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TIBOR FABINY Tyndale’s writings are in a way all hermeneutical treatises, and I am suggesting that he raises modern questions concerning the nature of the literal sense. In the following paper I wish to show (1) what Tyndale means by the literal sense when he radically rejects allegory, permitting at the same time certain forms of it; (2) how frequently Tyndale and his colleague John Frith (1503-1533) use the modern-sounding term “process of the text” in their writings; (3) how their ideas conform both to the Fathers of the Church, and to some modern views of textuality. TYNDALE’S LITERAL SENSE The Prologue to the 1525 Cologne Fragment’ and its expanded edition A Pathway into Holy Scripture (1531)*° might be considered as the first documents of Lutheran-type hermeneutics in English. Nevertheless I would propose “The Four Senses of Scripture”, the last long section of The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), as the first par excellence hermeneutical treatise in English. It is here that Tyndale gives a definition of the literal sense: “... the scripture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense. And that literal sense is the root and ground of all, and the anchor that never faileth, whereunto if thou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of the way. And if thou leave the literal sense, thou canst not but go out of the way.”” Tyndale rejects the medieval Quadriga, or, “Four senses of Scripture” the idea of which goes back to John Cassian (c365-c435) a contemporary of Augustine. Tyndale emphasized “the one sense” which is the “root”, the “ground” and the “anchor” of every signification. Tyndale shared the Lutheran and Reformation principle of sacra scriptura sui ipsius interpres when he said: Hermeneutics, New Haven — London, Yale University Press, 1974. 7 POLLARD, Alfred W. (ed.), Tyndale, William, The Beginning of the New Testament. Translated by William Tyndale 1525. Facsimile of the Unique Fragmenmt of the Uncompleted Cologne Edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1926. WALTER, Henry (ed.), Tyndale, William, A Pathway into the Holy Scripture, in, Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scripture by William Tyndale, The Parker Society 42, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1848, 1-28. * DANIELL, David, (ed.), Tyndale, William, The Obedience of a Christian Man, London, Penguin Books, 2000, 56.
