Tyndale, More, and the English vocabulary of the Bible

Verified against a primary or scholarly source

1. The 1408/9 constitution: adopted by the provincial council at Oxford and ratified at St Paul's, London, on 14 January 1408/9; no one to translate scripture into English "on his own authority", and no such translation to be read until "approved by the diocesan of the place or if need be by a provincial council" (Pollard, no. I, pp. 79–81, Latin and translation). Edward Lee's letter of 2 December [1525] cites the "constitutions prouincall" against English Bibles (Pollard, no. VII).
2. Tyndale's movements: born 1491 to 1494, probably in Gloucestershire; BA 1512 at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and MA 1515 (the timeline says from Oxford University; the Society's FAQ gives 1488 to 1494 for the birth); London 1523; left England 1524; Cologne 1525; Worms 1526; back in Antwerp from late 1529 ("Tyndale's translations and writings"); lodging with Thomas Poyntz from the summer of 1534; arrested in the spring of 1535 through Henry Phillips (Tyndale Society timeline and pages). His own account of Tunstall ("W. T. To the Reader", 1530, Mombert, p. 5): he hoped "to come to this mannes service", brought Sir Harry Gilford, the king's comptroller, "an oration of Isocrates which I had translated out of greke in to English", and was told "his house was full"; he stayed in London "almoste an yere" and found "no rowme in my lorde of londons palace to translate the new testament ... no place to do it in all englonde". The prologue does not say that he asked Tunstall to support a translation.
3. Cologne: three thousand copies in the press, stopped at quire K on Cochlaeus's information through Hermann Rinck and the city council; the two Englishmen took the printed quires up the Rhine to Worms (Cochlaeus 1549, in Pollard, no. VI, translation pp. 107–108; Cochlaeus does not name the two or the printer, and Pollard's introduction, p. 4, names "Tyndale and his amanuensis, William Roy"). Cochlaeus left three accounts, of 1533, 1538 and 1549, "the fullest" being the last (Pollard, p. 4, n. 1). Roye's role: Tyndale, 1528: help "both to write and to helpe me to compare the textes together" (Pollard, no. XII). The surviving Cologne fragment: 31 leaves, prologue and Matthew to the middle of chapter 22, with marginal notes, bequeathed by Thomas Grenville (Pollard, introduction, pp. 4–5).
4. Worms: an octavo, identified as Peter Schoeffer's from its types and illustrations, without the Cologne marginal notes (Pollard, pp. 5–6). Tyndale's name is not on the Stuttgart title page, the only one that survives (Werrell). Tyndale's own reason for leaving his name off: Christ's counsel "to doo theyr good deades secretly" (preface, 1528, Pollard, no. XII). The British Library copy is complete except for the title page and was sold by Bristol Baptist College to the British Library by an agreement of 21 April 1994 (West). Three copies survive (Pollard 1911 names Bristol and St Paul's; the Württembergische Landesbibliothek's catalogue says it identified the Stuttgart copy, the only complete one with a title page, in autumn 1996). The British Library catalogue assigns the edition "to the press of Peter Schoeffer" from its Schwabacher types.
5. Sources of the translation: primarily the Greek, with Luther's German, the Vulgate and Erasmus's Latin as aids (Pollard, pp. 5–6); the Greek text "in so far as Erasmus had been able to compile this" (Tyndale Society, "Tyndale's translations and writings"; also Huntington and Marsh 2011). The 1526 epilogue: "I had no man to counterfet ..." and "a thing begunne rather then fynnesshed" (Offor).
6. Suppression: Tunstall's order, thirty days to surrender all copies (Foxe 1563 in Pollard, no. XV), dated in the Latin "24. die mensis Octobris" 1526 and in Foxe's English "the xxiii. of October" (Pollard, p. 135; the script and post use the Latin date); copies burned at a sermon at St Paul's Cross at the end of October 1526, "a few copies" in Shamir's account, whose details "are not known" (Shamir 2013, pp. 367, 371; Tyndale Society); Tunstall's "more than two thousand" corruptions, which Cochlaeus reports as hearsay ("Ferunt ...", "supra duo Milia deprauationum atque peruersitatum"), in the Latin only (Pollard, p. 103; Pollard's translation leaves the sentence out); Ridley's letter of 24 February [1527] (Pollard, no. XIII); the royal proclamation of June 1530 and the instrument of 24 May 1530 naming "the translation also of Scripture corrupted by William Tyndall, as well in the Olde Testamente as in the Newe" (Pollard, no. XXII).
7. More and Tyndale: More's Dialogue, dated 1528 on its title page and published in the summer of 1529, book 3, chapter 8, names "prestys", "chyrch" and "charyte" rendered "senyours", "congregacyon" and "loue" (Pollard, no. XIV, p. 128; Walter 1850). Those are More's spellings; the 1526 print has "seniours" or "senyours", "congregacion" and "love" (Offor). Tyndale's Answer, printed about spring 1531, defends "congregation" for ecclesia (Parker Society, 1850, p. 13). More's Confutacyon printed 1532.
8. The Pentateuch: the Genesis colophon of 17 January 1530 with the false "Malborow" and "Hans Luft"; printed in Antwerp; Genesis and Numbers gothic, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy roman; Kronenberg (1919) attributed the Hans Luft books to Hoochstraten, Valkema Blouw (1996) to de Keyser and Grapheus (Biblia Sacra, five edition records). Eleven woodcuts of the tabernacle in Exodus, beginning with "The forme of the arke of wittnesse" on fol. XLIII (Mombert, p. xxxviii, who found them "doubtless identical" to the cuts in Vorsterman's Dutch Bible of 1528; spelling as on the Princeton leaf, canvas 283, where Mombert prints "witnesse"). Princeton's record gives the printer as Hoochstraten, names "Martin De Keyser and Joannes Grapheus" in its exhibition title, and describes the cuts as "based on cuts by Hans Holbein"; it cites STC 2350 and ESTC S1193.
9. Tyndale used the Hebrew, with Luther's German, the Septuagint and the Vulgate; Slater's conclusion that he probably drafted from the German and checked against the Hebrew; "the first version in English made from the Hebrew" (Slater 1906, pp. 52–54). That he learned Hebrew only after leaving England is Slater's inference: "neither from Christians, Jews, nor books did Tyndale learn anything of Hebrew in England" (pp. 17–18); the Tyndale Society says only that he "somehow managed to learn Hebrew".
10. The 1526 and 1530 readings in section 3 were found in Offor and Mombert, and the Wycliffite, Vulgate and Luther readings in Forshall and Madden and in Mombert's apparatus (research/primary-texts.md). These are editions read through OCR. A second check against the same editions and the Princeton leaves corrected spellings and punctuation in several quotations, Wycliffite readings in five rows, and two attributions (the Exodus 6:3 margin note, which is from Matthew's Bible of 1537, and the Wycliffite question at Genesis 4:9). Read any reading again in its edition before it goes on screen. Checking pass 1 read every Wycliffite reading in section 3 again in Forshall and Madden (all match; it added EV and LV labels and restored the yogh at Genesis 25:31, "ry3tis" and "ri3t", which the OCR had turned into j), the 1534 and 1611 readings in the Hexapla, and the 1526 readings in Offor, Fry's page images and, for Matthew, Arber's facsimile of the Cologne sheets of 1525. Luke 4:18 in 1526 checked on the facsimile page (fol. lxxix recto), and John 18:28, "eate Pascha", on fol. cxlviii recto. On the original 1530 leaves in the Princeton copy: the table of words at the end of Genesis, with the gloss "Iehovah is goddes name/ nether is any creature so called" (canvases 176 and 177); the Genesis colophon, with virgules, "Malborow in the lande of Hesse/ by me Hans Luft/" (canvas 180); Exodus 12:8, 12:11 and 12:13 with the margin gloss "The lambe vvas called passeouer that the very name itself shuld put thē in remebraunce vvhat it signified" (canvas 236; the gloss differs from Mombert's in three words, and this copy's side notes may be pen facsimiles: see Image notes and item 31); Exodus 25:17, "merciseate" (canvas 281); the shewbread gloss "Shevvbred because it vvas alvvay in the presence and sight of the Lorde" (canvas 282, the same in Mombert, p. 239); the woodcuts of the ark and of the table of shewbread (canvases 283 and 284); Leviticus 7:37 (canvas 390); Leviticus 16:6 to 15 (canvas 424).
11. Every OED date and revision status in section 3 (research/oed-factsheets.md).
12. 1534 and 1611 readings: "peacemakers", "Fyght the good fyght", "the broken harted", and "ester" kept in most places in 1534, with "paschall lambe" at Matthew 26:17 and John 18:28 and "pascall lambe" at Mark 14:12 (Hexapla); "church", "elders", "charity" (1 Corinthians 13), "Repent yee" (1611; modern editions "Repent ye"), "the feast of the Passeouer", and "Easter" only at Acts 12:4 in the King James text (Hexapla and the standard text, which also has "congregation" once in the New Testament, at Acts 13:43, and "passover" in all four Gospels, 1 Corinthians 5:7 and Hebrews 11:28).
13. The 1604 rules 1, 3 and 14 (Pollard, pp. 53–55).
14. Nielson and Skousen: 18 sampled passages from the parts of the Bible Tyndale translated; New Testament about 84 percent; Old Testament about 76 percent; earlier estimates from 18 percent (Butterworth) to up to 90 percent (Westcott) (abstract, verbatim, rechecked through OpenAlex by checking pass 1; the article is closed access and was not opened).
15. Prison and death: the letter, in Latin, signed "W. Tindalus", asking for warmer clothes, a lamp and "Bibliam Hebraicam, Grammaticam Hebraicam, et Vocabularium Hebraicum" (Demaus 1904, pp. 535–538, with facsimile; Arblaster places it in the Brussels State Archive); the deputization of Ruard Tapper on 5 August 1536, the degradation shortly after, the 501 days of keep in the Comptes des Confiscations, and the Leuven theologians (Arblaster); strangled and then burned (Tyndale Society).

Contested, flag in the post or caption

16. The date of execution. Traditionally 6 October 1536. Arblaster argues that "the traditional commemoration of Tyndale's execution on 6 October has no basis", explains it as Foxe listing Tyndale in his calendar "as the sixth martyr whom he thought had died in the month of October", notes that Hall and Bale put the execution in September (of 1535, "a year early"), and, from 501 days of keep and an arrest during the Bergen op Zoom fair (probably 24 April 1535), places it on about 6 September 1536. The Tyndale Society gives "late September or early October, 1536", and Daniell, as quoted by Wikipedia, "one of the first days of October 1536". The script says only "in 1536".
17. The date of the arrest. The Tyndale Society says "the spring of 1535". Arblaster argues that it fell while the English merchants were at the Bergen op Zoom fair, between Easter (28 March) and 15 May 1535, probably on 24 April, so that any later May date is too late. Dates in late May given elsewhere were not checked. The script says only "in 1535".
18. The date of the Oxford council: Pollard gives 1408, with ratification in London on 14 January 1408/9. Nicholas Watson's standard study is titled "Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409" (Speculum 70, no. 4, 1995: 822–864, doi:10.2307/2865345; the article was not opened), and modern scholarship dates the Oxford meeting to 1407: "The Oxford constitutions were passed in November 1407" and confirmed in London in January 1409 (Kelly 2016, chapter 5), and Powell (2014) and Forrest (2013) give 1407 for the Oxford meeting and 1409 for the London one. Pollard's "1408" is therefore probably a year late. The script and captions use the London ratification, January 1409, which every source agrees on; the post says "adopted by a church council at Oxford" with no year.
19. The printer of the 1530 Pentateuch: Hoochstraten (Kronenberg 1919, STC) or de Keyser and Grapheus (Valkema Blouw 1996). Caption it "printed in Antwerp" with no printer's name.
20. How independent the Pentateuch is of Luther. Slater (1906): a first draft from the German, checked against the Hebrew. Hammond (1980) reopened the question; his conclusion was not read. The script says only that Tyndale learned Hebrew and that some words follow Luther's.
21. The King James figure. Its limits: eighteen passages; only the books Tyndale translated (for the Old Testament these are usually taken to include Joshua to 2 Chronicles, first printed in Matthew's Bible of 1537, which Pollard says "has been conjectured with every appearance of reason to be Tyndale's continuation of his translation"; the abstract does not list the books); the 76 percent is phrased in the abstract as Tyndale's words "retained", the 84 percent as his "contribution ... of the text", and the two may not be the same measure, so the caption and the post now give each in the abstract's terms; the method beyond the abstract was not read, so the brief states no detail of it (how passages were chosen, how words were counted or matched). That the later Bibles carried his wording to 1611 is Pollard's judgment, not the study's ("must be looked upon as revisions of his", Pollard, p. 6). Popular sources also give "83 percent": Daniell's The Bible in English (2003), p. 448, as cited by Wikipedia, and Juhász (2010), as a search snippet, report 83 percent, the second as the figure for the whole Bible; neither was opened. Daniell's "nine-tenths" (via Mansbridge) is another figure. Use 84 and 76 with the citation, never 83 or 90. Gergely Juhász's chapter (The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 100–123) is reported in a search snippet to call the figures "only indicative" because the sample is small and the passages were chosen for their familiarity; the chapter was not opened (academia.edu returned HTTP 403), so this criticism stays out of the film.
22. The ploughboy saying. First printed by Foxe in 1563 (p. 570), 27 years after Tyndale's death ("nearly" thirty, in Martin's words), with no definitive source; the idea appears in Erasmus's Paraclesis of 1516 (Martin 2016). Not used in the script; if used, attribute it to Foxe.
23. The British Library's price: "one million pounds" (Werrell, Tyndale Society); the British Library's former gallery page (archived copy of 3 November 2017, web.archive.org/web/20171103181025/http://www.bl.uk:80/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/tyndale.html, opened by checking pass 1) says it bought the copy in 1994 for a little over a million pounds, and that Lord Oxford had paid 20 guineas for it in the 18th century. West gives no price. Not used.
24. OED "broken-hearted": the OED's earliest evidence is dated 1526, Tyndale, but the 1526 text reads "troubled in there hertes" at Luke 4:18, and "broken harted" is first found in the 1534 revision. The OED quotation was not seen. Likewise "two-edged" (OED 1526) has a Wycliffite antecedent, the compound "tweyne eggid" (twain-edged) at Hebrews 4:12, and "sin-offering", "trespass-offering" and "meat offering" (OED 1535) are already in the 1530 Pentateuch as printed by Mombert. All three are on the original leaves of the Princeton copy (Leviticus 7:37, canvas 390: "of burntoffrynges, of meatoffrynges, of synne offrynges, of trespaceoffrynges"; Leviticus 16, canvas 424: "synne offrynge", "synneofferynge"). The OED quotations were not seen, so call them possible antedatings. The earliest places in the 1530 text are Exodus 29:14, "For it is a synneofferynge", and Exodus 29:41, "the meateoffrynge" (Mombert). In the same way "jot" (OED 1526) is already in the Cologne sheets of 1525, "one *Iott/ or one tytle of the lawe", with a margin note that glosses it (Arber's facsimile, p. 24), and so are "the sygnes of the tymes" and "my cōgregacion" (p. 50). The Cologne quarto was stopped in the press, and whether its sheets were ever issued is not known (Pollard, p. 5), so the brief keeps 1526 as the book these words are printed in and names the Cologne sheets as the first printing.

Unverified, check before publishing

25. Image rights still open (checking pass 1 opened each holder's page; see section 4, Rights): the Foxe woodcut has no scan with an open commercial licence (Manchester publishes its images under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and licenses commercial use; license it); the British Library claims copyright in its photograph of the John page, which Commons treats as PD-Art (license it for a UK or commercial release, or use Stuttgart); St Paul's offers no image and forbids reproduction without consent. The National Portrait Gallery's "There is no authentic portrait of Tyndale" is now confirmed on an archived copy of its NPG 1592 page (Image notes).
26. Which edition of Erasmus's Greek Tyndale used (often given as the third, 1522, after Daniell; not checked). The script says only "translated from the Greek", its caption names Erasmus's printed New Testament with no edition, and the post says "the Greek New Testament that Erasmus had printed".
27. Luther's exact 1522 wording at Matthew 26:41; the OED's dates for the phrases in section 3 (only single words were checked in the OED; phrases have no factsheet of their own).
28. David Daniell's statements are quoted here at second hand only: "one of the first days of October 1536" (via Wikipedia) and "nine-tenths" of the King James New Testament (via Mansbridge). Neither was checked in Daniell's books, and neither is used. The 1530 Passover gloss ends with an attack on "oure domme God the Pope"; quote only its first clause.
29. The footprint of Vilvoorde castle (the heritage inventory places it near the Tuchthuis, on the other bank of the Zenne) and the place of execution; the exact site of St Paul's Cross; the English House in Antwerp. The Vilvoorde memorial is checked: 1913, moved about 1990 (inventory, relict 70474).
30. Henry Phillips's motives and backers (unknown, per the Tyndale Society) and Foxe's report of the last words at the stake. Neither is used.
31. The side notes of the Princeton copy. Its copy note says about 36 leaves were "remargined at fore-edge with shoulder-notes supplied in excellent pen and ink facsimile" and does not list them. The Passover note on canvas 236 differs from Mombert's reprint in three words ("remebraunce", "siginfied", "benefices" against "remēbraunce", "signified", "benefites"); the shewbread note on canvas 282 matches Mombert. Until another copy confirms canvas 236's note, quote the Passover gloss in Mombert's wording (as the post now does) and do not show that margin as the 1530 print.
32. Catalogue numbers: STC 2824 for the Worms octavo and STC 2823 for the Cologne fragment were checked only against a project listing (University of Virginia, Tyndale abbreviations) and search results; VD16 B 4570 was not checked (the VD16 page did not render without scripts).