This year (2025) marks the 500 anniversary of the translation of the Bible into English by William Tyndale.
There had been translations of the Bible into English before Tyndale. The Venerable Bede, a leading monk living at Jarrow from the late 600s, undertook a translation of John's gospel into English. Also, King Alfred (849-899) translated the first five books of the Old Testament into English. Later, in 1384, Reformer John Wycliffe and his followers completed a translation into English from the Latin (Vulgate). However, the institutional church during the Middle Ages considered it unhelpful to "give" the Bible to ordinary people, and Wycliffe's Bible translation was banned, and owning a copy was punishable by death.
William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire probably around 1494. He went up to Oxford University where he studied at Magdalen College from around 1506, graduating with a BA in 1512, and being awarded an MA in 1515. He was ordained as a subdeacon in 1512. Tyndale was a gifted linguist and he had a knowledge of French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin and Spanish.
Between 1517 and 1521, Tyndale went to study at Cambridge. After this, he went back to Gloucestershire and worked as chaplain (in-house clergyman) at the house of Sir John Walsh. Tyndale expressed his desire for the common people to have the Bible available to read in their own language: "If God spare my life, before many years [have passed], I will make sure a boy that drives the plough knows more of the Scripture than you do." In 1523, he left for London with the intention of obtaining sponsorship to translate the Bible into English from the original languages Hebrew and Greek. The local bishop declined to support Tyndale's project, but cloth merchant Humphrey Monmouth, after hearing Tyndale preach at St Dunstan's Church (St Dunstan's-in-the-West, Fleet Street, London), provided him with some support.
In the spring of 1524, Tyndale left England for the continent never to return - perhaps travelling to Hamburg or Wittenberg. It was during his time on the continent that Tyndale translated the New Testament from the original Greek, possibly with the help of William Roy. Many of his translation solutions became stock phrases in the English language: "Fight the good fight of faith," "give up the ghost," "daily bread," "God forbid," "scapegoat," and "my brother's keeper". Describing Tyndale's philosophy of translation, Daniell writes, "an English translation of the Bible had to be as accurate to the original languages, Greek and Hebrew, as scholarship could make it; and it had to make sense". Since Tyndale was translating from the original Greek, it broke the connection between unhelpful Roman Catholic teachings and the wording of the traditional Vulgate translation by Jerome.* The first edition of the translation was completed in 1525. Work to publish the translation was begun and interrupted that same year at Cologne (Germany). It was then published in full in 1526 at Worms (Germany), and a subsequent edition was printed at Antwerp. Copies of Tyndale's English New Testament were smuggled into England and Scotland. In that same year 1526 the translation was officially banned by bishop Tunstall, who bought up all the copies and had them burnt in public. Tyndale completed several revisions of his translation, the final one in 1535.
In 1530, still in exile, William Tyndale wrote to oppose King Henry VIII's desire to obtain an annulment for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. From late 1529 up until his arrest in 1535, Tyndale lived at Antwerp in Flanders (what is now northern Belgium), then controlled by the Roman Catholic ruler Charles V. Betrayed by close friend Henry Phillips in 1535, Tyndale was arrested at Antwerp, and then imprisoned in the castle at Vilvorde (near Brussels). In prison, he continued work on translating the Bible. In 1536, he was executed by strangulation and his body burnt at the stake as a heretic. Before he died, his final words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes".
Just a couple of years later, Tyndale's prayer began to be answered, as King Henry VIII decreed that a copy of the Bible should be made available in Latin and English in every church in England. Tyndale's translation majorly influenced future translations into English, for example, representing 84% of the New Testament and 76% of the Old Testament of the subsequent Authorised Version (AV) of 1611, also known as the King James Version (KJV).
* It should be pointed out that Latin translator Jerome, who lived in the 400s, did not necessarily support later teachings of the Roman Catholic church which sought support in his wordings such as "Do penance". For example Luther's translation into German retained Jerome's phraseology: "Tu Busse."
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