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“THE PROCESS OF THE TEXT” THE REFORMATION HERMENEUTICS OF WILLIAM TYNDALE lo) — TIBOR FABINY 1he father of English Bible translation and thus of English Protestantism is, undoubtedly, William Tyndale (1492?-1536). Several articles have already been published on Tyndale as a biblical scholar’, as a translator’, as a maker of the English language? but only a a few scholars have tried to explore Tyndale’s hermeneutics’. The issue of the literal sense is a frequently debated question in biblical studies. The Old Testament scholar Brevard S. Childs in a 1976 article argued that it was both an "ancient and modern problem". He pointed out that while during the time of the Reformation the literal sense meant the explicative theological sense of the text as well as the historical reference. However, for the historical-critical method, emerging in the eigtheenth century, the sensus litteralis became simply sensus historicus, and this method was characterized by a total commitment to this new understanding of the literal sense. The general assumption has been that there is an unbroken line of continuity between the Reformation and the eighteenth century with regard to the literal sense. Arguing against this mainstream, Hans Frei, in his The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (1974), has demonstrated the discontinuity between the Reformers and the eighteenth and nineteenth century critics.f | HAMMOND, Gerald, William Tyndale’s Pentateuch: Its Relation to Luther’s German Bible and the Hebrew Original, Renaissance Quarterly, 33 (1980), 351-385. 2 CuMMINGS, Brian, The Theology of Translation, in J. T. Day — E. Lund — A. M. O’Donell (eds.), Word, Church and State. Tyndale Quincentenary Essays, Washington D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1998, 36-61. Davies, Norman, William Tyndale’s English of Controversy, The Chamber Memorial Lecture delivered 4 March 1971 at University College London, London, University College, 1971. * PARKER, Douglas, Tyndale’s Biblical Hermeneutics, in Word, Church and State, 87-101. 5 BREVARD, S. Childs, The Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and Modern Problem”, in H. Donner at al. (eds.), Beiträge zur Altestamentliche Theologie, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976, pp. 88-99. ° Frei, Hans, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century 53 ¢
