Tyndale Bible

And what Tyndale has a particular gift for is creating a New Testament that really flows.

And I think it's very noticeable that even today, when we go back to Tyndale's New Testament, it is very readable, very understandable.

And you get a sense of the stories unfolding.

Tyndale opens lots of sentences with, you know, and or it came to pass these flowing ways of weaving things together.

Very true.

And what about a travel destination, perhaps somewhere that you haven't visited that you would like to see?

Well, it is still on my list to go to Cologne and to tick off the origins of Tyndale's New Testament.

I think what we would now call Germany is such an interesting and lively place in the early modern period that certainly to spend time in Cologne or in Wittenberg is on my list for the coming year.

Would you take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Philippians? Philippians chapter number one is where we will be this morning.

As you find your place, would you join me in standing as we read God's Word? Philippians chapter number one.

And we'll begin reading here in verse number one.

Great pleasure.

We're going to be talking about William Tyndale and Tyndale's New Testament because we are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the first printing of William Tyndale's New Testament, being the first New Testament to be translated into English from Greek, rather than from Latin, which Wycliffe had done previously.

So perhaps we could start just with you introducing yourself a little bit, telling us what you do in Durham, what you're your background and your interests are that have particularly brought William Tyndale into your life?

Well, my title is Professor of the History of Christianity.

for his translation i guess the translation was finished maybe in 1534 and uh he was he was sent to prison for it and was burned at the stake for it uh so so his was the first that is like from for the new testament from the greek and then that was translated by other people too later when the reformation hit england and it wasn't just a catholic thing now the There was a Bible done by a group of bishops called the Bishop's Bible.

And that was a revision of the Great Bible, which was a revision of Tyndale's Bible.

And the Bishop's Bible was revised by the King James translators.

So the King James Version isn't, they say in the preface that it's based on the original Greek and Hebrew, and it is, but it's basically a revision of the Bishop's Bible that was done before that.

And all of these translations, the King James goes directly back to Tyndale.

So most of the favorite passages in the King James Bible actually were passages that they simply copied from Tyndale's Bible.

So why is it called the King James Version?

ah right so um king james the first uh is king of england um he uh he brings the protestant tradition into england which led to many disputes and wars and things but he wanted a he wanted an edition of the bible that would be um useful for his church uh the church of england And he had problems with some of the earlier translations because he thought that they did not quite convey ideas that he wanted to have conveyed, especially the importance of obeying the king.

Yes, very good question.

I mean, we know that Tyndale's New Testament was going to have a print run of three to 6000.

So it was going to be a massive print run for the day.

And we know because he was well connected to merchants, because these, you know, there were links between German merchants in London that lots of Tyndale's New Testaments were being smuggled into England and also actually Scotland as well, five port cities.

So the authorities became increasingly concerned about this.

Certainly Thomas More enters into the stage as his major opponent.

More, although himself a very close friend of Erasmus, who'd even had one of Erasmus's famous satires, The Praise of Folly, attacking the scholastic theologians dedicated to him, More wrote against Luther.

He became known as writing against heresies.

If you remember, uh, he has a little, a page of his resources and his resources.

I said two agent Coverdale Bible, Tyndale Bible.

Yep.

And his commentary says, as long as we are approaching our studies from the fulfilled Bible prophecy perspective, from the, government of God being a present-day reality from understanding that being baptized into Christ does not have anything to do with physical water, and I believe we are safe in looking at these documents to get insight into the head knowledge of things related to the Bible and history.