Bible, New Testament, English, Tyndale's version | [The Newe Testament of oure Saveour Jesus Christ translated by M. Wil. Tyndall... ?London, 1549]

Bible. New Testament. English. Tyndale's version

[The Newe Testament of oure Saveour Jesus Christ translated by M. Wil. Tyndall... ?London, 1549]

8vo (150 x 95mm.), 35 lines of text plus headlines (except h1 and h8 printed in different type with 34 lines, as called for by DMH), woodcut initials, contemporary calf with indistinct centrepiece of a crowned Tudor rose stamped in blind, later red morocco spine label, handwritten note by Arthur H. Brown and later newspaper cutting loosely inserted, lacking all before F1, R6, u5-7 highly defective (essentially lacking), lacking x2 and all after x3, in all c.98 leaves, binding very rubbed, later endpapers

AN EARLY EDITION OF TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT. William Tyndale's influential translation of the Bible into English cost him his life; he was burned at the stake in Antwerp in 1536 on the orders of Charles V and with the approval of Henry VIII. Tyndale, in the manner of Erasmus (and indeed using Erasmus's editions of the Greek text), had based his text on the Greek rather than the Vulgate to ensure greater fidelity to the original meaning. His New Testament was first printed in 1526 in Worms as it could not be printed or even owned in England (book burnings were organised at Smithfield by the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, a close friend of Erasmus), but the number of reprints show that there was certainly sufficient demand for copies. Tyndale revised his text for an edition printed in Antwerp in 1534, in which his preface "to the Christian reader" appears for the first time.

There are numerous early editions recorded of Tyndale's New Testament, many of them recorded in few copies and with only small differences between them. This is one of the editions considered to have been issued in London in 1549, with the young Edward VI on the throne and a more positive political climate towards English Bibles. The type used in the reset pages in quire h indicates the likely involvement of the printers John Day and William Seres, who also issued a folio Bible in this year. Herbert thought that the bulk of the book was probably printed in Antwerp in 1534 and that it was subsequently reissued in London with these new leaves and a dated title-page.

Tyndale's influence on the English language can be considered equivalent to that of Martin Luther on German through his contemporaneous bible translations. Tyndale's contribution, however, was less visible; his language was used in later English Bibles but without acknowledgement.

Early editions of Tyndale often saw heavy use and are frequently incomplete, as here. The most substantial lacunae in the current copy are the preliminaries, including Tyndale's controversial preface, and the first 22 chapters of Matthew.

PROVENANCE: 

Early inscriptions by Robert Burnham (Q4v and n3v); seventeenth-century ownership inscription ("Joh[ann]es Rix iure me possidet"); ownership inscription, presumably of the hymnwriter and organist Arthur Henry Brown (1830-1926) "Arthur H. Brown, Brentwood, 1865"

LITERATURE:

DMH 79; ESTC S1202; STC 2856