The Tyndale Bible
Dear friends,
A very happy new year to you all. In amidst all of the celebrations and prophecies of doom there is one anniversary this year which is worthy of note, because it is foundational for the English speaking world. For 2026 marks the 500th year since the publication of William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into the English language. We take it for granted that we can read the Scriptures in our own tongue, but this was not always the case. Until Tyndale (and Wycliff before him) the good news of Christ, and the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures were exclusively in Latin, (and their original languages of Greek and Hebrew,) only available for the educated, which in practise meant the clergy and some of the wealthy classes. It is sobering to think that in the first three hundred years of Checkendon church’s existence, services would have been for the most part not understood, nor would they have been expected to be understood. “The holy mysteries”, far from meaning what it does today as a sort of spiritualisation of the eucharist, could in the middle ages be simply a description of “what went on inside the church in entirety”.
WIliam Tyndale (1494-1536) was the first to translate the New Testament from the original Greek directly into English. He was an Oxford scholar and clergyman, who worked in exile on the continent as it was against the law of England to put Scripture into the “vernacular”. Copies of his New Testament were smuggled into England, and even Thomas Cromwell gave one to his wife, commenting “you’ll be surprised at what is not in it.” However Tyndale paid a heavy price, as he was betrayed, tried, and executed for treason. He is remembered as a martyr who believed that God’s word should be available to everyone, and not just the privileged. If you are interested to read further, I commend to you this excellent short article, giving more about Tyndale’s bible, and three other hugely influential Bibles in the history of Bible translation.
Whatever else you may plan for the coming year, (whether that be world domination or a quiet life on the Isle of Bute) may I suggest that we each of us take hold of the Word of Life with renewed vigour, attending to the simple task of acquainting ourselves with it in all its fullness, mindful of the labours of those who worked to bring it to us, both in the past, and today.
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