Brief Biography
Brief Biography
William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. Forbidden to
work in England, Tyndale translated and printed in English the New Testament
and half the Old Testament between 1525 and 1535 in Germany and the Low
Countries. He worked from the Greek and Hebrew original texts when knowledge of
those languages in England was rare. His pocket-sized Bible translations were
smuggled into England, and then ruthlessly sought out by the Church,
confiscated and destroyed. Condemned as a heretic, Tyndale was strangled and
burned outside Brussels in 1536. His work has survived.
Tyndale’s
English translation of the New Testament was taken almost word for word into
the much praised Authorised Version (King James Bible) of 1611, which also
reproduces a great deal of his Old Testament. From there his words passed into
our common understanding. People across the world honour him as a great
Englishman, unjustly condemned and still unfairly neglected. His solitary
courage, and his skill with languages - including, supremely, his own -
enriched English history in ways still not properly examined, and then reached
out to affect all English-speaking nations. His influence has been as wide as
Shakespeare's. His phrases are so well-known that they are often thought to be
proverbial - 'let there be light', 'we live and move and have our being',
'fight the good fight', 'the signs of the times', 'the powers that be', 'a law
unto themselves', and hundreds more. The familiar words telling the great Bible
stories are usually Tyndale's. Modern interest in Tyndale is developing rapidly
in many fields, particularly history, theology, Bible studies, literature,
language, translation theory and the history of art.
Useful
Links
http://www.WilliamTyndale.com/0welcomewilliamtyndale.htm
Lots of Tyndale material - see their "Galleries"
http://www.WilliamTyndale.com/0links.htm
Many links to Tyndale material and other Reformers.
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/printing/
History of printing in England - Tyndale's Bible appears in 1583.
http://www.tyndale.org/ The Tyndale Society
- a must-visit!