: _____________________________________________ Town: ______________________________________________________ County: _____________________________________________________ Post Code: __________________________________________________ Telephone Number: ___________________________________________ Email Address: _______________________________________________ Standing Order Mandate To: The Branch Manager Bank/Building Society Name: ____________________________ Branch Address: ____________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Post Code: ________________________________________________ Name of Account Holder: _____________________________________ Account No: _______________________ Sort Code: _ _ / _ _ / _ _ Please pay: The Tyndale Society, National Westminster Bank, Branch Sort Code: 60-70-03 Account No: 86110683
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Tyndale Society OďŹƒcers: Chairman Emeritus Chairman Vice-Chair USA Treasurer Secretary to the Trustees Membership Secretary
Professor David Daniell
Mary Clow, maryclow@aol.com
Dr Barry T. Ryan, drbarrytryan@aol.com
Philip Dickson, philip.dickson@hertford.ox.ac.uk Rochelle Givoni, Rochelle.Givoni@ctl.com
Karen Wortley, tyndale.sec@btinternet.com
Key Contacts for Members and Friends: Membership/Subscription Worldwide Tyndale Society, Hertford College, Catte Street, Oxford OX1 3BW, UK email: tyndale.sec@btinternet.com Phone: +44 (0)207 221 0303 USA Tyndale Society, PO BOX 643, Unionville, PA19375 email: (subject: Tyndale Society): SatTeacher@aol.com Phone: +1 610 869 9087
European Representative Mrs Valerie Offord email: valerie.offord@bluewin.ch
UK Contact Mrs Priscilla Frost, 27 Ditchley Road, Charlbury, Oxon. OX7 3QS, UK. email: info@oxconf.co.uk Phone: +44 (0) 1608 811818. Fax: +44 (0) 1608 819010,
Administration Mrs Gillian Guest, email: PMG7515@aol.com
Ploughboy Group Revd. David Ireson, 50 Camperdown Terrace, Exmouth, Devon, EX8 1EQ email: decuman@hotmail.co.uk Phone: +44 (0) 1395 263307 Webmaster Dr Deborah Pollard, email: d.e.pollard@qmul.ac.uk, www.tyndale.org
ISSN: 1357-4167