A Talk by Philip Ashford on 14 January 2025.
Report by Stan Morrissey.
We kicked off the New Year with an account by Philip Ashford. Philip is well-known to us, being a past teacher at Katherine Lady Berkeley School and was on our committee for many years. He stood in for the advertised speaker who had to cancel, and we are grateful to him for helping at very short notice.
William Tyndale (1494?-1536) was the first translator of the Bible from the original Greek into English, providing text that has been used in Bible versions ever since. Previous translations had been from Greek to Latin, introducing many errors which were then perpetuated and taught as dogma.
Tyndale believed that the clergy were largely ignorant of the Scriptural tenets of Christian faith, simply repeating without understanding, and concentrated on Church doctrine when preaching. He wanted to create a Bible in English, faithful to the earliest versions “that even a ploughboy could understand”.
Tyndale was far from the only one who criticised the Church. In 1550 Bishop Hooper found that many incumbents were drunken, evil and inefficient. There was widespread ignorance of the Bible – many could not say who authored the Lord’s prayer, how many commandments there are, or even which book to find them in.
So who was Tyndale? Philip warned us that there is limited direct evidence of Tyndale’s life, We have no picture of him from his lifetime and much of what we know dates from well after his death.
Tyndale was allegedly born in Melksham Court, Stinchcombe (other contenders are North Nibley and Cam). His father, Thomas, was a wool merchant from South Shields. We do not know where William went to school. Philip surmised that young William may even have attended Katherine Lady Berkeley School, which was founded in 1384, but some churches had schoolrooms (Hawkesbury Church is a good local example).
Young William was destined for good education and attended Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1506 at the age of 12. He attained a BA in 1512 and MA in 1515 so was clearly precocious. He could have studied theology but was disturbed to find that the course did not include any study of Scripture. He was employed 1522-23 by Sir John Walsh as tutor and chaplain at Little Sodbury, where he started his translation of the New Testament. He began open-air preaching, first locally in Little Sodbury then on College Green in Bristol.
Tyndale argued that Scripture told us that all were equal, that priests were not needed to intercede with God and that “You cannot serve both God and Mammon”. In a hierarchic world, where everyone had a master and the higher clergy were well remunerated, this was a direct attack on the entire structure of society. He opposed accepted Catholic doctrine, saying that praying to saints was not in Scripture, and that at mass the host did not become the body of Christ but was simply symbolic. His arguments upset so many influential people that he was charged with heresy. Although cleared, he was now identified as a dangerous troublemaker.
With such local notoriety Tyndale sought employment in London but his reputation followed him and he moved abroad, first to Hamburg, then to Wittenburg where Luther’s teaching had already taken hold. He continued with his translation, which was eventually published in Worms and Antwerp.
Tyndale firmly believed that everyone should be able to read, or have read to them, the Scriptures in their mother tongue as the direct word of God. Accordingly his translation was written simply with monosyllabic words so that even the uneducated could understand what it was saying and “take God as his teacher”.
Tyndale never managed to finish his translation of the Old Testament, but it was completed by Coverdale and published in 1530. Tyndale was then living in Antwerp with Thomas Poyntz, probably part of the same Poyntz family who held Acton Court though this has not been proven. He continued to publish inflammatory materials, was eventually betrayed to the authorities, arrested and defrocked. Finally he was executed by being strangled and his body burned at the stake in 1536.
A final victory for the Catholic Church? Far from it. Having separated the Church in England from Papal authority Henry VIII ordered that a bible in English should be used in every church and a copy held in every household. What version? Tyndale’s translation, supplemented by Coverdale. Later, James I established a new version (the King James Bible) which became the only authorised English version to be used anywhere, including in the New World, and is still used today. 97% of its text is taken from Tyndale’s translation.
Tyndale is now seen as a key figure in the development of the modern church. There are many monuments to him on the continent and in England. Locally there are plaques at Little Sodbury, Reading, Oxford and Bristol, a statue in Bristol’s Millenium Square and, visible from afar, the Tyndale Monument above North Nibley, built in 1866 by Lord Berkeley and other landowners.