William Tyndale - the Father of the English Bible

William Tyndale was a scholar who went to the University of Oxford. He could speak seven languages and was skilled in ancient Greek and Hebrew. He was a priest who led a disciplined life and was blessed with intellectual gifts, which could have taken him a long way in the church if he had not felt the compulsion to teach his countrymen the good news of justification by faith.

Tyndale discovered this doctrine when he read his mentor, Erasmus’s Greek edition of the New Testament. He felt there wasn’t a better way to share this message with the men and women in his country than to create an English version of the New Testament and put it into their hands. And this became William Tyndale’s passion in life.

William Tyndale’s Work and Bible Translations

Tyndale raised objection to the Catholic Church’s control of the Latin scripture and the ban against an English translation. When he sought permission from ecclesiastical authorities for translating the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek, his request was denied. However, he left for Germany, where he worked on the Bible’s English translation.

He published his work on the New Testament and sections of the Old Testament, together with other writings, and got them smuggled into England. His work created the foundation of all other English translations of the Bible that followed until the contemporary era.

It’s interesting to note that William Tyndale is recognized as the first person who translated the Bible into English, instead of Wycliffe, because he used the original language Bibles, unlike the Latin translation that Wycliffe used.

William Tyndale’s Death

After Henry VIII called for his arrest, William Tyndale kept changing his locations to maintain safety. Though he was protected well by Antwerp’s affluent merchants, it was Henry Phillips who finally betrayed him though Tyndale considered him his friend. William Tyndale was imprisoned, followed by a torturous execution by strangulation, after which his body was burned at the stake in October 1536.

Final Words

Three years later, the Bible’s completed English version was published in England by his colleague Myles Coverdale with the king’s approval. Today, both William Tyndale and Coverdale are honored as the first to translate the Bible into English though it’s widely accepted that Coverdale mostly developed William Tyndale’s earlier work.

Original Source: http://william-tyndale.com/william-tyndale-the-father-of-the-english-bible.html