The word "luck" occurs three times in Tyndale's Old Testament. It is then excised from the Geneva Bible and the Authorised Version, and does not reappear in scriptural English until the New English Bible 400 years later. It is not difficult to see why: "luck" is a shibboleth for any predestinarian outlook. Yet it does not fit either with the theodicy expressed in Tyndale's theological writings, in particular in the Prologues to the Old Testament books concerned, such as Genesis and Jonah.

This paper will consider how Tyndale's translations and prologues come to contradictory conclusions on English "luck", and in the process will offer some commentary on the complex struggle between the different vocabularies of chance in Hebrew, Greek and English.