One scholar thus assesses Tyndale’s contribution to language: “It would be hard to overpraise the literary merits of what he had done. He recounts that Tyndale happened to be in the company of a learned man, and in communing and disputing with him about the issue of the Bible and the Catholic Church, the learned man said, “We were better without God’s law than the pope’s. Throughout the Old Testament, Tyndale was faced with many legal and religious Hebrew terms that were difficult to find English equivalents for. As the old Italian proverb goes, tradutore traditore—“a translator is a traitor.” Any rendering of a text from one language to another inevitably involves interpretation and the changing of meaning.The choice of words can also be theologically loaded. Within a language, words develop complex semantic fields—that is, sets of meanings depending on context and usage. For example, he used congregation instead of church, elder instead of priest, repent instead of do penance, and love instead of charity. Tyndale’s English translations of these words were in many cases probably more accurate translations of the Greek terms, but they differed from the familiar Vulgate upon which much Christian theology had been based. It shows that Tyndale's words account for 84% of the New Testament and for 75.8% of the Old Testament books that he translated. Tyndale may also have noted that Jerome, in his Latin translation, had attempted to render this same Hebrew wordplay. For the English family, see Tyndale's birth was about 1494 according to History of the Revised Version in 1881. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMoynahan2003 ( sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMoynahan2003 ( sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMoynahan2003 ( sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMoynahan2003 ( sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMoynahan2003 ( In his 1526 New Testament, Tyndale rendered this term as “the seate of grace” in Hebrews 9:5, but in his translation of the Old Testament, most likely influenced by Luther’s Gnadenstuhle (literally “grace” or “mercy” with “chair” or “seat”), Tyndale coined the term “merciseate” (Exodus 25:17, 18). Oddly enough, Tyndale did not use his newly coined word in the New Testament but preferred the term Easter—which Christians of his time routinely used for the Christian festival. Consider the familiar cadences of the following phrases created by Tyndale: “let there be light, and there was light,” “male and female created he them,” “who told thee that thou wast naked?” “my brother’s keeper,” “the Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee,” “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul and with all thy might,” “the salt of the earth,” “the powers that be,” “a law unto themselves,” “filthy lucre,” and “fight the good fight.” These phrases have become impressed in the English language, both in religious discourse and in proverbial expressions.
Tyndale most definitely coined new words -- atonement, for one. The early Greek and Latin translators presumed, probably incorrectly, that this word was made up of Hebrew ‘ēz ’ōzēl, meaning “a goat that goes away” (in Greek, chimaros apopompaios, “to be sent away,” and in Latin, caper emissarius). In his preface to his 1534 New Testament ("WT unto the Reader"), he not only goes into some detail about the Greek tenses but also points out that there is often a Hebrew idiom underlying the Greek.Of the first (1526) edition of Tyndale's New Testament, only three copies survive. Leviticus 16 contains a description of the most solemn of the festivals of the law of Moses, called Yom Kippur in Hebrew. And who can imagine singing the hymn “I Stand All Amazed,” without the image of presenting oneself at the “mercy seat”? At the end of his translation of Genesis, Tyndale included a list explaining his translations of various Hebrew words. . The term “mercy seat” nicely links the idea of atonement implied by the Hebrew word kappōret, as it is linguistically linked with the host of terms dealing with repentance and forgiveness and the reconciliation offered to ancient Israel at this sacred covering. He used the term transitus Domini (“the passing over of the Lord”) to describe the paschal sacrifice (Exodus 12:11), and the verb transeo, “to pass over,” as it is used in Exodus 12:13 (ac transibo vos, “I will pass over you”).
Tyndale sought to render the biblical text into plain and literal English and tried to capture the sense of each word in its original language and context. Indeed, in his own words directed to the readers of his translation, he invites us as follows: “Geve diligence Reder (I exhorte the) that thou come with a pure mynde, and as the scripture sayth with a syngle eye, unto the wordes of health, and of eternall lyfe: by the which (if we repent and beleve them) we are borne anewe, created afresshe, and enioye the frutes off the bloud of Christ.” “Come . He died while translating the Gospel of John. unto the Wordes of Health, and of Eternall Lyfe”