ISSN 0014-1690 the Ethical Record Vol. 99 No. 10 November 1994 TYNDALE AS TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE David Daniell 3 WHO KILLED HILDA MURRELL? Judith Cook 6 ETHICAL THOUGHT AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES Jonathan Dancy 11 DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS AND•THE DISCREDITING OF CHRISTIANITY Daniel O'Hara 14 DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS (1808-1874) LASKI - A LIFE ON THE wrote Leben-Jesu in 1835. In 1842 an English LEFT Reviewed by translation, "The Life of Jesus", was published in Dorothy Forsyth 22 London by Henry Hetherington with the above engraving as frontispiece. See page 14. VIEWPOINT Eric Stockton 23 EDITORIAL — THE HUMANIST THREAD FUTURE EVENTS 24 Prof David Daniell (page 3), in telling Tyndale's tragic story, refers to the study of classical texts by the renaissance humanists, and to Tyndale's use of the original Greek and Hebrew sources (instead of the 4th century Latin version) when doing his translation. Daniel O'Hara (page 14) reveals F.D. Strauss as a modern humanist in his effort to understand the content of the Bible as a human and not a superhuman production. Both Tyndale and Strauss were attacked and resented by the religious establishments of their time. There is bound to be a conflict between disinterested scholarship, the pursuit of novel truths — and The defenders of well-worn dogma, whether ecclesiastic or secular. There is an echo of this conflict in the field of moral philosophy — Prof Jonathan Dancy in his paper Ethical Thought and Ethical Principles (page I I) quotes George Eliot's diatribe against "the men of maxims". Whereas this particular conflict may be capable of resolution, I see no possibility of a synthesis between the Christian view of man as doomed if without faith in supernatural assistance and the humanist conviction that religion is an invention — we are on our own in the universe. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. 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At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in many kinds of cultural activities, including discussions, lectures, concerts and socials. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 have achieved international renown. A reference and lending library is available, and all members receive the Society's journal, The Ethical Record eleven times a year. Funerals and Memorial Meetings are available to members. Membership is £10 p.a. Please apply to the Secretary for Membership Application forms. 2 Ethical Record, October, 1994 TYNDALE AS TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE Professor David Daniell Universil) College London Lecture to the Ethical Society, 2 October 1994 on the Quincentenary of the birth of William Tyndale William Tyndale, who was born 500 years ago in 1494, gave us our English Bible. An Oxford scholar, he was the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into English, and print it: and even more remarkably, translate half the Old Testament from Hebrew into English, and print that. This work was done at a time when to translate the Bible, or even to read it, in English, had been strictly forbidden by the Church in England for over a century. He did all his translating and printing in exile on the Continent. His work cost him his life, and after a sixteen-month imprisonment he was strangled and burned outside Brussels on the morning of 6th October 1536. Do not Thank God — Thank Tyndale Though he reached and influenced more people than Shakespeare, our debt to him is only slowly coming into view. The three panels of divines summoned by King James, between 1604 and 1611, nearly a hundred years after Tyndale's first work, to produce a new Bible translation (the 'Authorised Version' or 'King-lames Bible') were happy to take, without acknowledgement, 90% of Tyndale's work in the New Testament, and not much less in the Old. 'AV' is acknowledged as one of the glories of what is called England's heritage. It has had more influence on English-speaking people than any other document on any people in the world. Yet the man who made so much of it has been forgotten, and his genius denied him. Until very recently indeed — until the 1990s — it has been customary to thank God that our first Bible translation was not made with any ingredient of artistry, but simply flowed out of a simple soul (i.e. Tyndale) as God poured it in. That this is poppycock, and incipiently dangerous, is something I want to show here. Tyndale's genius was that on top of an expert knowledge of good Latin, and, unusually, Greek — and, quite remarkably, Hebrew — he translated into an English which was not specialised, but everyday. His translations are not in a literary English, which in the 1520s and 1530s meant heavily Latinised syntax and vocabulary, often with a strong dash of French, nor in some curious philological `translatorese% so 'faithful' to the original that it obstructs understanding. Thus he gives us Jesus in Luke 14 talking of 'the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind', and not 'the pecuniarily disadvantaged, the physically assaulted, the progressionally obstructed with the addition of the visually impaired' —instead of Latin jargon he gives us spoken English monosyllables. Nor does he go for 'translatorese': a few lines later, the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 has 'Go to the open roads and the hedgerows and force people to come in to make sure my house is full.' I find that rebarbative. Tyndale, in 1526, has 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come, that my house may be filled.' His ear for spoken English rhythms, for the short units that are, for example, thc legacy of English proverbs, gives his translation at all times that precious and unusual quality, clarity: and as a result, timelessness. (The Jerusalem Bible's 'please accept my apologies' in earlier verses in the same chapter is already dated, where Tyndale's 'I pray thee have me excused', oddly enough, is timeless.) Humanist Interest in Earliest Texts After boyhood in Gloucestershire, in prosperous circumstances, Tyndale spent about 10 years at Magdalen Hall Oxford, and then possibly some time at Cambridge, where the great Erasmus had been teaching Greek. He returned to Gloucestershire to teach the Ethical Record, November, 1994 3 children of Sir John and Lady Walsh, not a heavy task. There. in Little Sodbury Manor, I believe he studied Erasmus's ground-breaking Novum instrumentum ol.1516: the first ever printed Greek New Testament, with Erasmus's own Latin alongside and copious annotation at the end. With this book, it was now possible to challenge the Vulgate, that Latin translation of the Bible which the Church had had since the fourth century AD. Humanist advances just before Tyndale's time had opened up interest in the earliest texts, though for many in authority in Europe. for someone to attend to the original languages of the Bible (Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old) was heretical: the Church had the Latin version made by Jerome, and the Church could not err. Moreover. to translate the Greek and Hebrew into the vernacular, and particularly into English, was damnable: if the common people could have the Scriptures — all the Scriptures — in their hands, they would undoubtedly interpret them amiss: that is, in ways not sanctioned by the Church. This is of course what happened, for study of the New Testament by laymen allowed out the awkward fact that, for example, the doctrine of Purgatory did notappear there.