The Domestic Bible: William Tyndale's Vernacular Translation by Joul
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Domestic Bible: William Tyndale’s Vernacular Translation by Joul Layne Smith A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English University of Texas Arlington In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2019 1 Abstract This translation study of William Tyndale’s revised New Testament of 1534 identifies the translator’s motivations and strategies then explores the effect of the translation on the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) and Shakespeare’s plays. Tyndale’s primary motivation was to create a text for his would-be congregants during the Reformation and his strategy was largely one of domestication. However, his unique concern for his mother-tongue coupled with an insistence on his preferential theological material extends his domestication activity into an idiosyncratic attention to his lingua mater (English), resulting in a personalized translation project, a Tyndalian effect that influenced the production and literary use of biblical material for the next century. This kind of translation variegates biblical material so that its application in later literary traditions, like future Bible translations and Shakespeare’s biblical references, can take on a wide range of expressions not beholden to cultural stigmas associated with altering the Bible. The KJV, though often considered to have borrowed 85% of Tyndale, based on this study, only borrowed 55% of Tyndale’s Bible. Tyndale’s Bible is then used to explicate Shakespeare’s Macbeth, demonstrating how literary uses of the Bible can take on extensive and varied forms of expression. 2 Acknowledgments The debt I owe my committee chair, associate professor, Dr. Amy Tigner, is so large that it eludes any attempt at articulation, even in the tongues of angels. Dr. Tigner’s brilliant, creative, and scholarly guidance, alongside an unwavering patience, permitted this project to thrive. Accompanying those lofty efforts are the unforgettable notes of Drs. Jacqueline Fay and Kevin Gustafson, my other committee members, who encouraged, edited, and challenged my thoughts and words as I attempted to capture some meaning from Tyndale’s translation. I offer this committee my deepest, undying gratitude. I also must thank the English Department and College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas-Arlington for supporting my project. They generously funded my efforts for years— money well spent. The rewards from this project will repay the university many times over, I have no doubt, but it would not have existed without their patronage. I sincerely appreciate my cohort of scholars, Jeffrey Marchand and Drs. Miriam Rowntree, Sarah Shelton, and Stephanie Peebles-Tavera, who supported me enthusiastically and became life-long friends. Rarely do cohorts work out so splendidly. Along the way, other groups of scholars became encouragers and friends, who deserve high salaries and long, prosperous lives for their heartening inspiration: Drs. Glenn Hopp, Evelyn Romig, James Warren, Peggy Kulesz, Penny Ingram, Luanne Frank, Tra Daniels-Lerberg, Kathryn Warren, Hope McCarthy, and Jason Hogue. My sisters, Charla Law, Carla Pyle, Cathy Byrne, and Jana Hobbins and my parents, the Reverend Charles Smith and Paula Smith, have been partners and supporters of my entire life’s work and in many ways this project originated with them. I can always count on them, along with my parents-in-law, Bill and Barbara Walton, whose love, gifts, and moments of respite saw 3 me through to the end. Other family members, like my children, Chloe Elizabeth Smith, Spenser Tyndale Smith, and Olivia Brontë Smith, and my grandfather, the Reverend Paul Eaton, stimulated my perseverance with their kindness and support. More than any other, I thank my wife, Becca, who endured this painstaking ordeal with the patience of Job. The groanings of a scholar are intolerable to most people, but she, the consummate mental health professional in her own career and devoted partner to me in life, easily quenched the fiery darts of the wicked dissertator. Primarily because of her, it is finished. Thank you, Becca. 4 Table of Contents Introduction............................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter One: Why Tyndale .................................................................................................. 20 Chapter Two: Juggling Utterances......................................................................................... 82 Chapter Three: Opening the King’s Eyes ............................................................................ 135 Chapter Four: Macbeth, Betrayer and Man ........................................................................ 159 Coda: Found Christianities ................................................................................................... 220 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................... 227 5 Introduction Trusting of his fellow and chummy Englishman, William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536) happily followed Henry Phillips down the narrow alleys of Antwerp in 1535. A refurbished citadel for the emerging capitalist societies springing up in Europe, Antwerp hadn’t had much of a chance to transform its infrastructure from the medieval design of the Holy Roman Empire.1 This meant that Tyndale and Phillips had to clomp through what were essentially sludge-raked chutes. Halfway through one bilgy alleyway, a pair of imperial guards turned into their path. Phillips, in the lead, halted their traverse and urged Tyndale to go ahead of him in the other direction, whispering encouraging terms to his friend about the escape they were about to attempt. Tyndale, a fugitive, steeled his inward panic and carefully turned back the other way. He knew he was far enough from the troopers to get out of the alley before they could catch him. But, after he had gone about a dozen paces, two more pike-yielding soldiers appeared at the other end of the alley. Tyndale turned back around. Sadly, for him, he found that his friend had fallen back toward the soldiers, walking with them, grimly sneering. Finally arrested for heresy, Tyndale was tried, convicted, strangled, then burned. All he wanted to do, since he began preaching in Gloucestershire in 1519, was to continue a pastoral 1 The dramatized version of Tyndale’s betrayal in these first few paragraphs is drawn from the exhaustive and creative work of Bragg, Melvyn. William Tyndale: A Very Brief History, 2017; Juhász, Gergely. Translating Resurrection: The Debate between William Tyndale and George Joye in Its Historical and Theological Context, 2014; Stabel, Peter, B Blondé, and Anke Greve. International Trade in the Low Countries (14th-16th Centuries): Merchants, Organisation, Infrastructure : Proceedings of the International Conference, Ghent-Antwerp, 12-13th January, 1997. Leuven: Garant, 2000; Marnef, Guido. Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis, 1550-1577. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996; and Daniell, David. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. 6 role among English churches, a role that fit his personality as a biblical interpreter. But English speakers didn’t have an authoritative resource for establishing that kind of religious identity, and the authoritarian King, Henry VIII, didn’t want any of his subjects to leave the Catholic Church, at least not at this point in time (1517-1534), in favor of another. In reaction to the opposition in his homeland, Tyndale left England to translate the Bible into English as an anti-Catholic document carrying the weight of sacred authority. The vernacular Bible printed from William Tyndale’s translation during the 1520s-30s disseminated scriptural material to English readers and initiated socio-linguistic arguments about its meaning during a tumultuous age of reformation in England. Though costly, those arguments seeded a decades-long proliferation of hermeneutical variety evident in the abundance of sixteenth-century Bible editions and new biblical conceptualizations found in imaginative literature. Tyndale’s polemical treatises, his exchanges with Thomas More, and most significantly, a final revised New Testament in 1534 maintained a presence for decades, directly traceable to the King James Bible of 1611 and clearly present within Shakespeare’s inventive expressions of bible-based characters, narratives, and themes. This dissertation addresses how a close study of Tyndale’s translation gave the English Bible its distinct cultural resonance, which Tyndale largely infused through a carefully managed translation agenda that was motivated by his skills as a linguist and his aspirations to be a reformed preacher in England.2 2 For the role of preaching in early modern England and Tyndale’s perception of himself as a preacher, see Marshall, Peter. Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation. London: Arnold, 2017; Vasilev, Georgi. Heresy and the English Reformation: Bogomil-cathar Influence on Wycliffe, Langland, Tyndale and Milton. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 2008; Wabuda, Susan. Preaching During the English Reformation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Pettegree, Andrew. Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print; Jones, Norman L. The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.;