William Tyndale

William Tyndale
16th century engraving of William Tyndale, from Theodore Beza's Icones
Born	c. 1494 Melksham Court, Stinchcombe, Gloucestershire, England
Died	October 1536 (aged 42) near Vilvoorde, Duchy of Brabant, Habsburg Netherlands in the Holy Roman Empire
Cause of death	Strangulation prior to being burnt at the stake
Alma mater	Magdalen Hall, Oxford University of Cambridge
Years active	1521 to 1536
Known for	victim of the Roman Catholic Inquisition
Notable work	Tyndale Bible

William Tyndale (/ˈtɪndəl/;^[1] 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 is well known as a translator of most of the Bible into English, and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.^[2]

Tyndale's translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts to some extent, 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 as preferred by English Protestant Reformers.^[a] It was taken to be a direct challenge to the hegemony 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.

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^[3] of the Bible drew extensively from Tyndale's original work and other translations that descended from his.^[4] 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%.^[5][6]

A copy of Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), which some view as arguing for Caesaropapism (the idea that the monarch rather than the Pope should control a country's church), came into the hands of King Henry VIII, providing a rationalisation for breaking the Church in England away from the Catholic Church in 1534.^[7][8] 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.^[9]

Fleeing England, Tyndale sought 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.

In 2002, Tyndale was placed 26th in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.^[10][11]

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