Portrait of a Protestant: Tyndale

Scripture Alone – William Tyndale (1494-1536)
Guest Blogger: Rowena Miers

The Bible… numerous households and hotel rooms in Australia have one… free copies are given out at schools and at train stations, its read in churches and bible study groups the world over… Your Bible… the pages dog-eared, your favourite verses highlighted for later reference… a fairly harmless book right?

In 1531 Stephen Vaughn an English merchant was given the task of finding his country man William Tyndale and informing him that the King Henry VIII desired him to come back to England out of hiding in Europe. In a letter from Vaughan dated June 19, 1531, wrote about Tyndale with these words: “I find him always singing one note.” That one note was this: “Will the King of England give his official endorsement to a vernacular (common) Bible for all his English subjects?”. If not, Tyndale would not come. The king refused and Tyndale never went back to his homeland again.

Nine years earlier whilst serving as a tutor in the home of John Walsh in Gloucestershire England Tyndale was spending much of his time studying Erasmus’ Greek New Testament which had just been printed six years before in 1516. This was the first time that the Greek New Testament had been printed with its release quickly followed translations from the Greek into most European languages. One of the most famous of such translations was by Luther [1483-1546] into German in 1522. These new versions of the bible are commonly considered to be basis of the reformation of the Catholic Church that occurred in Europe at this time.

As Tyndale immersed himself in this new Greek translation he began to see the arguments in favour of the reformation more clearly and became increasingly convicted of the truths of the scripture as opposed to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Four years later in 1526 Tyndale finished the English translation of the Greek New Testament in Worms, Germany, and began to smuggle it into England in bails of cloth. By October of the same year the book had been banned however with at least three thousand copies in circulation the books were getting to the people.

Before he was martyred in 1536 Tyndale had translated into clear, common English not only the New Testament but also the Pentateuch, Joshua to 2 Chronicles, and Jonah. William Tyndale gave us our English Bible with his work considered to form nine-tenths of the King James Authorized Version of the Bible of 1611 which has since its released been widely circulated.

What did it cost William Tyndale in his task as a translator of the Bible and a writer of the reformed faith? Having fled his homeland in 1524 he spent the next 12 years exiled and in danger in Europe, constantly hearing of the deaths of others for the sake of his cause, only to be finally burnt alive at the stake in Brussels in 1536.

Despite the costs what drove Tyndale to sing “one note” all his life? “Sola fides justificat apud Deum” which means “Faith Alone Justifies Before God”, this was what lay hidden in the Scriptures that must be translated for the sake of others coming to know and trust in the life-giving message that we justified by faith alone in Jesus.

The Bible…. Your Bible…