The Life, Work, and Legacy of William Tyndale

This article is part of the ESV 25th Anniversary series.

Tyndale’s Life and Works

William Tyndale was born around 1494 into a world that, as he would later say, walked in darkness. People did not hear the word of God taught clearly in church; instead they heard Latin—a language most could not understand. Only an educated few could access or understand the Latin Vulgate Bible, and ninety years earlier the University of Oxford had banned its translation into English (a move echoed by a province of the Church of England). Tyndale, as it happened, was one of those educated few, attending the University of Oxford. Yet even there, he said, “they have ordained that no man shall look on the scripture, until he be noselled [instructed] in heathen learning eight or nine years.”¹

However, the times were changing. This was, after all, the age of the Renaissance, when many were hungry for fresh ways of thinking. Behind the scenes, Tyndale and a number of other students at Oxford were questioning their formal education and even secretly studying the Scriptures. Then, in 1516, the influential Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus published his Greek New Testament, allowing students like Tyndale to compare the Greek text with the church’s official Latin translation.

Soon after, Tyndale moved to the University of Cambridge, which before long was ringing with news of Martin Luther. The new printing presses allowed books to be produced faster than ever before, and Luther’s works were soon being smuggled into England and studied—especially by a group of scholars at Cambridge who met at the White Horse Inn.

Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the ESV

As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the ESV Bible and the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale’s New Testament, Crossway gives thanks for God’s faithfulness in preserving his Word across the centuries and for generations to come.

In 1521, Tyndale returned to his native Gloucestershire in the rural west of England, there to serve as a tutor to the children of Sir John Walsh. The Walshes liked to host clergy and scholars at their table, but the ignorance of these clerics irked Tyndale, as he irked them. On one occasion, we are told, a certain doctor snorted, “We were better to be without God’s law than the pope’s.” At this, Tyndale replied, “I defy the pope and all his laws,” adding that if God spared him life, “ere many years he would cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scrip­ture than he did.”² Years later, he would explain that this was what had moved him to translate the New Testament: “Because I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay-people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.”³

The atmosphere became too hostile in Gloucestershire for Tyndale to remain, and so he went to London, immersing himself in a group of friends who smuggled and distributed works of the young Reformation movement. From there he sailed to Germany and made his way to Martin Luther’s hometown of Wittenberg. Sadly, we do not know what sort of personal acquaintance Tyndale had with Luther, but Luther’s influence on him would be profound. Luther himself had only recently translated the New Testament into German, and Luther’s work would both inspire and directly shape Tyndale’s.

It was there in Wittenberg that Tyndale seems to have done the bulk of his work of translating the New Testament from Greek into English. Yet by 1525 he had left Wittenberg for the printing center that was Cologne. It was a good location from which to publish, but it was not all easy there: When the authorities discovered what he was up to, they sought to confiscate Tyndale’s work. Tipped off before they could swoop, Tyndale fled to Worms with the prints of his translation. There in Worms, where five years earlier Luther had stood trial before the emperor, Tyndale published his first complete New Testament in English in 1526.

For over a century, the followers of John Wycliffe had been quietly translating the New Testament into English. Yet their translations were handwritten and so achingly slow to produce. They were stilted and ungainly. And they managed to render only the church’s Latin Vulgate, not the original Greek text, into English. As such, they passed on all the theological problems of the Vulgate. For example, the Vulgate rendered Jesus’s call to repent in Matthew 4:17 as penitentiam agite (“do penance”). This suggested to its readers an external ritual, not an internal need for sinners to change their minds and turn away from sin.

In contrast, Tyndale’s translation read “repent.” Elsewhere, instead of “priest,” his translation gave the word “elder.” Instead of “confess,” it had “acknowledge.” Through Tyndale’s translation, readers could discover a radically different message from the one they knew. Here they could see that God’s word does not describe an external sacramentalism requiring a priestly order; it calls for a change of heart and personal trust in Jesus.

William Tyndale New Testament, 500th Anniversary Edition

This commemorative New Testament edition marks the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale’s Bible translation. It features the original 1534 text and design, with modern spelling, updated typesetting, and decorative elements.

Over the following decade, thousands of copies would be smuggled into England, hidden in bales of cloth, barrels, and false-bottomed chests. Given that the population of England at this time was at most 2.5 million and largely illiterate, the sheer numbers involved (some 16 to 20 thousand) made Tyndale’s translation a runaway bestseller. Yet while thousands in England—even among the uneducated—received it eagerly and flocked to hear it read, the English bishops were generally horrified. For them it was a dangerous and blasphemous threat to the authority and teaching of the Church. Copies were publicly burned in London, and Tyndale became a wanted man.

For the next few years, Tyndale lived in Antwerp (in what is now Belgium). He added a prologue to each book of the New Testament and wrote explanatory gospel tracts to be read alongside his translation. Believing that his work was a “thing begun rather than finished,”⁴ he produced a revised edition of his New Testament translation in 1534 (the basis for the edition you hold in your hands). He added marginal notes to guide readers in their study and sharpened the language with deliberate word choices that improved accuracy and carried theological weight. Tyndale began to translate the Hebrew Old Testament as well, getting as far as 2 Chronicles (and Jonah). However, he would not live to complete his task or see the full fruit of his labors.

In Antwerp, an agent called Henry Phillips had been hired to hunt Tyndale down. Sweet-talking his way into Tyndale’s confidence, Phillips pretended to take him out for dinner only to hand him over to the authorities. Officers arrested Tyndale, who was then imprisoned in Vilvoorde Castle. In August 1536, Tyndale was formally condemned as a heretic and on October 6 was taken to be executed. Tied to a stake, he was strangled before his body was then burned.

Before dying, Tyndale cried out, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes!”⁵ It was a prayer that would be answered, at least in part. That king of England was Henry VIII, and just two years after Tyndale uttered those words, Henry passed a law stating that a Bible in English was to be placed in every church in the land. Indeed, he ordered, “Ye shall discourage no man privily or apertly from the reading or hearing of the said Bible, but shall expressly provoke, stir, and exhort every person to read the same, as that which is the very lively word of God.”⁶

Thank God for the genius and the faithfulness of William Tyndale!

Tyndale’s Translation and Legacy

William Tyndale’s New Testament was a dazzling achievement made all the more startling by the fact that it was the work of one man, and a man under deadly pressure at that.

Not only was it the first English translation drawn directly from the Greek, but it also displayed a brilliant mastery of Greek. Some of this, of course, was due to Tyndale’s outstanding linguistic ability. But there is more going on. Tyndale conveyed both the content and the feel of the Greek New Testament with such sensitivity because he was so ardent in his desire to look on the pure word of God as it is. That meant he was supremely alert to the nuances of tone and meaning. As such, he managed to render faithfully the message of the gospel, which before had been obscured by the Latin. He believed that “the Greek tongue agrees more with the English tongue than with the Latin . . . so that in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into English, word for word.”⁷ This is precisely what he sought to do. He would even coin new English words to convey Greek ones (for example, “atonement” and “longsuffering”).

In fact, the coining of new English words and phrases not only demonstrated Tyndale’s brilliant mastery of English but also contributed to his lasting legacy. Tyndale had an ear for the Anglo-Saxon of the people, which gave his translation an easy readability. Instead of complex Latinate words like “illumine” or “incinerate,” Tyndale gave us “shine” and “burn.” Some of that is lost on us today, of course, for the English language has evolved. Yet still, five hundred years later, Tyndale’s language sounds surprisingly familiar. In part this is because Tyndale gave the English language so many useful and memorable words and phrases. These are all Tyndale’s:

• Passover
• Castaway
• Busybody
• Seashore
• Scapegoat
• Uproar

In Tyndale’s own lifetime, Latin was the language of the polished and educated; English was but the vulgar tongue of the masses. Yet within a century, the English language would become the prized and refined language of Shakespeare. This was a remarkable turn of events to which Tyndale’s New Testament played a key part.

Tyndale’s translation not only shaped the very language in which it was written; it also became the foundation for the most famous English translations. Reading the King James Version of 1611, one cannot help but be struck by its similarity to Tyndale’s. And no wonder: Over eighty percent of Tyndale’s New Testament made its way straight into the King James Version. As Tyndale wanted, translations of God’s word into English have continued to improve. But even today’s English translators stand on Tyndale’s shoulders.

Thank God for the genius and the faithfulness of William Tyndale! Because of him, English speakers ever since have been able to read what he called “the words of health and of eternal life; by the which, if we repent and believe them, we are born anew, created afresh, and enjoy the fruits of the blood of Christ.”⁸

This article is by Michael Reeves and is adapted from ESV New Testament with Illuminated Drop Caps: William Tyndale Commemorative Edition.

Michael Reeves (PhD, King’s College, London) is president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in Bridgend and Oxford, United Kingdom. He is the author of several books, including Delighting in the Trinity; Rejoice and Tremble; and Gospel People.

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