William Tyndale: A Biography by David Daniell (review)

704BOOK REVIEWS smiths in Basel support the old piety whUe other guilds caUed for its aboUtion? Questions such as these await further exploration. As she did in her previous study, Always Among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli's Zurich (Cambridge, 1990), Lee Wandel has once anew focused on the role symbols play in the creation and transformation of culture. More spectficaUy , she has again called attention to the centrality of symbol and ritual in the unfolding of the Reformation. Sixteenth-century Protestants and CathoUcs knew that iconoclasm was not simply a byproduct of the Reformation, or a violent spasm, but its very essence. With this book, Lee Wandel has brought us one step closer to recovering this once-lost perspective. Carlos M. N. Eire University ofVirginia William Tyndale:A Biography. By David DanieU. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1994. Pp. x, 429. $30.00.) When David DanieU's biography appeared as part of the WUUam Tyndale Quincentenary celebrations (1494-1536), I wondered what else could be said about the first translator of the New Testament and Pentateuch from Greek and Hebrew into EngUsh. I had been disappointed by C. H. WUUams' 1969 biography , and then wished that the pubUshers had simply reprinted J. F. Mozley's 1937 biography, which they did Ui 1971 . Although DanieU is not a professional historian, he is a Shakespeare scholar and the editor of modern-spelling versions of Tyndale's New Testament (1989) and Old Testament (1992). He thus brings a broad and deep knowledge ofRenaissance EngUsh to bear on Tyndale's clear and vivid prose. In my opinion, the best parts of this biography are the chapters which analyze Tyndale's bibUcal translations. Studying the table of contents and prologue to the aborted Cologne edition of 1525, DanieU notes their resemblance to Luther's New Testament of 1522 (p. 1 10). His chapter on Tyndale's Pentateuch explains the general principle of the three-consonant form of most Hebrew words f?. 300 ff.) but also examines specific passages as translated Ui the Vulgate ,WycltfA and B,Tyndale, and the KingJamesVersion (pp. 285-286). Ui Gen. 3:4,"Then said the serpent unto the woman: tush ye shaU not die," DanieU tries to gage the exact tone of the coUoquial "Tush" by measuring it against "Tush" in Hamlet, The Taming ofthe Shrew, andMuchAdoAboutNothing (pp. 407-408, n. 3). DanieU praises the dtfectness ofTyndale's translation of 2 Samuel 22,"the aUens . . . shaU tremble for fear," by contrasting it with a modern version, " 'foreigners wUl be disheartened' as if they can't find luggage troUeys at Heathrow" (p. 342). Although DanieU gives a chapter each to Tyndale's first theological book, WickedMammon, and his major poUtical treatise, Obedience ofa Christian Man, he skims over the other exegetical and polemical writings. Critical BOOK REVIEWS705 editions of aU of these wUl be published by the CathoUc University ofAmerica Press as the IndependentWorks ofWiUiam Tyndale. DanieU is weU aware of the work of the revisionist historians J.J. Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh, and Eamon Duffy, who defend the character ofthe medieval church and claim that the Reformation was forced upon the EngUsh people from above (p. 398, n. 29). DanieU answers Duffy at some length (pp. 398-399, n. 36), opposing bibUcal Protestantism to folk CathoUcism. Unlike Duffy, I would mourn the loss to EngUsh Christianity, not so much of saints and sacramentals , but ofthe centraUty ofthe Mass and the unity of Christendom. In other passages DanieU takes a miUtant Protestant position, "Repentance and beUef come from reading, which brings salvation. This is sound New Testament doctrine : boU that book down, and this is what you get" (p. 148). Unlike DanieU, I would assert the primacy of the Two Great Commandments for the Gospels and, for Paul, the union of beUevers in Christ. WhUe the student ofthe Bible and church history wUl find much to learn and enjoy in DanieU's biography of Tyndale, the CathoUc reader wUl be pained by his chapter on SU Thomas More, first on More's account, then on DanieU's. Besides More's rightful image as a merry friend, loving father, honest judge, and faithful martyr,we must also acknowledge More's...