Tyndale, as he was being burned at the stake, uttered his famous last words: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes!” The king was Henry VIII, who followed the old tradition of not allowing Bibles in the people’s language.
(The Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was legal, but only priests and scholars read Latin.) Tyndale, a professor, was appalled not only that the people could not have the Bible in their own language, but that many ministers were ignorant of the Bible.
He told one priest, “If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.”
Tyndale set out to make a translation from the Hebrew and Greek. He was opposed by the English church officials, so he did his work in Europe.
In 1525 his English New Testament was published in Germany. He translated part of the Old Testament but didn’t live to complete it. Agents of Henry VIII arrested him, and he was burned at the stake as a heretic.
Ironically, the same king who executed him, ordered, years later, that an English Bible be made available in every church in England.
Tyndale is known as the “Father of the English Bible.” He was burned, and so were copies of his New Testament, but some remained in circulation and were widely read.
The popular and familiar King James Version of 1611 was in many ways just a revision of Tyndale’s work. Many of his words and phrases endure in English Bibles.
