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William Tyndale (October 6th) is the great hero of the English Bible. Beginning in 1524, he produced the very first translations of the Scriptures into English directly from the original Hebrew and Greek. Born ca. 1494, he received his degrees from Oxford and was ordained a priest in 1521.
His entire life was dedicated to rendering the Scriptures in the people’s language. He told a prominent Churchman who opposed his project that “before many years I will cause a boy that drives the plough to know more scripture than you do.” Failing to obtain the support of the Bishop of London, he moved to Germany in 1524, encouraged by the fact that Luther had produced a German Bible just two years earlier. However, Tyndale was not left free to do his work. From this point on, his life reads like a cloak-and-dagger story.
His opponents in England and on the Continent sought to destroy his work and bring him to execution. Tyndale produced his translations in hiding, working in attics and barns, all the while fleeing from one city to another across Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Finally, he was betrayed and captured. By decree of the Holy Roman Emperor he was strangled at the stake and his body burned on Oct. 6, 1536. His last words were the prophetic prayer: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”
Tyndale did not live to fulfill his task but he did complete the New Testament, and then the first fourteen books of the Hebrew Scriptures. The landmark King James Version (1611) certainly could not have been produce without Tyndale’s work: some 94% of the New Testament in the KJV is exactly as Tyndale left it. Even the KJV’s magnificent prose style is owed to Tyndale. It is said that he practically reinvented the English language and showed how glorious it could be. He did the same thing for Holy Scripture and its place in our lives.
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