1. http://www. christianitytoday

2. Outline Early life Motivations Production of English translation
Legacy

3. DISCLAIMER

4. Early Life Born late 15th Century in England (~ 1490 - 1494).
Not so humble beginnings.
Grammar school (Latin education).
College (Oxford University) - completed BA in 1512; MA in 1515, studying theology.
Ordained as a priest in Roman Catholic Church in 1515, but doesn’t enter monastery.
Attended Cambridge University for further study. Taught as professor of Greek.
Returns to Gloustershire to work as tutor for Sir John Walsh.

6. Early Life Born late 15th Century in England (~ 1490 - 1494).
Not so humble beginnings.
Grammar school (Latin education).
College (Oxford University) - completed BA in 1512; MA in 1515, studying theology.
Ordained as a priest in Roman Catholic Church in 1515, but doesn’t enter monastery.
Attended Cambridge University for further study. Taught as professor of Greek.
Returns to Gloustershire to work as tutor for Sir John Walsh.

7. Et Tu, Brute?
Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic Church and considered the only appropriate language for academic and religious use.
The Bibles used by the Church were only in Latin, having been translated from the original Greek and Hebrew texts in 382 AD by St Jerome.
Control of scripture used as a means of maintaining the Church’s authority and stopping people challenging its power.

9. Mission: impossible
Tyndale studied theology and the Bible at a time when other theologians and priests were questioning the doctrines and practices of the Church, and the accuracy of the Latin Bible.
Drive to have the Bible available in common language.
Wycliffe (~1380); Gutenberg (1456); Erasmus (1516); and Luther (1517, 1522).

10. The ploughboy
“The great doctor burst out into these blasphemous words, ‘We were better to be without God's laws than the pope's.’ Master Tyndale, hearing this, full of godly zeal, and not bearing that blasphemous saying, replied, ‘I defy the pope, and all his laws’ and added, ‘If God spared him life, ‘ere many years he would cause a boy that drives the plough to know more of the Scripture than he did.’”

11. Why? Goose and the Gander (Wycliffe’s. argument ver 2.0)
It’s biblical: Deuteronomy 6: 7-9
It’s already been translated before
English is better for translating that Latin:
‘For the Greek tongue agrees more with the English tongue than with the Latin. And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agree a thousand times more with the English tongue than with Latin. The manner of speaking is the same; so that in a thousand places you need only translate it into English, word for word. But you must seek a work-around in the Latin, and yet still have much work to translate it favourably, so that it has the same grace and sweetness, the same sense and pure understanding, as it has in the Hebrew. It may be translated into the English a thousand times better than into the Latin.’

12. Deuteronomy 6: 4 – 9 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

13. Why? Goose and the Gander (Wycliffe’s. argument ver 2.0)
It’s biblical: Deuteronomy 6: 7-9
It’s already been translated before
English is better for translating that Latin:
‘For the Greek tongue agrees more with the English tongue than with the Latin. And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agree a thousand times more with the English tongue than with Latin. The manner of speaking is the same; so that in a thousand places you need only translate it into English, word for word. But you must seek a work-around in the Latin, and yet still have much work to translate it favourably, so that it has the same grace and sweetness, the same sense and pure understanding, as it has in the Hebrew. It may be translated into the English a thousand times better than into the Latin.’

14. Why? It’s better for teaching
The Church permits Mills & Boon, but not the Bible.
It holds the Church accountable, preventing/revealing corruption or false teaching:
‘Indeed, why should I not see the Scripture, and the circumstances, and what goes before and after, so that I may know whether your interpretation is the right sense; or whether you juggle and stretch the Scripture forcefully to your carnal and fleshly purpose? Are you about to teach me, or deceive me?’

15. Progress Made
Tyndale approaches the Bishop of London to gain support for his studies
Tyndale leaves for Germany in around 1524.
Moves around Germany, working on his translation and publishing.
‘Pocket’ sized English New Testament published in 1526.
First 5 Old Testament books translated and published in English by 1530.
Tyndale moves to Antwerp in 1534.

17. Progress unmade
In May 1535, Tyndale was captured by the authorities after being betrayed.
Investigated and imprisoned, but refused to recant.
Convicted of heresy and treason.
Executed in October 1936.

18. Take-away Menu
The message of the Gospel is for everyone, at all times.
Sometimes, the Church gets it wrong.
Michael Farris (2015) The History of Religious Liberty, 8:
Today, all Christian denominations embrace religious liberty as an ideal. But it was not always so...We have to recognise the truth of the claim that professing Christians were indeed the principal persecutors during the relevant era in which religious liberty emerged.
Reformation, not Revolution.
Political action can be expensive

19. John Foxe (1563) Acts and Monuments (Foxe’s Book of Martyrs)
It will not be inappropriate to devote a few pages of this work to a brief detail of the lives of some of those men who first stepped forward, regardless of the bigoted power which opposed all reformation, to stem the time of papal corruption, and to seal the pure doctrines of the Gospel with their blood.

21. Epilogue
God plays the Long Game.