Tyndale William - The Obedience of a Christian Man

THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN

WILLIAM TYNDALE was born in Gloucestershire in 1494. He spent over ten years at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and may then have gone on to Cambridge. By the early 1520s Tyndale was back in Gloucestershire serving as tutor to the children of Sir John and Lady Walsh, for whom he translated Erasmuss Enchiridion. He was ordained priest. Using Erasmuss newly-printed Greek text, Tyndale began to translate the New Testament into English, at that time a forbidden, heretical undertaking. Having failed in an attempt to gain the support of the Bishop of London for his endeavours to print an English New Testament for the first time, he left England for Germany in about 1524. In Cologne in 1525 his printing was stopped by the authorities. In 1526, Tyndale, now living in Worms, printed his English translation of the New Testament, which was smuggled into England in bales of cloth. It was swiftly denounced in Britain as heretical and many copies were burned. In Antwerp in 1530, having by then learnt Hebrew (impossible in England), he produced his Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), which, like his other works, was then smuggled into Britain. His knowledge of Hebrew also lay behind his revised edition of the New Testament in 1534, this time including prologues and notes. In May 1535, having completed his translation of the remainder of the Old Testament historical books, Tyndale was tricked into arrest and imprisoned in Vilvoorde Castle near Brussels. He was interrogated by Catholic heresy-hunters for sixteen months. Denounced as a heretic, he was passed to the secular authorities, and, on 6 October 1536, having been stripped of his priesthood, he was publicly strangled and burned.

His treatise The Obedience of a Christian Man was first printed in Antwerp in October 1528. In it he set down the religious principles that made it one of the most important books of the first phase of the English Reformation. His Parable of the Wicked Mammon, published earlier that same year, and other books, strongly influenced English religious life. Seventy-five years after his death, his translation of the New Testament was taken almost unchanged, and what he had translated of the Old Testament only slightly altered, into the King James Version (the Authorized Version).

DAVID DANIELL is Emeritus Professor in the University of London, and Honorary Fellow of Hertford College Oxford. He read English, and then Theology, at Oxford. His Ph.D., in Shakespeare, is from London. He has published extensively on Shakespeare (including the Arden edition of Julius Caesar), on John Buchan and on the English Bible. His editions of Tyndales New and Old Testaments and his biography of Tyndale were published by Yale University Press. He is Chairman of the Tyndale Society, which has members worldwide.

WILLIAM TYNDALE

The Obedience of a Christian Man

Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by
DAVID DANIELL

PENGUIN BOOKS

In memory of my father,
Eric Daniell, 18921960

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published in Antwerp, 1528

Published in Penguin Books 2000

Introduction and editorial matter copyright David Daniell, 2000

All rights reserved

The moral right of the editor has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 9781101492413