LETTER 33: TYNDALE AND THE BIBLE Association Press  New York City   Sirs:---I am writing to protest against your misleading, absolutely false Bible advertisement that appeared in the daily press. In it you tell readers of the advertisement that "Tyndale died for your right to read the Bible;" that the book you offer for sale contains "an exciting story of the Bible's first translator," which Tyndale was not.   In the first place bear this in mind, the Catholic Church was the originator of that Divine Library, which she designated The Bible. Secondly, the Catholic Church made the Bible accessible to the populace, through St. Jerome's translation of it from the Hebrew and Greek into Latin, over eleven centuries before your disreputable Bible hero was born. The very name of that fourth century translation, "The Vulgate," signifies the issuance of it in the language of the populace. You sellers of false Bible history disregard the fact, or know not that Latin was a world language at the time the vulgate translation was made; and even during the lifetime of Tyndale, when most people who could read at all, read Latin. Therefore Macaulay could say, in his Essay on Bacon, that "at the time of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, a person who did not read Greek or Latin could read nothing or next to nothing. It was the language of the courts as of the schools. It was the language of diplomacy; it was the language of theological and political controversy," etc., etc. The universality of Latin, the language in which the Catholic Church made it possible for the people to read the Bible as early as the fourth century, was seen in our country in which Yale College required ability to read that language, in order that students be admitted. It was not until the year 1790 that Harvard College substituted ability to translate Latin for speaking that language, in order that students be admitted. Students in the schools and colleges of New England studied the Latin, and not the English language Bibles. The circulation of Bibles among the populace was not possible until the invention of printing; thanks to Gutenberg, the struggling inventor who was enabled to carry on his work through the generosity of the Catholic Archbishop of Mayence. This took place before the 16th century Lutheran Deformation divided the Christian world. This invention was followed by the publication of forty editions of the Bible by the Catholic Church, in eleven languages, between the years 1450-1520. Your advertised assertion that Tyndale was the "Bible's first English translator" is without any foundation in historic fact. The Venerable Bede, Doctor of the Church, who lived during the years 672-735 A.D., translated nearly the whole Bible into the English of his day. The Encyclopedia Britannica declares that "before the middle of the 14th century the entire Old Testament had been translated into the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period" (Vol. III, p. 530, 1947 edition). St. Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, said in his "Dialogue" (p. 138), that "the whole Bible was long before Wycliff's day (who lived during the century before Tyndale) by virtuous and well learned men translated into the English tongue and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness, well and reverendly read ..." Even Cranmer, Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury, said in the preface of the "Great Bible," that the Holy Bible "was translated and read in the Saxon tongue, which at that time was the mother tongue, whereof there remaineth yet divers copies ...; and when this language waxed old and out of common use, it was translated into the (English) language, whereof yet also many copies remain and be daily found." It is love of the God-inspired books in the Bible that caused the Catholic Church to protect the people from counterfeit translations as ardently as the State endeavors to protect the people from counterfeit currency. The "right to read the Bible," which is a moral right, does not include imbibing such a blasphemous and distorted translation as came from the contemptible ex-Catholic pen of Tyndale. His translation was ordered to be destroyed, not because it appeared in the English language, as you assume, but because it was a faulty, corrupted translation, which was a deliberate profanation of the Sacred Text. Protestant Bishop Tunstall of London declared that there were upwards of 2,000 errors in Tyndale's Bible. Tyndale translated the term Baptism into "washing;" Scripture into "writing;" Holy Ghost into "Holy Wind," Bishop into "Oveseer," Priest into "Elder," Deacon into "Minister;" heresy into "choice;" ... etc. Many of his footnotes were vicious. For instance, Tyndale referred to the occupant of the Chair of Peter, as "that great idol, the whore of Babylon, the anti-Christ of Rome." Tyndale was a religious Benedict Arnold, a violator of solemn vows made to Almighty God, at the time of his ordination in the Franciscan Order. He, like all such excommunicated creatures, set up his perverse concept of things Christian, against those who speak with Divine authority in the Church that Christ established; the Church that made it possible for the world to have a Christian Bible. Tyndale died not for the right to read the Bible, as you arrogantly claim. He was put to death by the civil judges of the father of the English Protestant Deformation, for doctrines subversive of law and order, which Dr. James Gardiner, Protestant, said "was intended to produce an ecclesiastical and social revolution of a most dangerous character ..." The wording in your Bible advertisement is an offense. It is a perversion of historic truth. The publication of your defense of Tyndale's blasphemy and treason is very likely due to the members of your Association Press being ignorant of Bible history; having a bigoted concept of the Christ-established Catholic Church; and a desire to coin misunderstanding and hostility into dollars. May your darkness be turned into the Divine Light, that shines in and through the Catholic Church. Contact Us HOME------------TRADITION www.catholictradition.org/Tradition/goldstein33.htm