Parenting & Family Quote by William Tyndale

Tyndale writes like a man smuggling dynamite in a hymnbook. On the surface, he is doing straightforward typology: the spotless sacrificial lamb of the Hebrew scriptures prefigures Christ. But the verb choice matters. "Consider and mark" is a teacher's imperative, not a priest's benediction. He is training readers to read for themselves, to become competent interpreters who can trace a line from Levitical ritual to Christian doctrine without clerical handholding.

The phrase "without spot or blemish" carries a double charge. Theologically, it asserts Christ's unique sinlessness. Politically, it functions as a quiet rebuke of the late-medieval ecclesiastical machine that had turned holiness into something brokered: indulgences, penance tariffs, priestly mediation. Tyndale's Christ is not one holy option among many administered by an institution; he is "only of all mankind" acceptable "in the sight of God and of his law". That last clause is doing Protestant heavy lifting: divine law, not church custom, is the measuring stick.

Context sharpens the edge. Tyndale was translating scripture into English in an era when that could get you tried for heresy and killed. So the argument is also a defense of translation itself. If scripture already contains the pattern - prophecy and fulfillment, sign and substance - then ordinary readers can "see" it when it's in their language. The subtext is insurgent: interpretive authority belongs with the text, not the gatekeepers. This isn't just Christology; it's a blueprint for religious power redistributed through literacy.