Tyndale's one note

I have been moved this morning reading John Piper's account of the passion of William Tyndale. Piper's theme is the one note that Tyndale sang:

Stephen Vaughn was an English merchant commissioned by Thomas Cromwell, the king’s adviser, to find William Tyndale and inform him that King Henry VIII desired him to come back to England out of hiding on the continent. In a letter to Cromwell from Vaughan dated June 19, 1531, Vaughan wrote about Tyndale (1494-1536) these simple words: “I find him always singing one note.”1 That one note was this: Will the King of England give his official endorsement to a vernacular Bible for all his English subjects? If not, Tyndale will not come. If so, Tyndale will give himself up to the king and never write another book.

This was the driving passion of his life—to see the Bible translated from the Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English available for every person in England to read.

Piper gives many more details of the life and death of this courageous Bible translator. I cannot compare myself with Tyndale, but I do share his passion "to see the Bible translated from the Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English available for every person ... to read." Ironically, Piper encourages others today to adopt the ESV as their main Bible, but the ESV is not translated into "ordinary English" as several scholarly reviews and my own observations and those of others show. The ESV honors Tyndale in retaining many of his translation wordings, but if Tyndale were translating for English speakers today, his passion would still be to translate "from the Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English available for every person ... to read." But "ordinary English" today uses different words and syntax from what was ordinary English in Tyndale's day. Tyndale would translate into today's "ordinary English."

May more of us have Tyndale's passion "to see the Bible translated from the Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English available for every person ... to read."

HT: Justin Taylor

Categories: Bible translation, William Tyndale, John Piper, ESV, natural English, ordinary English, vernacular. translation