contrast with the needless additions of a modern translation, Phillips Modern English: the man ‘sprang to his feet , stood and then walked. Then he went with them into the Temple, where he walked about, leaping and thanking God.’ How else could the man have sprung, but ‘to his feet’? He could not have walked without first standing, nor have entered the temple without first walking; the dual use of ‘then’ is ugly and pointless. As to the temple ‘where’ he walked about, since he was in the temple, where else could he have been?
Tyndale preferred short words and short sentences. He wrote in the parable of the good sower in Matthew 13: 8 – Tyndale used ‘similitude’ for parable, an accurate translation of the Greek parable, meaning to place alongside – that some seed ‘fell on goode grounde, and spronge up and bare frute, an hondred foolde’. These twelve words have perfect economy, and they entered the King James Version intact. The Phillips Modern English Bible needs seventeen words – the seed ‘fell on good soil and grew and produced a crop – a hundred times what had been sown’ – and achieves no better clarity. Tyndale used the shortest and most simple phrases to express the mysteries of the faith: ‘Axe and it shal be given you. Seke and ye shall fynd. Knocke and it shal be opened unto you.’ The cadence here is perfect: change ‘ unto ’ into ‘ to ’ – ‘knock and it shall be opened to you’ – and it is lost. King James runs this as a single sentence, its power diluted by commas and colons.
Where the King James strays away from him, Tyndale is often both more vivid and more plain. ‘Thou arte my dear Son in whom I delyghte’ is more intimate than the King James: ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’
The language used by the authors of the few books then printedin English had some bias towards words derived from French and Latin. A single meaning in English might be covered by words from three derivations: kingly from Anglo-Saxon, for example, royal from French, and regal from Latin. Tyndale reversed this to favour Anglo-Saxon words – ‘freedom’ in place of the Franco-Latin ‘liberty’, ‘hang’ for ‘suspend’, ‘brotherly’ for ‘fraternal’, ‘folk’ for ‘people’, ‘foe’ for ‘enemy’ – or to use both. Religion was itself a Franco-Latin word, of course, and so were many of its expressions – saint, miracle, pilgrimage, disciple, Trinity – though Bible was Greek and the Anglo-Saxon God had bettered the Latin Deity.
Where later translators of the New Testament stick slavishly to a single English word for a word from the original Greek, Tyndale used as many English expressions as he wished. Thus it ‘came to pass’ is followed by it ‘happened, ‘chanced’, ‘fortuned’ and ‘followed’. ‘Lo’ becomes ‘behold’, ‘mark’, ‘see’, ‘look’ and ‘take heed’. He sometimes, indeed, mixed his words in the same passage: ‘Give to every man therefore his duty; tribute to whom tribute belongeth , custom to whom custom is due , fear to whom fear belongeth ; honour to whom honour pertaineth .’ The brilliance of his phrases is matched by a peerless rhythm: ‘take thine ese, eate, drynke and be mery’, or the wonderful ‘for we are made a gazing stock to the world’. The King James replaced ‘ gazing stock’ with the dull ‘we are made a spectacle ’. As unhappily, for Tyndale’s: ‘And the devil took him up into an high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world, even in the twinkling of an eye ’, the King James committee substituted ‘ a moment in time ’.
Tyndale often used a polysyllable as a sort of full stop to round off a string of monosyllables. This is an example: ‘lest they bid thee again, and make thee recompense’. The King James adds an unneeded ‘also’ and destroys the rhythm at the end of the sentence: ‘lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made
Tyndale preferred short words and short sentences. He wrote in the parable of the good sower in Matthew 13: 8 – Tyndale used ‘similitude’ for parable, an accurate translation of the Greek parable, meaning to place alongside – that some seed ‘fell on goode grounde, and spronge up and bare frute, an hondred foolde’. These twelve words have perfect economy, and they entered the King James Version intact. The Phillips Modern English Bible needs seventeen words – the seed ‘fell on good soil and grew and produced a crop – a hundred times what had been sown’ – and achieves no better clarity. Tyndale used the shortest and most simple phrases to express the mysteries of the faith: ‘Axe and it shal be given you. Seke and ye shall fynd. Knocke and it shal be opened unto you.’ The cadence here is perfect: change ‘ unto ’ into ‘ to ’ – ‘knock and it shall be opened to you’ – and it is lost. King James runs this as a single sentence, its power diluted by commas and colons.
Where the King James strays away from him, Tyndale is often both more vivid and more plain. ‘Thou arte my dear Son in whom I delyghte’ is more intimate than the King James: ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’
The language used by the authors of the few books then printedin English had some bias towards words derived from French and Latin. A single meaning in English might be covered by words from three derivations: kingly from Anglo-Saxon, for example, royal from French, and regal from Latin. Tyndale reversed this to favour Anglo-Saxon words – ‘freedom’ in place of the Franco-Latin ‘liberty’, ‘hang’ for ‘suspend’, ‘brotherly’ for ‘fraternal’, ‘folk’ for ‘people’, ‘foe’ for ‘enemy’ – or to use both. Religion was itself a Franco-Latin word, of course, and so were many of its expressions – saint, miracle, pilgrimage, disciple, Trinity – though Bible was Greek and the Anglo-Saxon God had bettered the Latin Deity.
Where later translators of the New Testament stick slavishly to a single English word for a word from the original Greek, Tyndale used as many English expressions as he wished. Thus it ‘came to pass’ is followed by it ‘happened, ‘chanced’, ‘fortuned’ and ‘followed’. ‘Lo’ becomes ‘behold’, ‘mark’, ‘see’, ‘look’ and ‘take heed’. He sometimes, indeed, mixed his words in the same passage: ‘Give to every man therefore his duty; tribute to whom tribute belongeth , custom to whom custom is due , fear to whom fear belongeth ; honour to whom honour pertaineth .’ The brilliance of his phrases is matched by a peerless rhythm: ‘take thine ese, eate, drynke and be mery’, or the wonderful ‘for we are made a gazing stock to the world’. The King James replaced ‘ gazing stock’ with the dull ‘we are made a spectacle ’. As unhappily, for Tyndale’s: ‘And the devil took him up into an high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world, even in the twinkling of an eye ’, the King James committee substituted ‘ a moment in time ’.
Tyndale often used a polysyllable as a sort of full stop to round off a string of monosyllables. This is an example: ‘lest they bid thee again, and make thee recompense’. The King James adds an unneeded ‘also’ and destroys the rhythm at the end of the sentence: ‘lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made
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