LONDON.- The translation was made by William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536), a linguist and leading figure in Protestant reform, greatly influenced by the work of Luther and Erasmus. Tyndale was called by his great opponent Thomas More “the captain of our Englysh heretikes”. He has been studied as a translator of the Bible and a representative of moral and doctrinal reformation.

Tyndale made political use of his vernacular English translations of the Bible to win the common people of Renaissance England to the Protestant cause. His translations were appealing because made more intelligible the mystical holy word. They reformed the Scriptures in the image of men. The 1534 edition outraged the clerical establishment by giving the laity access to the word of God, in print in English for the first time.

Tyndale was condemned as a heretic by Cardinal Wolsey, and in 1535 was imprisoned and later executed by strangulation and burnt at the stake, crying out as he died “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!”. Tyndale’s plea was heard and two years later Henry VIII authorised an English translation known as the ‘Great Bible’, which included much of Tyndale’s own translation.

Tyndale’s translation of the Bible had a significant impact on English culture and subsequent English translations and at least three quarters of the King James authorised version of 1611 is believed to be taken directly from Tyndale, as well as the revised copy dated 1881.

Although, the translation was the basis of all subsequent English bibles until after the Second World War, and though it was the version of the Bible used by some of our greatest poets, it is today largely unknown because of its suppression for political reasons because of its difficult early sixteenth-century spelling.