David Daniell announced at the Library on June 4 that "83 percent of the King James New Testament is Tyndale exactly." Although it was known that Tyndale's English translations of the Bible were the basis of the King James Bible, an exact percentage had not been determined, he said.
David Daniell (right) describes the pocket-size design of the Tyndale Bibles to Prince Philip and Dr. Billington during the Prince's visit to the Library's exhibition "Let There Be Light." - N. Alicia Byers
The King James Bible was authorized by the same government that 75 years earlier put Tyndale to death for translating the Bible into English. Only one year after Tyndale's death, England had changed its policy to allow the circulation of the complete English Bible (1535), by Tyndale's disciple Miles Coverdale.
Mr. Daniell, who is Tyndale's biographer, made the announcement at the Library of Congress opening of an exhibition he curated for the British Library, "Let There Be Light: William Tyndale and the Making of the English Bible." He attributed the figure to a student at Brigham Young University who compared the texts using a computer. "At last the definitive figure for how dependent the King James is on Tyndale," said Daniell, who learned of the percentage in January when he visited the college in Provo, Utah.
What Daniell and other scholars already knew was that "The New Testament ... was Tyndale's in vocabulary, syntax and the verbal cadence." Mr. Daniell, emeritus professor of English at the University of London, said Tyndale's translations had a profound influence on the English language in his talk, "William Tyndale: Courage and Genius Behind the English Bible."
"The words of the 1611 version of the King James Bible have gone around the world for nearly four centuries and are soaked into the work of many writers in English. Many simple elemental phrases in the King James Bible of 1611 can be felt to belong properly to the later years of Shakespeare, like, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,' 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God' and 'Behold I stand at the door and knock.'
"In all these phrases, the original New Testament Greek is immediately understandable to any English hearer or reader, with, as well, an uncanny directness. ... These phrases were made not in 1611, but early in the 1530s, when English was still a poorish language."
David Scott Kastan, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, described Tyndale's time in history in an address titled "The Noyse of the New Bible: Religion and Politics in Henrician England.
"King Henry himself condemned the translation and determined the 'said corrupt and untrue translations to be burned with further sharp correction and punishment against the keepers and readers of the same.' However, the four-shilling Bibles reached an eager audience whose desire for the scriptures had been left unsatisfied by the government's failed policy of censorship and repression. 'The noyse of the new Bible,' in Tyndale's fine phrase, echoed throughout the country."
Dr. Billington welcomed an audience of about 100 people. "The Library of Congress is enormously pleased to be collaborating with our sister institution the British Library on this exhibition. ... The original interactive device is still the book, which fosters a train of thought rather than a bumper car of emotions. No book has had the impact of the book we are celebrating in this exhibition."
Said Brian Lang, chief executive of the British Library, "No computer terminal is ever going to evoke the words in the way Tyndale's printed work is able to do. ... There is nothing between us and what is on the page -- until that is, I might put my spectacles on. We're delighted to share this with you."
John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book, acted as emcee for the program, which was sponsored by the Center for the Book in cooperation with the Interpretive Programs Office, the Folger Institute, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Washington Collegium for the Humanities.
