 |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
-46-
God Hath Spoken
The Work of William Tyndale
One day in the year 1522, William Tyndale was walking with a priest when he spied a young man plowing. He turned to his companion and said, "The day will come when a common ploughboy will know more Scripture than you." He thus began translating the Bible and earned the title "Father of the English Bible."
Tyndale believed the bishop of London would look favorably upon his work, but Bishop Tunstal was very unfavorable. Fearing for his life, William Tyndale in 1524 set sail from London with only ten pounds in his pocket. He was a fugitive for thirteen years. He first went to Hamburg, Germany. Wherever he went it was not long before his translation work was known, and the civil authorities, the so called secular arm of the Roman Pontiff, would set out to have him arrested.
In 1525, when he was in Cologne, Germany, he completed the New Testament and took it to the printer. Unfortunately, the printer was not a man of very good reputation and while drunk he began to tell everyone that he was printing six thousand copies of the Bible. The civil authorities got wind of it and attempted to seize the manuscripts, but Tyndale fled by ship to the German city of Worms.
In 1526, he was back in the German city of Cologne. In 1529, he went to Belgium to the city of Antwerp, but when his presence was known, he made a narrow escape by ship. Unfortunately, the ship wrecked, and the translation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, was lost. His spirit was undaunted, and in 1530, William Tyndale was again in Antwerp, Belgium. In 1535, he was betrayed by a friend while he was at lunch, and was captured in the street, and imprisoned. In prison, Tyndale asked for three things: a candle, a pen, and paper; and he resumed his work of translating the Scriptures. When friends came to visit him, he gave them pages of his translation to be smuggled out of his cell.
Tyndale directed that the Bibles should be carried to the docks and hidden in bales of cotton, or in sacks of wheat that were to be shipped to England. By the time the valuable cargo was discovered, the Bibles had already been disseminated. The English king therefore demanded the Bibles be confiscated, but not everyone thought more of the King's word than they did of God's Word.
Many people prized the Scriptures more than they did their lives; therefore the king used his political clout to have Tyndale put to death. This was the only way to silence him. When they led Tyndale to the stake to be burned, they first asked him if he had anything to say. "Yes," he replied, and he prayed, "Oh, Lord, open the eyes of the king that he may see every subject in England needs a copy of God's Word." Before burning him, they strangled him that he might not suffer more than necessary. Well did Solomon write "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel" (Prov. 12:10).
Miles Coverdale
In 1535, Miles Coverdale had completed his translation of the Bible at Antwerp and dedicated it to the king, Henry VIII. The Coverdale Bible was the first printed English Bible.
The "Matthew Bible"
Then in 1537, John Rogers writing under the pen name "Matthew," produced the Matthew Bible. It was a combination of the work done by Tyndale and Coverdale.
The Great Bible, and "Cranmer's Bible"
Thomas Cranmer, Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, brought out the Great Bible in 1538, but when the Inquisitor General attacked it, they were forced to quit Paris and complete the work in London. A second edition appeared in 1540 and was known as "Cranmer's" Bible. When it was "apoynted to the vse of the churches" by Henry VIII who decreed every parish church should have a copy, God, in part, answered the prayer of William Tyndale. Since the Bible was chained to the pulpit, people had to go to the parish church to read it.