Judas in the Bible, and who wrote the Bible, anyway? Jesus Christ Superstar (1 of 5; Episode 24)

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The year is 1525 and William Tyndale is doing what nobody has done before…he has translated the Bible from Latin to English.  This as not well received; the church condemned the book, and one Bishop Tunstall bought all available copies and publicly burned them.  Cardinal Wolsey condemned Tyndale as a heretic.  The English government had sent agents out for his arrest.

That did not end matters for Tyndale.  He roamed the continent staying where it was safe for 10 years, spending much time in Antwerp.  But then, in 1535, he was betrayed by Henry Phillips who turned him over to church authorities.  He could be put to death by the secular state if was a deemed a heretic, but he could be spared if he proved to the church that he was not.

He had no illusions.  The trial would be for show.  He spent 18 months in the Filford prison in Brussels, where he prepared his statements and continued to translate.  And what a process it was.  His prosecutor was the Roman Catholic inquisitor, Jacobus Latomus, gave him the opportunity to write a book stating his views; Latomus wrote a book in response to convince him of his errors; Tyndale wrote two in reply; Latomus wrote two further books in response to Tyndale. Latomus' three books were subsequently published as one volume: in these it can be seen that the discussion on heresy revolves around the contents of three other books Tyndale had written on topics like justification by faith, free will, the denial of the soul, and so on. See Latomus' report of Tyndale's beliefs below. Latomus makes no mention of Bible translation; indeed, it seems that in prison, Tyndale was allowed to continue making translations from the Hebrew.

He was not specifically accused of heresy for his translations; he did not recant or seriously contest the rest of the charges against him.  He was condemned.

In October of 1536 he was led to a town square where a circle of stakes surrounded the place of execution.  He was offered one more chance to recant.  His words were, instead, defiant: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”

He was burned at the stake, but not burned alive.  He was given the courtesy of being strangled to death before his body was lit on fire.

This ended the life of a Luthern, reformer, and first translator of the Bible to the English language.  Be careful when you mess with the ineffable word of God.  For hundred and fifty years later two other Englishman would be even more bold: they would take the Biblical story of the crucifixtion, put it to music, and open it on Broadway.  Nobody was going to strangle them, but the heart of the matter remained the same: Were mere mortals allowed to re-translate and re-interpret the Bible, outside the sanction of an official church?   To know what’s OK and what isn’t, don’t we need to know how the Bible get translated in the first place, and who decides what goes into it?  In the words of Barnett College Biblical scholar Indiana Jones, only the penitent man shall pass.  We humble ourselves in this episode of THM.

[References and bibliography for the Superstar series are in this episode]

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