July 4, 1512 and July 2, 1515
Oxford, England

“Singularly
Addicted”

We be all equally created and formed of one God our Father, and indifferently bought and redeemed with one blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Which two points, I say, if they be written in thine heart, are the keys which so open all the scripture unto thee, that no creature can lock thee out, and with which thou shalt go in and out, and find pasture and food everywhere. And if these lessons be not written in thine heart, then is all the scripture shut up as a kernel in the shell, so that thou mayest read it, and commune of it, and rehearse all the stories of it, and dispute wittily, and be a profound sophistry, and yet understand not one jot thereof.

—William Tyndale, “Prologue to the Prophet Jonas”

Brought Up from a Child

The continued refining of Tyndale’s skills found ample heat in the furnace of Oxford to which he went while still a child. Foxe gives us a brief account of Tyndale’s next stage of preparation:

“Brought up from a child in the university of Oxford, where he, by long continuance, grew up, and increased as well in the knowledge of tongues, and other liberal arts, as especially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted; insomuch that he, lying then in Magdalen hall, read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen college, some parcel of divinity; instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures.”¹

Foxe’s description, though ordinary, is remarkable considering the attitudes and curriculum of the English universities of the day. Scholars of the sixteenth century felt it was desirable to instill in young minds the sophistries of the day, especially in religion. Developing intellects were susceptible to the imprints of learned men, but William Tyndale’s mind was soft to the stamp of ancient thought, not the scholastics of the university, which he rejected. His academic interests left him alone in the scholarly world for the seven years it took to earn a bachelor’s degree at Oxford. During those years, he grew in language, liberal arts, and scripture—skills he would draw on to accomplish his life’s work.

The first recorded entry of William’s life is July 4, 1512. On that day he received his bachelor of arts under the name William Hychyns. He received his master of arts three years later, on July 2, 1515. Statutes at Oxford’s Magdalen College mandated that entrants, or “Demies,” be at least twelve years of age. William likely left for Oxford at about this age. That he was not overwhelmed at such an early age by his professors shows the quality of his intellect and spirit.

Before leaving for college, William would have studied Latin, the required language for any serious education, in a local grammar school in Gloucestershire. Indeed, the idea that significant writing could be done in English was simply not entertained. Spoken English was not allowed except on isolated holidays. At the time, England was a backwater country, its language considered rustic and coarse.

Most students entered the university in their mid to late teens. By entering at an earlier age, William showed promise as a scholar. But he was not the only prodigy. A butcher’s son who became Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII, earned his bachelor’s degree from Magdalen College at age fifteen.² Wolsey would become Tyndale’s enemy and hunt him throughout Europe. In challenging the religious and political status quo, William also took on the high intellect found in Renaissance England.

Tyndale began his university day by studying from 6 to 9 a.m. After breakfast, he resumed his studies until 11 a.m. Following lunch, he studied until 5 p.m. Students at Oxford were almost always mildly hungry and, in the winter, chilly. Their rooms, heated by fires, were smoke-filled and cold.³ The realities of student life in William’s day give value to Shakespeare’s description of “the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school.”⁴

At the university, recitation was a common means of instilling knowledge in young minds, which required reading texts out loud. Vocal reading trained William’s ear for the cadences and symmetry of human speech and helped him realize that scripture in particular is enhanced when read out loud. Hearing Virgil’s majestic poetry or Cicero’s sweeping prose tuned William’s ear in a way unfamiliar to academe today but which was critical for the development of his genius, which is best realized when listening to his resonating phrases.

The Rhetorical Tradition

Liberal arts studies centered on the trivium, which consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and on the quadrivium, which consisted of arithmetic, music (including poetry), astronomy, and geometry. Students studied Euclid, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Ovid, and Cicero. They graduated with fluency in Latin, a mental keenness for
debate, and a mind framed for logic but browbeaten into submission regarding church orthodoxy.

For Tyndale, rhetoric proved useful. Though it has a negative connotation today, rhetoric helped those who mastered its intricacies to fully comprehend the power of words. Well-constructed phrases could persuade, convince, and move the listener. Exercises included rewriting a sentence dozens of ways and examining the effect each rewrite produced. Erasmus’ rhetorical manual, De Copia,reworked the sentence “Your letter has delighted me very much” 150 different ways.

Clarity of expression was not the only goal. Wisdom and insight were ideally presented in emotive language, which was designed to be pleasurable to hear or read. The enjoyment increased the likelihood that the ideas would be accepted and acted upon. In the
non-rhetorical tradition of today, it would be difficult to produce something as magnificent as the King James Bible. English today has largely lost the richness and color of an age that produced Shakespeare. For this reason, the King James Bible remains the preferred edition.

This disciplined rhetorical training heightened Tyndale’s sensitivity to the poetic quality of combinations of sounds and stresses. He did not always consciously manipulate words, but as a deeply educated man acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he produced pleasing patterns and sequences. You can hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit in the repetition of the “s” sound and the double “l” in the phrase “still small voice.” Latter-day Saints have adopted that phrase as the primary definition of the Holy Ghost, even for children. (Joseph Smith used it in his translation of the Book of Mormon.) We hear the same musical endorsement even in small phrases created by Tyndale such as “mercy seat,” which juxtaposes two “s” sounds and fits comfortably in the sacrament song “I Stand All Amazed.”⁵

The Lord placed William Tyndale in a tradition and culture best calculated to create the human tools he needed to produce a Bible that would be “of great worth unto the Gentiles” (1 Nephi 13:23). That worth hinged not only on the truth it contained but also on its manner of expression.

The Gift of Tongues

As late as the early 1600s, the Oxford Library had fewer than one hundred books in English out of its six thousand volumes.⁶ But to spark a revolutionary change, Tyndale needed Greek and Hebrew, the original recorded languages of the Bible. Marching ahead of his contemporary scholars, he believed that technical rhetorical skills in Latin could be employed in creating a beautiful Bible in English, which was a perfect medium for catching the grandeur of Hebrew and Greek scripture.

Tyndale was gifted in English as well as in foreign and dead languages. A contemporary wrote that Tyndale was “so skillful in seven tongues . . . that whichever he speaks, you would think it his native tongue.”⁷ His mastery of languages required effort beyond his Oxford years, but eventually Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, French, and German flowed without restraint from his pen and tongue.

Greek was essential because Tyndale drew his translation of the New Testament directly from the Greek text instead of from Jerome’s almost worshiped Latin Vulgate—the Latin Bible used by the Catholic Church. The study of Greek was new at Oxford, but when Tyndale left the university, his mastery was such that he translated a difficult piece of classical writing into English in hopes of persuading the bishop of London to employ him for a biblical translation. In time, Tyndale taught himself Hebrew so he could put the wisdom of the Old Testament into English.

“No Man Shall Look on the Scripture”

Tyndale’s assessment of university education paints an unflattering picture of the dozen or so years he spent there:

“In the universities they have ordained that no man shall look on the scripture, until he be noselled [nurtured] in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles; with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the scripture,” he wrote. The student “is sworn that he shall hold none opinion condemned by the church. . . . And then, when they be admitted to study divinity, because the scripture is locked up with such false expositions, and with false principles of natural philosophy, that they cannot enter in, they go about the outside, and dispute all their lives about words and vain opinions.”⁸

Tyndale recalls with exasperation some of the debates at Oxford. One centered on the sacramental wafer. Was it still bread considering that the flour “with long lying in water, was turned to starch, and had lost its nature”? He remembered another debate about whether the widow or the virgin had more merit. One had to forgo the joys of marriage after having known them while the other imagined them greater than they were. Who faced the most serious temptations?⁹ In light of such discussions, Tyndale preferred his private self-tutorials in the bare text of his Old and New Testaments even though they were in Latin and even though he risked reprimand if caught studying them.

A decade earlier, John Colet had shocked conventional university practice by delivering lectures on Paul’s epistles. He restricted himself to the plain text and the simple truths to which Paul testified, but it was as if the apostle had risen from the pages of Romans and Corinthians like a resurrected spirit to walk the halls of Oxford—a breathing, feeling, living human being. Colet attracted huge crowds, testifying to the inherent need for drinking at the source instead of down river. The impact of those moments in the sunlight of pure scripture still reverberated in Oxford’s halls, as did whispers about the work of another Oxford scholar—John Wycliffe. Though proscribed and burned, Wycliffe’s work continued to circulate in the Christian underground, and the spirit of his sure footsteps and earnest conversations followed Tyndale as he walked the same halls.

Of Life Unspotted

In the quiet of his private world at Oxford, William pored over the scriptures by candlelight when he had finished other studies. Yet the spirit to share with others the beautiful truths he loved turned him toward his fellow scholars. Cautiously, choosing with care those to gather around him, he read “privily to certain students and
fellows of Magdalen College; instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures.”¹⁰

The person Foxe described was not an adult but a boy in his early and late teens. It is hard not to compare the adolescent Tyndale with two other earnest young men who also acquired enough wisdom in their early years to teach others untainted truth—the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem and the teenage Joseph Smith in a Palmyra log cabin surrounded by his family.

A man is judged not only by his talent, intellect, and faith but also by his character. This is certainly true if his chosen arena is religion. Fortunately, we have a description, though minimal, of the daily walk of the Father of the English Bible. Foxe concludes in his portrait of Tyndale’s Oxford days an entry about his demeanor: “His manners and conversation being correspondent to the same [knowledge and truth of the scriptures], were such, that all they that knew him, reputed and esteemed him to be a man of most virtuous disposition, and of life unspotted.”¹¹

Foxe, who admired Tyndale, undoubtedly put the best face on his biography. But what of Tyndale’s enemies? Sir Thomas More, chancellor of England, became one of Tyndale’s fiercest foes, obsessed with destroying him. Yet even he verified Foxe’s assessment. Tyndale was “well known,” More wrote, “before he went over the sea, for a man of right good living, studious and well learned in scripture, and in divers places in England was very well liked and did great good with preaching.”¹² Later in the same work, More added that Tyndale “was indeed . . . taken for a man of sober and honest living, and looked and preached holily.”¹³

Hall’sChronicle contained another assessment of Tyndale’s virtues: “Such as best knew him reported him to be a very sober man, born about the borders of Wales, and brought up in the University of Oxford and in life and conversation unreprovable.”¹⁴

These qualities proved critical for the selfless work that became William Tyndale’s obsession. It is appropriate that the Lord chose such a man. Purity of soul and purpose must accompany the mind that gives voice to apostles and the Son of God. The Spirit, so crucial for Tyndale’s work, could not thrive in an unclean temple. Tyndale’s early traits prefigure the character of one of the few Reformers who had little to gain from his efforts and everything to risk. His pen could burn hot if occasion required, but it was not his nature to be confrontational. He was the sweet singer of the Reformation, and the man matched the song.

Notes

^1. Foxe, Acts and Monuments,5:114—15; emphasis added.

^2.  Some historians attribute Wolsey’s “butcher son” origins to legend, claiming rather that he was the son of a prosperous merchant who could afford to send him to Oxford.

^3. Daniell, William Tyndale, 25.

^4. Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.7.146—48.

^5. Hymns, no. 193.

^6. Daniell, William Tyndale, 25.

^7. Mozley, William Tyndale, 67.

^8. Greenslade, Work of William Tindale, 153—54.

^9. Daniell, William Tyndale, 38.

^10. Foxe, Acts and Monuments,5:114—15.

^11. Ibid., 5:115.

^12. More, Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 6:28; spelling standardized.

^13. Ibid., 6:424; spelling standardized.

^14. Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 818; emphasis added.