THE STORY OF  WILLIAM TYNDALE

The Bible is one of the world’s best selling books and is available, I believe, in every written language and can be purchased from every book shop across the land. However, this was not always the case. Up to the middle of the 16^th century, the Holy Writ was in the total control of the Roman Catholic church, usually written in Latin and only available to the clergy. At this time the Reformation was taking place in Europe and Protestantism was on the march against the complacency and sometimes corruption that was infecting the established church. Reformers such as Erasmus believed that superstition had crept into the Latin versions of the Bible and that the early Greek and Hebrew texts were closer to the truth.

In England there were two reformers at this time whose ambitions were to translate the Bible into English: Miles Coverdale and William Tyndale. William Tyndale, born in Gloucestershire at the end of the fifteenth century, was educated at Magdalen College School before going on to Oxford where he studied theology. A gifted linguist, fluent in several languages including Hebrew, Latin and Greek, he moved onto Cambridge where it is likely he met and was influenced by Erasmus. After leaving Cambridge he became a chaplain and tutor to the family of Sir John Walsh. His forthright views soon got him into trouble with the religious authorities and he was summoned to appear before the Dean of Worcester. On this occasion, however, no formal charges were laid. Tyndale was planning his translation of the Bible and he sought permission for this from Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall. Suspicious of Tyndale’s theology, doubtful of his scholarship and uncomfortable with the idea of a translation in the vernacular (English), Tunstall refused. Tyndale was undeterred and ignoring the mounting opposition he began his work. He left England for Hamburg in 1524, completed his translation in 1525 and in 1526 a full edition of the New Testament in English rolled off the printing press of Peter Schoeffer in Worms. Further copies were printed in Antwerp and smuggled back to England and Scotland. It was then that all hell broke loose! Bishop Tunstall threatened booksellers and copies were publicly burned. The Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey condemned Tyndale as a heretic. Tyndale also fell foul of Henry VIII over his comments about the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Another implacable enemy was Sir Thomas More who had published a six volume work savagely criticising Tyndale and calling him "the Antichrist". Tyndale went into hiding in Hamburg and continued his work revising his New Testament and publishing an Old Testament. Eventually, he was betrayed by a so-called friend Henry Phillips and arrested in 1535. He was imprisoned at Vilvoorde Castle, near Brussels, for sixteen months then tried for heresy and condemned to death in 1536.

Meanwhile the situation in England had changed dramatically. Wolseley was dead and Henry had fallen out with Rome and the established church was now Protestant. Wolsey’s successor, Thomas Cromwell ,attempted to intercede on Tyndale’s behalf but to no avail. He was executed in 1536 and his final words were "Oh, Lord, open the King of England’s eyes" This prayer was soon to be answered for within four years, four translations of the Bible had appeared in England, one becoming the "official" version and available in every church in the land. Another irony in this time of change was that Tyndale’s fiercest foe had preceded him into the next world. The year before Tyndale’s execution, Sir Thomas More had gone to the scaffold for one of Tyndale’s ‘crimes’, the refusal to recognise Henry’s divorce.

There are memorials to Tyndale in Vilvoorde where he was executed, in the Victorian Embankment Gardens in London and on a hill above his supposed birthplace, North Nibley in Gloucestershire. Colleges, schools and centres of learning across the world have been named in his honour and traditionally his death is commemorated on October 6^th. The greatest memorial to this dedicated scholar and Christian appeared in 1611, the King James Authorised Version of the Bible. Although unacknowledged, the bulk of it came directly from the work of Tyndale and many phrases which are familiar to millions are his, for example "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil".

Next time, you open your bible please spare a thought for the man who was prepared to give his life because he believed it was a God given right that everyone should be able to read the scriptures in his own tongue. Do this and give thanks for William Tyndale.