Smuggling Truth
I have 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, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.
William Tyndale, preface to The Pentateuch
The man with the neatly trimmed beard, serious brow, stately forehead, and piercing eyes stood motionless. A wood post stood at his back. He was tied to it. At his feet men piled logs, brush, and kindling. They then poured gunpowder over the dry wood. Nearby, a city official stood by with a torch, its flames flickering, licking the air as if hungry for the pyre. The October sun seemed to stop its transit to watch the drama unfold.
The man shifted his weight, feeling both the chain around his neck that bound him to the pole and the rope noose beneath the chain. He could feel each movement of the rope as the executioner continued his preparations. He knew what awaited him.
A representative of his prosecutor gave him the opportunity to recant. There, in the middle of the gathered crowd, he refused. He was then given an opportunity to pray. He accepted that offer. “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”1
The ranking town official gave the signal and the executioner yanked the noose tight, strangling the forty-two-year-old to death. Then the fire was lit. His body burned. His ashes were scattered to the wind.
William Tyndale, British subject living in exile, died a criminal, expelled from the church, his priesthood stripped from him for his heinous crime: making an English translation of the Bible so any common English person could read and study the Word of God. The task cost him time, effort, his homeland, and his life. The one thing the execution of William Tyndale failed to kill was the man’s cause.
Passion for the English Word of God
For the worde off god is quycke & myghty in operacion and sharper then eny two edged swearde: and entreth through, even unto the dividynge asonder of the soule and the sprete and of the joyntes, and the mary: and judgeth the thoughtes and the intent of the herte.
The above verse looks strange to the eye, but it is a familiar passage from the New Testament. Here it is again:
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Heb. 4:12)
The first passage is taken from the 1526 version of William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament and, of course, uses spelling of the day. The translation, like all worthwhile translations, would undergo many revisions and would serve as the basis for several other English works.
Let’s move beyond the archaic spelling and look at the meaning of the passage. It speaks of the power of God’s Word in the life of the individual. For William Tyndale, this was more than just an interesting verse. It was the foundation of his passion to place in the hands of English-speaking people a Bible they could read in their own language. Such a goal was neither original, nor limited to England. Martin Luther had translated the Bible into German for his people many years before.
Tyndale lived his life with sacrificial allegiance to the cause of making the Bible available to all. Years before, Erasmus, who had compiled the New Testament from the Greek that Tyndale (and Luther in Germany) used to make his translation, said, “Christ desires His mysteries to be published abroad as widely as possible. I would that [the Gospels and Epistles of Paul] were translated into all languages of all Christian people, and that they might be read and known.”2
Tyndale had the same desire for his people, but the king and the pope were against it. At the time, churches in England were still tied to Roman Catholicism, although the break arranged by King Henry VIII between the English and Roman Church was at hand. Ironically, King Henry VIII would later, a few years after Tyndale’s execution, sanction the release of an English Bible.
A Personal Mission
Tyndale did not begin as a reformer or rebel. He was born in western England around 1494 and took the path to priesthood. He studied in Oxford and Cambridge. He had a remarkable intellect and was able to speak seven languages and work in both biblical Hebrew and Greek. He grew increasingly disappointed in the lack of biblical knowledge held by priests of his day. Most priests at that time rarely read the Bible.
In his early thirties, he approached the bishop of London seeking funds and a place to make an English translation of the Bible. The bishop refused outright, a stance Tyndale found consistently throughout the church in England. What Tyndale was proposing was considered a criminal act.
In 1524, Tyndale traveled to Germany, where he lived in Hamburg, Cologne, and Worms, carrying out his translation work. In 1525 he finished his first translation of the New Testament. Over the next five years, six editions were done and fifteen thousand copies made and smuggled into England.
Tyndale’s translation caused quite a stir, infuriating King Henry VIII, Cardinal Wosley, and Sir Thomas More. More captured the rage of those in church leadership over the translation and its distribution when he stated: “Not worthy to be called Christ’s testament, but either Tyndale’s own testament or the testament of his master Antichrist.”
Tyndale became a wanted man and his translation an illegal item. Efforts to keep it from the English people included buying up all the stock, which of course provided the funding for additional publishing and distribution of the translation. It took the help of friends to smuggle Tyndale from place to place, keeping him out of the hands of his enemies and allowing him to continue his work. He managed to translate the first five books of the Old Testament and a few other books from the Hebrew into English before his capture.
Despite the demands of his translation work, Tyndale still considered himself a priest of the people and structured his workweek to include time helping the poor, visiting religious refugees who had fled England, and visiting the homes of merchants, joining them for supper and reading the Scripture before and after the meal.
It may be that his servant heart was what ultimately led to his capture and execution. Several agents from different sources searched for Tyndale, but he had been able to avoid them all—all except Henry Phillips. Phillips came from a prestigious family but was a scoundrel who had gambled away his money. He found Tyndale in Antwerp and befriended him, worming his way into the translator’s confidence. He even became one of the few who had the privilege of seeing Tyndale’s papers.
In May of 1535, Phillips had things set in motion. He was able to convince Tyndale to cancel a previous lunch engagement and have lunch with him. Tyndale agreed. Phillips led him into the arms of arresting soldiers.
He was taken to the Castle of Filford, where he spent the next year and some months imprisoned. He was tried by ecclesiastical authorities as a heretic and found guilty. He was stripped of his priesthood and was handed over to civil authorities for execution.
Tyndale’s enemies had finally succeeded in putting an end to the person William Tyndale, but they failed to stop the movement Tyndale had birthed. Miles Coverdale, another Cambridge graduate, published the first complete edition of Tyndale’s translation. In 1537 the Matthew Bible appeared from “Thomas Matthew,” a pseudonym for John Rodgers, a clergyman who would also be executed at the stake on February 4, 1555 under Queen Mary I—“Bloody Mary.” In 1539, Henry VIII, who had opposed an English Bible, was convinced by Thomas Cramner, Archbishop of Canterbury, to release the “Great Bible,” which was based on Coverdale’s work that had itself been based on Tyndale’s translation. Since Tyndale’s death, there have been hundreds of translations, versions, paraphrases, and revisions of the English Bible. The Bible has also been translated into over two thousand languages.