Christopher Yetzer posted the following article (see below) on the Facebook group Textus Receptus Academy, October 11, 2024. Brother Yetzer is a Baptist missionary, a native Ohioan, preaching in Milan, Italy. In addition to his missionary work, he is doing excellent research and writing concerning the traditional texts and the King James translation of the Bible. The writing below is from Brother Christopher Yetzer, posted with his permission.
Stop misusing Tyndale: A response to Nathan Deatrick’s article My Plea for the Plowboy
While I appreciate Bro. Deatrick’s passion and do not question his sincerity or integrity, I do see some issues in his history. The number one problem with the article is Deatrick’s faulty Wardinian premise: Tyndale translated into the plowboy’s English and so should we.
“[Tyndale’s] heart yearned to translate the Bible into such a simple vernacular that the plowboy of England could read and understand the very words of the living God. My plea is that Tyndale’s passion would ignite my generation to such a degree that the plowboy of today can have God’s Word in the English of his day.”[1]
This thought is based on a quote attributed to William Tyndale found in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: “If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.”[2] But did Tyndale say this, and if so, what did he mean?
A 2016 research article by Jan J. Martin concluded, “the source of the ploughboy anecdote cannot be substantiated. Moreover, Foxe’s amplifying editing of the story creates suspicion that the conversation between Tyndale and the learned man may be a fictional construct designed to further Foxe’s particular interpretation of English history and Tyndale’s role in it.”[3] Even if one were to grant the words to Tyndale (not at all out of the possibility given the widespread use of the plowboy allegory during the time), we still ought to carefully consider the context. Would Tyndale have meant that he translated the Bible at the plowboy’s reading level and is that what he did?
ESV editor Leland Ryken argued that the vast majority of those who use this supposed Tyndale quote actually abuse it. “The statement about the plowboy is not a comment about Tyndale’s preferred style for an English Bible. It is not a designation of teenage farm boys as a target audience for a niche Bible. Those misconceptions are the projections of modern partisans for a colloquial and simplified English Bible.” He goes on to explain that, “It is instead a comment about how widely Tyndale wanted the English Bible to be disseminated in English society. Tyndale was not making a bow to farm boys. He was using a particular example to make the general point that he wanted the whole cross section of the English population to have access to the Bible.”[4]
Looking at Tyndale’s translation, we can see that Ryken was right. According to Nikolaos Lavidas’ 2021 book The Diachrony of Written Language Contact: A Contrastive Approach published by Brill, he states, “Tyndale’s texts, translations and polemical texts, contains examples of syntactic archaisms, that is, borrowings and re-introductions of obsolete forms from an earlier period of the language—what one would characterize as evidence of a type of written contact with earlier forms of English. One such example is the use of the early/archaic second person singular and plural pronouns in Tyndale’s texts: the second person plural pronoun had begun to appear in all, singular and plural, contexts in Early Middle English. Tyndale used the verbal forms for second singular and plural number productively, as well as the distinction between the subject pronoun ye and the object pronoun you, following earlier texts. However, the first attestations of the nominative you, instead of ye, appeared in the 14th century and was productively used in the literary language by the 1540s.”[5]
David Norton’s book The English Bible as Literature, published by Cambridge, notes that Sir Thomas More jibed at Tyndale’s deficiencies in producing comprehensive English vocabulary, saying, “all England list now to go to school with Tyndale to learn English” and “Tyndale must in his English translation take his English words as they signify in English, rather than as the words signify in the tongue out of which they were taken in to the English”.[6] Tyndale knew that his translation would not be comprehensive to everyone: “In time to come (if God have appointed us thereunto) we will give it his full shape, and put out if aught be added superfluously, and add to if aught be overseen through negligence, and will enforce to bring to compendiousness that which is now translated at the length, and to give light where it is required, and to seek in certain places more proper English, and with a table to expound the words which are not commonly used and show how the Scripture useth many words which are otherwise understood of the common people, and to help with a declaration where one tongue taketh not another; and will endeavor ourselves, as it were, to seeth it better, and to make it more apt for the weak stomachs; desiring them that are learned and able, to remember their duty, and to help thereunto, and to bestow unto the edifying of Christ’s body (which is the congregation of them that believe) those gifts which they have received of God for the same purpose.”[7]
Tyndale saw the need to create words like “scapegoat” and “Passover”. Thomas More also complained about some of Tyndale’s word choices. One example was the French word “seniors” in substitute of the common English word “priests”. Tyndale humbly replied, “of a truth senior is no very good English”.[8]
Modernly, the conjunction “but” is used to express contradiction; however, in early English, it was used as another way of saying “except” or “unless”. The book I Never Knew That Was in the Bible! says that this sense of ‘but’ was “beginning to be archaic when Tyndale made his translation.”[9] In Mark 6:5 where Wycliffe had used the word “save” Tyndale chose to use the moderately out-of-date form of “but”.
The 16th century scholar John Cheke insisted in English words being used in English books. “In writing English none but English words should be used, thinking it a dishonour to our mother tongue to be beholden to other nations for their words and phrases to express our minds. Upon this account, Cheke seemed to dislike the English translation of the Bible, because in it were so many foreign words.”[10]
Just to be clear, I am not trying to take away anything from what Tyndale accomplished or to suggest that he was aiming at incomprehension. In his 1530 preface he clearly stated: “Which thing only moved me to translate the New Testament. Because I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to stablish the lay people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.”[11]
Targeting “lay people,” however, isn’t quite the same as Foxe’s “plowboy”. Translating into English does not by default mean translating for the most ignorant English reader in the country. Everything we have shown historically to this point coincides with Tyndale’s desire that people might read the Bible in English, but it also shows that he did not translate on the lowest level.
I would personally argue that comprehension and accuracy are not the only objectives of a translator. While I disagree a lot with Dr. Wallace, he has noted that the main error of the Revised Version was the lack of beauty, “the scholars who produced it were far more interested in a literal translation than in a beautiful translation. In spite of all the scholarly clamor for this new translation, most people—including clergy—still preferred the King James.” He says today that a good translation should aim to “be as accurate as the formal equivalent translations, as readable as the dynamic equivalent translations, and more elegant than either.”[12]
John Selden, a friend of several KJV translators, in reference to the language of English Bibles (which indirectly would include Tyndale), said, “There is no Book so translated as the Bible for the purpose. If I translate a French Book into English, I turn it into English Phrase, not into French English [Il fait froid] I say ’tis cold, not, it makes cold, but the Bible is rather translated into English Words, than into English Phrase. The Hebraisms are kept, and the Phrase of that Language is kept: As for Example [He uncovered her Shame] which is well enough, so long as Scholars have to do with it; but when it comes among the Common People, Lord, what Gear do they make of it!”[13]
David Norton summarizes the situation in the 1500s well, “The English people of the sixteenth century were learning a new English. However simple the language of the Protestant translators may now seem (archaisms apart), it had much in it that the people had to learn before they could understand and appreciate it.”[14] Oh, the irony that anyone would present Tyndale as a contrarian to modern use of the KJV because of the English language. As I have discussed in other places, overall the KJV is possibly more intelligible to you today than it was to the average non-university man in the 1600s.
I welcome conversation on this topic. I intend to respond to other arguments in the article in the future (D.V.).
Also, see the essay “Bibles and Plowboys” by Bill Fortenberry at Increasing Learning.
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