William Tyndale: A Radical Reformer

 

William Tyndale was born around 1494 in Melksham Court, Stinchcombe, a village near Dursley, Gloucestershire, England. In 1506, William was enrolled at Magdalen College School at the Oxford University and completed his B.A. in 1512 and his Master of Arts degree in 1515. This allowed him to start studying theology, but not Scripture. He proved to be a gifted linguist. He became fluent in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Between 1517 and 1521, he went to the University of Cambridge and served as a professor of Greek. While at Cambridge, he became further convinced that the Bible alone should determine the practices and doctrines of the church and that every follower should be able to read the Bible in his own language. In 1521, he left Cambridge and became the chaplain at the home of Sir John Walsh, at Little Sodbury.

In 1523, Tyndale tried and failed to get authorization from the church to translate the Bible into English. So he left England to translate it without authorization, possibly in Wittenberg—a city in Germany. In July 1525, Tyndale completed the New Testament translation which was subsequently published at Cologne and later at Worms, after the suppression of Catholic authorities. The following year, its first copies reached England where they were soon condemned as heretical and burnt in public at St. Paul's Cross.

Tyndale also wrote books and religious tracts. In 1530, he wrote the Practice of Prelates, in which he infuriated King Henry VIII by criticizing the monarch’s plan to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Tyndale said this went against Bible teaching. Eventually, he came out of hiding and moved to Antwerp (1534), believing it to be safe. There he continued to work as a translator, writer, and evangelist. He also visited other religious refugees and helped the poor. William Tyndale’s Biblical translations appeared in the following order: New Testament, 1525-26; Pentateuch, 1530; Jonah, 1531.

Tyndale was betrayed in Antwerp by a friend, Henry Phillips, in May 1535. Tyndale was arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Vilvoorde for over 500 days of horrible conditions. He was tried for heresy and treason in a ridiculously unfair trial and convicted. Tyndale was then strangled and burnt at the stake in the prison yard, Oct. 6, 1536.

Tyndale’s dying prayer was, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Tyndale’s dying hope was answered: Henry VIII authorized what became known as the Matthew Bible, based on Tyndale’s work. This was followed by The Great Bible of 1539, authorized by the King to be read aloud in the services of the Church of England. It too was based on Tyndale. In 1611, when King James famously commissioned 54 scholars to produce the King James Version of the Bible, they used almost all of Tyndale’s original translations.

His work also changed the English language, introducing new words and phrases such as "Passover", "let there be light", "Seek and ye shall find", "Ask and it shall be given you" and "the signs of the times." Some words and phrases have been criticized as inaccurate but Tyndale’s translations have remained the basis for many of the versions of the Bible that have followed.