“It is noteworthy that Tyndale never thought to adopt such a strategy, despite his concern that the boy at the plow know the Bible. He understood perfectly well that many of the English words a faithful translation required him to employ would be unknown to many of his readers; however, his response to this problem was not to use only common words but to append to his translation a glossary of difficult terms. (At a time when real dictionaries were unheard of, this was a brilliant and innovative solution. Alas, Tyndale did not live to implement it.) Otherwise, readers would be in the lamentable situation of being unable to distinguish Tyndale’s words from those of the text; and if he intruded his own words—even if those words were only meant to clarify or explain the Bible’s—he would, by his own lights, have become a traitor rather than a translator.“...Wycliffe: ‘The faithful whom he calls in meekness and humility of heart, whether they be clergy or laity, male or female, bending the neck of their inner man to the logic and style of Scripture will find In it the power to labour and the wisdom hidden from the proud.’ God indeed reveals to the ‘little children’ what is hidden from the ‘wise and understanding,’ but transforming oneself into a little child is the arduous work of a lifetime. Christ’s yoke is easy and his burden light, but we don’t like bending our necks to receive it—and no translation, however it accommodates itself to our language and understanding, can change that.”
Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring: Essays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010, pp. 14-15
Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University, and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virsginia.
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