26 INTRODUCTIONthe hogs of hell shall feed upon."^4 More specifically, More wrote, "Tyndale has
wilfully mistranslated the scripture, and deceived blind unlearned people by
teaching what he knows to be false. His life is of likelihood as evil as his teach-
ing, worse it cannot be. He is a beast who teaches vice, a forewalker of an-
tichrist, a devil's limb."^5
Yet none of these attacks could erase Tyndale's genius of plain word and
humble ideal, nor hush his plea for a candle and a Hebrew dictionary to con-
tinue his heretical translations as he lingered for nearly two years in his light-
less cell. Tyndale's hope for a new audience coincided with that expressed by
his admired Erasmus, whose work Exhortations to the Diligent Study of Scrip-
ture Tyndale translated in 1529:I wold desire that all women should reade the gospell and Paules
episteles and I wold to God they were translated in to the tonges
of all men so that they might not only be read and knowne of the
scotes and yrishmen But also of the Turkes and the Sarracenes.
... I wold to God the plowman wold singe a texte of the scripture
at his plow-beme. And that the wever at his lowme with this
wold drive away the tediousness of tyme. I wold the wayfaringe-
man with this pastyme wold expelle the weriness of his iorney.^6
Tyndale's translation of scripture into the everyday English was to expose
the faithful to a forbidden text, a deed as heretical as revealing a proscribed
gnostic scripture or of affirming the prime authority of Hebrew Scripture,
which was routinely called "the corrupt original." For his crime, on October 6,
1536, William Tyndale was taken to the stake, strangled by the hangman, and
burned.
An epilogue to Tyndale's death and his unfinished labor of Bible transla-
tion came with the King James Bible, which accomplished under royal com-
mand what William Tyndale courageously desired to do on his own. The
preface to the James concludes with a line redeeming not only the vernacular
version but the notion of the word as light, the logos asphos, which is also the
spiritual essence of gnosticism: "Translation it is that openeth the window, to
let in the light."
- Quoted in MacGregor, Literary History of the Bible from the Middle Ages to the Present Day,
p.115. - Quoted in Mozley, William Tyndale, p. 217.
- Quoted in Barnstone, The Poetics of Translation, p. 204-