Wordwatch: Martyr

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was published in 1559, running to a total of 732 pages (in Latin). The first English edition appeared in 1563 and was followed by steadily enlarged editions in 1570, 1576 and 1583. The author, John Foxe (1516-1587), was one of those ministers who fled to the continent during the reign of Mary Tudor when Protestants were being burned at the stake, returning only when the first Elizabeth ascended the throne and the persecution ended.

John Foxe gave his book the snappy title of Acts and Monuments of Matters Happening to the Church. It became a classic of church history and, in various editions, is still in print today. And it seems to have fixed the meaning of the word ‘martyr’ in the English language as: someone who dies for his or her beliefs and is admired for this.¹

Our word ‘martyr’ is a transliteration of the Greek word marturos, which doesn’t mean dying—it means witnessing. Today Bible translators routinely render marturos as ‘witness’—as did Wycliffe and Tyndale (in 1388 and 1534 respectively). But in between those older translations and today, in 1611 in the King James Version, marturos in Acts 22:20 and Revelation 2:13 became ‘martyr’. Why? I suspect because of John Foxe’s influential and widely read book—and because these texts record those whose witnessing leads to their death.

What Foxe has usefully done for us is to connect the notions of witnessing and suffering. We can all think of those occasions when we could have said something for the gospel in a conversation with our friends, but our nerve failed. We wanted to witness, but not to suffer—even though our suffering would have been nothing worse than mockery or rejection (rather less painful and less permanent than Foxe’s martyrs suffered, and than our brothers and sisters suffer today in some countries).

It’s worth remembering the lesson of John Foxe: that witnessing and suffering march in lock step, and that all Christians are called to do both.