William Tyndale, the “Father of the English Bible”

William Tyndale (ca. 1494–1536) studied Scripture and language at Oxford and Cambridge, where he lectured and became convinced of the need for the Scriptures to be read and learned by everyone, including the common man. He studied the work of Erasmus, and was impressed with his new 1516 edition of the Greek New Testament. In the preface to this work, Erasmus expressed his desire that the Scriptures be translated into the common tongue and read by the unlearned. “I wish that the farm worker might sing parts of them at the plough, that the weaver might hum them at the shuttle, and that the traveler might beguile the weariness of the way by reciting them.”[1] Tyndale came to share the same desire. His concern for the widespread ignorance of the Scripture included not only the common man, but many learned clerics as well. He is reported in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs to have said to one learned clergyman, “If God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!”[2]

Most of Tyndale’s work occurred during the early part of the reign of Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547), before Henry’s break from the Roman Catholic Church. Tyndale faced much opposition in England that forced him to continue his work on the continent of Europe, but finally published the New Testament in 1526. This was the first Bible to be printed in English. Tyndale was also the first to translate the Bible into English directly from the original language. In this he set a new high level of scholarship in English translations that would be continued by his successors. Tyndale for these reasons has been called the “father of the English Bible.”

Tyndale's Bible was banned in England. Thousands were seized and burned. Sir Thomas More wrote in 1529, “To study to find errors in Tyndale's book were like studying to find water in the seas.”[3] In spite of opposition from church and state authorities in England, Tyndale's Bible continued to be circulated, smuggled from place to place, and eagerly read.

Tyndale managed to publish parts of the Old Testament translated from the Hebrew, and a revision of his English New Testament before his death. He was found guilty of heresy and executed on 6 October 1536 by being strangled then burned at the stake. His dying words were “Lord, open the King of England's eyes!”

---

[1] Qtd. in F. F. Bruce, History of the English Bible, Third Edition (Oxford, 1978), 29.

[2] Qtd. in Bruce, History, 29.

[3] Qtd. in F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, Revised Edition (Revell, 1963), 223.