C S Lewis on Tyndale

Crystal draws attention to an essay by C S Lewis on the AV where he refers to Tyndale. This is an extended  extract from that work. The essay on The literary impact of the Authorised Version can be fouond in a collection of 12 essays called They asked for a paper. See here

... there is something new about Tyndale; for good or ill a great simplification of approach. “Scripture,” he writes, “speaketh after the most grossest manner. Be diligent therefore that thou be not deceived with curiousness.”[Parable of the Wicked Mammon, Doctrinal Treatises, ed H Walter, Cambridge 1848, p 59]. In the words “grossest manner” we recognise an echo of Augustine’s humillimum genus and Hugo of St Victor’s simplicitas sermonis. [Burton; Pt III, Sec 4, Mem ii, Subs 6, p 729 “Blasphemous thoughts the scriptures foster, rude, harsh, immethodical.”] That rusticity or meanness which we find it so hard to discern in the Bible is still apparent to Tyndale. The novelty is the rejection of the allegorical senses. That rejection he shares with most of the Reformers and even, as regards parts of the Bible, with a Humanistic Papist like Colet; and it is no part of my business to decide whether it marked an advance or a retrogression in theology. What is interesting is not Tyndale’s negation of the allegories but his positive attitude towards the literal sense. He loves it for its “grossness”. “God is a Spirit,” he writes, “and all his words are spiritual. His literal sense is spiritual.”[Obedience of a Christian Man, Walter, op cit, p 309]. That is very characteristic of Tyndale’s outlook. For him, just as God’s literal sense is spiritual, so all life is religion: cleaning shoes, washing dishes, our humblest natural functions, are all “good works”.[Parable of the Wicked Mammon, Walter, op cit, pp 100, 102]. The life of religion, technically so called, wins no “higher room in heaven ... than a whore of the stews (if she repent)” [Burton; Pt III, Sec 4, Mem ii, Subs 6, p 729 “Blasphemous thoughts the scriptures foster, rude, harsh, immethodical.”]. This would certainly seem to be an attitude more favourable to the literary appreciation of much Scripture than any we have yet encountered. On the other hand, Mr. Gavin Bone, whose loss we still deplore at Oxford, has said roundly that Tyndale “hated literature”. This is based on his fierce condemnation of medieval romance; [Obedience, Walter, op cit, p 161] a trait which is Humanistic as well as Puritanical. But I do not think he did hate literature. Where he speaks of his own work as a translator he sounds like a man with a sense of style; as when he says that Hebrew and Greek go well into English whereas “thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and yet shall have much work to translate it well-favouredly, so that it hath the same grace and sweetness”.[Ibid, pp 148, 149] More important still is the evidence of his own original works.

I wish I had time to digress on those works. Tyndale’s fame as an English writer has been most unjustly overshadowed both by the greater fame of More and by his own reputation as a translator. He seems to me the best prose writer of his age. He is inferior to More in what may be called the elbow-room of the mind and (of course) in humour. In every other respect he surpasses him; in economy, in lucidity, and above all in rhythmical vitality. He reaches at times a piercing quality which is quite outside More’s range: “as a man feeleth God in himself, so is he to his neighbour” [Wicked Mammon, Walter, op cit, p 58)] - —“I am thou thyself, and thou art I myself, and can be no nearer of kin” [Obedience, p 296] —“be glad, and laugh from the low bottom of his heart” [Pathway, p. 9] —“that he might see love, and love again” [Obedience, p 136] —“Who taught the eagles to spy out their prey? Even so the children of God spy out their Father”.[Answer to More, ed H Walter, Cambridge, 1850, p 490]. Though it is not strictly relevant, may I be excused, since the fact seems to be insufficiently known, for saying that Tyndale’s social ethics are almost identical with those of More?—quite equally medieval and equally opposed to what some call the New Economics. The points on which these two brave and holy men agreed may have been few; but perhaps they were sufficient, if they had been accepted, to have altered the course of our history for the better.

It is not, of course, to be supposed that aesthetic considerations were uppermost in Tyndale’s mind when he translated Scripture. The matter was much too serious for that; souls were at stake. The same holds for all the translators. Coverdale was probably the one whose choice of a rendering came nearest to being determined by taste. His defects as well as his qualities led to this. Of all the translators he was the least scholarly. Among men like Erasmus, Tyndale, Munster, or the Jesuits at Rheims he shows like a rowing boat among battleships. This gave him a kind of freedom. Unable to judge between rival interpretations, he may often have been guided, half consciously, to select and combine by taste. Fortunately his taste was admirable.