Reformation in The Books Store

William Tyndale was the first to translate the full New Testament and half of the Hebrew Scriptures directly from their original languages into English and to see his work produced on the early modern printing press. Born in the late fifteenth century, he was educated at Oxford and began his self-imposed exile in 1524 when he was refused ecclesiastical approval for his work of translation. Regarded as a Lutheran heretic, he eluded capture in Germany and the Low Countries for over ten years while he worked on his translations and produced ten polemical pamphlets and works of exegesis. Eventually arrested, he was condemned and executed outside Brussels.

This collection of essays-based on papers from the Washington International Conference celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tyndale's birth-contains cutting-edge work by some of the world's most established scholars currently working on Tyndale. The essays collected here address Tyndale's hermeneutics and practice as a translator as well as his pastoral concerns; treat his theological interactions with his opponent John Fisher, his disciple John Frith, and his adversary Jacobus Latomus; compare Tyndale's and Sir Thomas More's ideas on friars, Turks, and impending death; examine the role of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey in Tyndale's world and in Tyndale's works; compare Tyndale's efforts with those of John Skelton in calling for church reform; and consider how Tyndale's ideas echo in Shakespeare.

The essays make fresh linguistic, historical, and theological contributions to Tyndale studies and give theoretical or practical readings of his lesser-known compositions. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of the literature, history, and theology of the Reformation in England during the sixteenth century, as well as to those interested in Tyndale himself, Sir Thomas More, and the Bible in English.

John T. Day is professor of English at St. Olaf College. Eric Lund is professor and chair of the department of religion at St. Olaf College. Anne M. O'Donnell, S.N.D., is associate professor of English at The Catholic University of America.