William Tyndale

William Tyndale (/ˈtɪndəl/; sometimes spelled Tynsdale, Tindall, Tindill, Tyndall; c. 1494 – October 1536) was an English Biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He translated much of the Bible into English and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.

Tyndale's translations were the first English Scriptures to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, the first English translation to take advantage of the printing press, the first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation, and the first English translation to use Jehovah ("Iehouah") as God's name. It was taken to be a direct challenge to the authority of the Catholic Church and of those laws of England maintaining the Church's position. The work of Tyndale continued to play a key role in spreading Reformation ideas across the English-speaking world.

A copy of Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), arguing for Caesaropapism (the idea that the monarch rather than the Pope should control a country's Church, first instance of advocating the divine right of kings, a concept mistakenly attributed to the Catholic Church), came into the hands of King Henry VIII, providing a rationale for breaking the Church in England away from the Catholic Church in 1534. In 1530, Tyndale wrote The Practice of Prelates, opposing Henry's plan to seek the annulment of his marriage on the grounds that it contravened Scripture. This work made him enemy of both the State and the Church, therefore he fled England, soughting refuge in the Flemish territory of the Catholic Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. In 1535 Tyndale was arrested, and jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde (Filford) outside Brussels for over a year. In 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake.

Tyndale's translations of biblical books were re-used by subsequent English editions (often without his sectarian prefaces or annotations), including the Great Bible and the Bishops' Bible, authorized by the Church of England. In 1611, after seven years of work, the 47 scholars who produced the King James Version of the Bible drew extensively from Tyndale's original work and other translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests that the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's words and the first half of the Old Testament 76%. In 2002, Tyndale was placed 26th in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Tyndale lived and worked during the era of Renaissance humanism and the revival of Biblical scholarship, which were both aided by both the Gutenberg Revolution and the ensuing democratisation of knowledge; for example, the publication of Johann Reuchlin's Hebrew grammar in 1506. Notably, Erasmus compiled, edited, and published the Koine Greek scriptures of the New Testament in 1516. Luther's translation of the Christian Bible into German appeared between 1517 and 1522.

Partial Old English translations had been made from the 7th century onwards, and by the 14th century contemporary vernacular translations were available in most other major European languages. However the religious foment and violent rebellion of the Lollards resulted in heresy being treated as sedition under English law, which bore the death penalty. Lollardy was associated by authorities with the possession and public readings of Wycliffite Bibles in the newly emerged Middle English; manuscripts with Wycliffite material were destroyed; the possession of Wycliffite material could be used as information in investigations and inquisitions though not used as a proof of heresy.

By the early 16th century, the Wycliffite translations were becoming less and less comprehensible as the English language changed from Middle English to Early Modern English. Classical and Koine Greek texts became widely available to the European scholarly community for the first time in centuries, as it welcomed Greek-speaking scholars, philosophers, intellectuals, and the manuscripts they carried to Catholic Europe as refugees following the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The Tyndale family also went by the name Hychyns (Hitchins), and it was as William Hychyns that Tyndale was enrolled at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Tyndale's brother Edward was receiver to the lands of Lord Berkeley, as attested to in a letter by Bishop Stokesley of London. William Tyndale's niece Margaret Tyndale was married to Protestant martyr Rowland Taylor, burnt during the Marian Persecutions.