How did Yom Kippur become the Day of Atonement? The story of how this came about begins with William Tyndale (~1490 – 1536).  In the fourteenth century in England, John Wycliffe had translated the Bible into English but his source for the translation was the Latin Vulgate Bible.  Tyndale translated the Bible from its original Hebrew and Greek into English.  He translated the entire New Testament and the Torah and the book of Jonah before he was captured and convicted of heresy.  He was strangled and then burned at the stake in Belgium in 1536.

It is no exaggeration to say that William Tyndale made a greater impact on the English language than any other person in history.  Most of his Bible translations ended up in the King James Version of the Bible with very little change.  It is estimated that more than one billion copies of the King James Bible have been printed.

When William Tyndale was translating the Old Testament into English he struggled with Hebrew words that did not have a good English counterpart. As a result, he had to create new English words to convey the meaning of the Hebrew word. Author Harry Freedman who wrote  the book, The Murderous History of Bible Translations, wrote about William Tyndale in a blog for The Times of Israel. “If he came across a Hebrew word he couldn’t translate, he invented a new English word to explain it. Among the new words that appear for the first time in Tyndale’s Bible are network, thanksgiving, Passover, circumcised, birthright and whoremonger.”[1]

William Tyndale also created the word “Atonement.”  He was not satisfied with the Septuagint that linked kippur with cleansing. He was also not satisfied with Jerome’s Latin Vulgate that linked kippur with prayer.  Sin created a separation between us and God.  Tyndale recognized that Yom Kippur represented our reconciliation with God. In other words we become one with God again; At-One-Ment. This is how William Tyndale created the word “Atonement.”

As we saw in my previous blog on humility God wants four things from us:

1. Humble ourselves
2. Pray
3. Seek His face
4. Turn from our wicked ways

Even if we do all these things our sinfulness makes us unworthy to reconcile with God. In spite of this, God chooses to reconcile with us anyway. So, we see that Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement is also about God’s grace. It is only by God’s grace that we can achieve At-One-Ment with God. May our prayer be that we become one with God on this Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

References

[1] Harry Freedman, “Atonement: A Made Up Word with an Impossible Meaning,” The Times of Israel, May 1, 2019, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/atonement-a-made-up-word-with-an-impossible-meaning/

The portrait of William Tyndale is in the public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_William_Tyndale.jpg