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 William
Tyndale was born about 1495 at Slymbridge near the Welsh border. He received
his degrees from Magdalen College, Oxford, and also studied at Cambridge. He
was ordained to the priesthood in 1521, and soon began to speak of his
desire, which eventually became his life's obsession, to translate the
Scriptures into English. It is reported that, in the course of a dispute
with a promminent clergyman who disparaged this proposal, he said, "If God
spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to
know more of the Scriptures than thou dost." The remainder of his life was
devoted to keeping that vow, or boast. Finding that the King, Henry VIII,
was firmly set against any English version of the Scriptures, he fled to
Germany (visiting Martin Luther in 1525), and there travelled from city to
city, in exile, poverty, persecution, and constant danger. Tyndale
understood the commonly received doctrine -- the popular theology -- of his
time to imply that men earn their salvation by good behavior and by penance.
He wrote eloquently in favor of the view that salvation is a gift of God,
freely bestowed, and not a response to any good act on the part of the
receiver. His views are expressed in numerous pamphlets, and in the
introductions to and commentaries on various books of the Bible that
accompanied his translations. He completed his translation of the New
Testament in 1525, and it was printed at Worms and smuggled into England. Of
18,000 copies, only two survive. In 1534, he produced a revised version, and
began work on the Old Testament. In the next two years he completed and
published the Pentateuch and Jonah, and translated the books from Joshua
through Second Chronicles, but then he was captured (betrayed by one he had
befriended), tried for heresy, and put to death. He was burned at the stake,
but, as was often done, the officer strangled him before lighting the fire.
His last words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."
Miles Coverdale continued Tyndale's work by translating those portions of
the Bible (including the Apocrypha) which Tyndale had not lived to translate
himself, and publishing the complete work. In 1537, the "Matthew Bible"
(essentially the Tyndale-Coverdale Bible under another man's name to spare
the government embarrassment) was published in England with the Royal
Permission. Six copies were set up for public reading in Old St Paul's
Church, and throughout the daylight hours the church was crowded with those
who had come to hear it. One man would stand at the lectern and read until
his voice gave out, and then he would stand down and another would take his
place. All English translations of the Bible from that time to the present
century are essentially revisions of the Tyndale-Coverdale work.
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