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 Tyndale was a brilliant student and a gifted linguist. He entered Oxford at 16 and Cambridge three years later. By the time he finished his education he had mastered eight languages.
After graduation, he took a job tutoring the children of Sir John Walsh, a prominent nobleman. He conversed frequently with many of the local clergymen and was shocked by their ignorance of the Scriptures. At one point he told a priest, “If God spare my life, before many years pass, I will cause a boy that drives the plough to know more of the Scriptures than you do.”
Tyndale was convinced that the Bible must be made available in the English language, and he set out to translate it. But the church had banned the unauthorized translation of the Bible into English. He approached the bishop of London for permission to begin his project, but he was rejected and accused of heresy.
Tyndale escaped to Germany with the help of a local merchant. There he completed his translation of the New Testament. He published 6,000 copies and smuggled them into England. The English clergy were irate and frantically tried to eradicate his Bible. Bishops burned copies outside of St. Paul’s. The archbishop of Canterbury bought copies to destroy them, but Tyndale simply used the money to print improved editions. (adapted from, Bible Translator William Tyndale Strangled and Burned, Christian History Institute)
Tyndale returned to Germany and finished his translation of the Old Testament. He wrote many influential pamphlets that promoted the cause of the Reformation. He also made the wrong people mad. When Henry VIII demanded his arrest, an Englishman pretending to be his friend betrayed him to the authorities. He was tried for heresy, strangled, and burned at the stake. His final words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Three years later, Henry decreed an edict requiring every parish church in England to make a copy of the English Bible available to its parishioners.
When the King James Version was translated in 1611, 90% of it was taken from his translation. William Tyndale is rightly called the “Father of the English Bible.”
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