William Tyndale: faith, focus, and fearlessness

This year marks the 500th anniversary of one of the most world-changing books ever printed: William Tyndale’s English New Testament.

Published in 1526, it was the first printed version of the New Testament translated directly from the original Greek into English.

It was banned, burned, and branded heresy.

It was banned, burned and branded heresy, yet it ignited a movement that transformed our language, our literature and our faith.

A man with a mission

William Tyndale was born in 1494 in Gloucestershire, England. Gifted with languages, he eventually mastered eight and, educated at Oxford and Cambridge, his deepest passion was not scholarship but Scripture.

In an age when the Bible was chained to pulpits and locked in Latin, Tyndale longed for ordinary people to hear and read God’s Word in the language of their hearts. "If God spare my life," he vowed, "will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost."

That single sentence lit the fuse of the English Reformation.

Faith that would not flee

Tyndale left England and became a fugitive for the faith.

When permission to translate was denied, Tyndale left England and became a fugitive for the faith. From Hamburg to Cologne, Worms to Antwerp, he worked by candlelight, translating in secret and printing under threat of death.

In 1526, his English New Testament began slipping back into England, smuggled in bales of cloth and barrels of grain. The authorities were furious. Copies were seized and burned at St Paul’s Cross in London. Yet the attempt to destroy God’s Word only spread it further. Tyndale’s faith was forged in danger and defined by devotion. "I never altered one syllable of God’s Word against my conscience," he wrote.

Focus that never faltered

For more than a decade Tyndale labored tirelessly, translating, revising, refining. He gave us not only the New Testament but also the Pentateuch and portions of the Old Testament.

Phrases that still shape our speech flowed from his pen:"Let there be light.""The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

"Fight the good fight."