When William Tyndale had completed his 1526 New Testament he set about learning Hebrew and translated from the original, with the aid of Luther's version, the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, which he issued in 1530. The signs are that Tyndale's immersion in its patriarchal narratives and legal codes transformed his doctrinal views - in contrast to Luther, who tended always to regard the Old Testament as an embarrassment at best and a Jewish conspiracy at worst - and inaugurated that strange elevation of the Old Testament which still marks English and American culture. One element of this is easy to understand: the best stories in the Bible are in the Old Testament. Their influence has been immense, ranging from the Old and New World puritans who saw their travails clearly reflected in the Israelites' journey out of Egypt into the Promised Land, to the First World War soldiers who read into Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son their elders' easy tolerance of the huge casualty figures.

LRB 23 May 1996 | PDF Download