Contra-AV: William Tyndale

ebion

Member
If you define AV as the Authorized Version of the King James bible, then I think you would have to list William Tyndale as an objector, even though he basically wrote its NT.

The Authorized Version of the King James Bible was not a new translation, and was done according to rules drawn up by King James, including how some specific (and crucial) words were to be (mis)translated. The rules of "translation" were sent to the "translators" by the then Bishop of London, and I think that the original has been preserved in Lambeth Palace.

Rules 1 and 14 make the King James Bible a revision rather than a translation, largely in the family of Tyndale Bibles, with the additions from the Geneva bible ( King James I was raised a Scottish Presbyterian):

1. The ordinary Bible read in the Church, commonly called the Bishops
Bible, to be followed, and as little altered as the Truth of the
original will permit.

14. These translations to be used when they agree better with the Text
than the Bishops Bible: Tyndale’s, Matthew’s, Coverdale’s,
Whitchurch’s, Geneva.

Almost all of the Tyndale family are explicitly refered to; in chronological order (still to be checked for the exact order) they are:

1. Tyndale’s 1524 1534,
2. Coverdale’s 1535 1537,
3. Matthew’s 1537,
4. The Great Bible 1539,
5. The Bishops Bible 1568, 1572, 1602,

Rule 3 is a travesty of Tyndale's translation, and is aimed directly at him:

3. The Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the Word Church not
to be translated Congregation et. cetera.

Whilst running and hiding and fleeing the agents of a sadistic English Lord Chancellor who wanted him burned at the stake, Tyndale still had time to write a book back at him defending his translation of eklesia as "Congregation" not "the Word Church". The book explains in detail his reasons for the critical choices of translation he made of the "et. cetera" words:


I find that reading the best of the Tyndale bibles - the Matthew's bible - is a great pleasure compared to the KJV, both linguistically and scripturally. He based it on Erasmus' 2nd edition, not 3rd.
 
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