Many of those who can read the Bible in their languages today don’t know the sacrifices that some people paid. Some people paid with their lives to have the Bible translated into many languages.
One of such people is William Tyndale. Tyndale lived between 1490 and 94, near Gloucestershire, England. He died on October 6, 1536, Vilvoorde, near Brussels, Brabant. He was an English biblical translator, humanist, and Protestant martyr.
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Tyndale is well known as a translator of the Bible into English. His works were influenced by the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther.
Tyndale attended the University of Oxford and became an instructor at the University of Cambridge. In 1521, he met a group of humanist scholars meeting at the White Horse Inn and became convinced that the Bible alone should determine the practices and doctrines of the church. He was of the opinion that all believers should be able to read the Bible in their language. This propelled him to make a move to have the Bible translated into English.
Because of the availability of a printing press and a demand for Scriptures in the vernacular, William Tyndale began working on the translation of the New Testament directly from the Greek in 1523.
He was opposed by church authorities in England. They prevented him from translating the Bible into English there, so he moved to Germany in 1524, and with financial support from wealthy London merchants, his New Testament translation was completed in July 1525 and printed at Cologne.
Again, Tyndale came under pressure from the city authorities. As a result, he fled to Worms, where two more editions were published in 1525. The first copies of Tyndale’s Bible in English were smuggled into England in 1526, where they were immediately proscribed.
After successfully translating the New Testament, Tyndale began work on the Old Testament. In 1530, he finished the translation of the Pentateuch in Marburg with each of the five books being separately published and circulated.
Tyndale continued to work on the Old Testament translation but was captured in 1535 at Antwerp before it was completed. He was reportedly betrayed by Henry Phillips to authorities representing the Holy Roman Empire. He was held in the castle of Vilvoorde (Filford) near Brussels before his trial.
In 1536, he was tried on a charge of heresy for translating the Bible into English. He was found guilty and condemned to be burned to death. He was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was set ablaze. His final words at the stake before he passed on were reported as “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes.”
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True to his prayers, within four years, after his death, four English translations of the Bible were published in England at the king’s request. This included Henry’s official Great Bible.
Tyndale’s translation of the Bible was used for subsequent English translations, including the Great Bible and the Bishops’ Bible, authorized by the Church of England.
Reference: William Tyndale, Biography of the Father of English Bible
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