4 THE FIRST PRINTED ENGLISH BIBLES H aving realized the importance of translating the Bible into German Martin Luther wasted no time in getting on with this task In September 1522 Luther published his German translation of the New Testament The work which represented a translation di rectly from the original Greek into German was elegantly produced at the press of Hans Luft in Wittenberg It was a landmark in European religious history and can be shown to have been of consid erable importance in consolidating the progress of the Reformation in Germany In the summer of 1523 the same press produced Luther s German translation of the Pentateuch the first five books of the Old Testament There were many who cast admiring glances in its direction and wondered if it might be possible to equal Luther s achievement in their own native languages One such admirer was William Tyndale 1494 1536 now widely acknowledged as the most formative influ ence on the text of the King James Bible 67 IN THE BEGINNING The First Printed English Bibles WILLIAM TYNDALE WAS born in Gloucestershire and studied at Magdalen College School in Oxford from which he went on to attend Magdalen Hall now Hertford College Oxford That Tyndale what happened next is studied at Oxford at least is reasonably a little obscure Traditional accounts represent as migrating to Oxford s foremost intellectual rival in the University of Cambridge at which he became a member group Some of the more romantic accounts of this period invite us to imagine Tyndale gathered together with many of the great Cambridge reformers of this era swapping jokes and biblical texts while quaffing their pewter mugs of ale and plotting the Lutheranization of England As is the way with most matters the real is rather less pleasing than the imagined We have no documentary evidence to suggest that Tyndale ever attended Cambridge other than a slightly garbled recol lection in John Foxe s Book of Martyrs dating from thirty years later about the White Horse group than is generally Far less is realized we are largely dependent upon some rather nostalgic recollections of John Foxe for our accounts of this group let us assume that Tyndale did indeed leave Oxford for Cambridge What reasons might be offered for this move The first and most obViOUS is that by the early 1520s Cambridge was to be far more sympathetic to the ideas of the Reformation than Oxford Luther s books which had to be imported from continental Europe through the Flemish port of Antwerp were much more acces sible in Cambridge than Oxford Many of the leading lights of the English Reformation had links with Cambridge around this time most notably Thomas Cranmer It is entirely possible that the reform minded Tyndale sensed that he might benefit from this more sympathetic atmosphere Yet primary concern was with the translation of Scripture and such translation required knowledge of the three great languages of antiquity Greek Hebrew and Latin As we have seen writers such as Erasmus were actively campaigning for the direct engagement with the text of the Bible in its original languages as the foundation of Christian theology Erasmus s opponents had little time for such matters theology they held rested on philosophical analysis While there is no historical evidence to suggest that they debated over the number of angels that could dance on a pinhead other important and sophisticated theological questions are known to have engaged God reverse time and make a prostitute into a their attention virgin Or could Christ have become incarnate as a donkey or per haps a cucumber rather than a man While others saw such heady discussions as an intellectual feast Tyndale regarded them as pointless Tyndale himself was more than a little irritated by his experience of theology at Oxford not least because it seemed to give the study of Aristotle priority over mastering the Bible In an autobiographical fragment Tyndale recalled how the Oxford authorities ordained that no man shall look in the Scripture until he be nooselled spoon fed or perhaps nourished in heathen learning eight or nine years and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of Scripture For him theology was worthy of its name only when it took its lead directly from the Bible Both Oxford and Cambridge were well placed to encourage and sustain the study of Hebrew and Greek Richard Croke who served as professor of Greek at Leipzig had settled in Cambridge in 1518 at Oxford a year later Cardinal Wolsey established a The tradition of the classical languages continued into the century As we shall see presently both Oxford and Cambridge were able to supply King James I with an ample supply of Greek and Hebrew scholars at the beginning of the next century Luther taught himself Hebrew using Johannes Reuchlin s 1506 primer De rndimen tis hebraicis On the Basics of Hebrew might not Tyndale have done the same Yet acquiring a knowledge of the biblical languages was perhaps Tyndale s least pressing difficulty at Oxford the purpose for which he acquired it appears to have been widely ridiculed 68 69 THE PIONEER WILLIAM TYNDALE IN THE BEGINNING The First Printed English Bibles Oxford was not interested in translating the Bible nor indeed any other work into English It was the accepted wisdom of the age the 1525 registers of Guillelmus Roy ex Londino a clear reference to William Roye of London Roye being a noted advocate of reform that Latin the language of the culture of academia was the only language worth knowing Oxford dons might use English in speaking in England at this time The 1524 registers make reference to one Guillelmus Daltici Guillelmus is the Latin form of to college servants otherwise Latin was the of choice This academic commitment to the Latin language proved to be a mixed blessing for the progress of the Reformation in England It meant that Luther s Latin works could be read at Oxford or Cambridge without difficulty thus allowing his ideas to discussed at both universities though they were received more readily at Cambridge Yet part of Luther s agenda was relentlessly populist Luther wrote works of theology and translated the Bible into his native German so that Herr Omnes Luther s term equivalent to the English every man might be empowered and illuminated Most academics tended might conceivably be a pseudonym of around with the order of letters in his name and replacing n a neat explanation with c But it is not