Little is known of Tyndale’s early life. But he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then Cambridge. At university he discovered the New Testament in the original Greek in the recent edition by Erasmus, which proved to him the Latin version normally used just wasn’t good enough.

‘He perceived by experience, how that it was not possible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scriptures were so plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.’

1521 He was ordained and served as a chaplain and tutor, first in Gloucestershire and then in London.

The translation of the Bible into his day’s English became Tyndale’s life’s work. The Reformation in Germany was already under way and he was strongly sympathetic to the ideas of reform circulating on the continent. The church leaders therefore viewed his work with suspicion. Bishop Tunstall of London refused to support the project. Determined to carry out his plans, Tyndale eventually left England in 1524 and settled in Hamburg. The first edition of Tyndale’s English New Testament was printed to begin with in Cologne and completed in Worms in 1525. It was denounced in England as heretical and publicly burned.

Tyndale moved to The English House in Antwerp and continue his work, thousands of copies were secretly circulated. He then learned Hebrew in order to translate the Old Testament. By the time of his death, he had published the Pentateuch and Jonah, leaving in manuscript form his version of the historical books from Joshua to Chronicles. They became the basis of the King James Version leading to the Revised Version, the Revised Standard Version, and the New Revised Standard Version we have today.

Tyndale also wrote commentaries and expositions of various books, including Romans, 1 John and the Sermon on the Mount. His theological works dealt with such topics as justification by faith alone, the after-life, and the authority of Scripture. Like many of his contemporaries he could be strongly critical, and some of his writings served that purpose.

He suffered constant opposition due to his support of reformation ideas. Secret agents were a continual threat, and he was eventually betrayed by a colleague, George Joye, who pirated his New Testament. At last the church authorities had him arrested and imprisoned in Brussels, a year later he was condemned to death for heresy. He was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536, his last words being, “Lord! Open the king of England’s eyes.”

BORN: 1494, Gloucestershire, England

DIED: 6 October 1536, Duchy of Brabant