By Michelle Shocklee
Last month I shared the story of how Tyndale House Publishers was founded by Dr. Kenneth Taylor in the 1960s. Today I'd like to tell you about the man Tyndale House is named for.
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William Tyndale |
William Tyndale was born in a small village in Gloucestershire, England between 1490 and 1494. His family had ties to knights and landed gentry. In his early twenties, William enrolled at Oxford where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and eventually his Masters in theology, becoming an ordained priest. However, his frustrations with the practice of leaving out the study of the scriptures themselves led him to this complaint:
They have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture until he is modeled in heathen learning eight or nine years and armed with false principles, with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.
Thankfully William didn't give up. To find a hospitable environment, he traveled to the free cities of Europe—Hamburg, Wittenberg, Cologne, and finally to the Lutheran city of Worms. There, in 1525, his New Testament emerged: the first translation from Greek into the English language. It was quickly smuggled into England. This infuriated the authorities, including King Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and Sir Thomas More. It was, said More, "not worthy to be called Christ's testament, but either Tyndale's own testament or the testament of his master Antichrist."
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The beginning of the Gospel of John, from Tyndale's 1525 translation of the New Testament. |
In 1536, William Tyndale was condemned for heresy and was executed by strangulation and then burned at the stake at Vilvoorde. English historian John Foxe said William cried out, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes" before he died.
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King James Bible |
Today, anyone who has read the King James version of the Bible has read William Tyndale's words. His translations, it would turn out, became decisive in the history of the English Bible. Nearly a century later, when translators of the Authorized, or King James Version, debated how to translate the original languages, eight of ten times, they agreed that Tyndale had it best to begin with.
Your turn: What is your favorite Bible translation?
Michelle Shocklee is the author of several historical novels, including Under the Tulip Tree, a Christy Awards and Selah Awards finalist. Her work has been included in numerous Chicken Soup for the Soul books, magazines, and blogs. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of two grown sons, she makes her home in Tennessee, not far from the historical sites she writes about. Visit her online at www.MichelleShocklee.com
COUNT THE NIGHTS BY STARS
*A 2023 Christianity Today Book Award Winner*
1961. After a longtime resident at Nashville’s historic Maxwell House Hotel suffers a debilitating stroke, Audrey Whitfield is tasked with cleaning out the reclusive woman’s room. There, she discovers an elaborate scrapbook filled with memorabilia from the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Love notes on the backs of unmailed postcards inside capture Audrey’s imagination with hints of a forbidden romance . . . and troubling revelations about the disappearance of young women at the exposition. Audrey enlists the help of a handsome hotel guest as she tracks down clues and information about the mysterious “Peaches” and her regrets over one fateful day, nearly sixty-five years earlier.
https://www.tyndale.com/p/count-the-nights-by-stars/9781496459930
https://www.tyndale.com/p/count-the-nights-by-stars/9781496459930
Thank you for finishing Mr. Tyndale's story. I'm grateful to know about his efforts. There are so many things I don't think to ask about, but I'm glad that authors and historians shares these little tidbits. My favorite translation is New American Standard.
ReplyDeleteUgh, sometimes I come back to see if there are other comments on the blog entries and then I see my own typos. Sorry....
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