Dr Paul Allen

In the late summer or fall of 1525, sheets of thin sewn paper bounced across the English Channel, hidden in bales of cloth and sacks of flour. They passed silently, secretly, from the Channel to the London shipyards, from the shipyards to the hands of smiths and cooks, sailors and cobblers, priests and politicians, mothers and fathers and children. De-clothed and un-floured, the first lines read, I have here translated (bretheren and sisters most dear and tenderly beloved in Christ) the new Testament for your spiritual edifying, consolation, and solace. And then, a few pages later: This is the book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son also of Abraham . . . Here was the Gospel of Matthew, translated from the original Greek into English for the very first time. The entire New Testament would soon follow, and then portions of the Old Testament, before its translator, William Tyndale (1494–1536), would be found and killed for his work. Reforming English For centuries...

The beginning verses of the Gospel of John, from a facsimile edition of William Tyndale's 1525 English translation of the New Testament. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Tim Challies (Author) The moment Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of the university chapel at Wittenberg, he set into motion a series of events that brought about a great Reformation. This Reformation would soon spread beyond Germany and as it did so, it would forever transform the Christian faith . One of the jewels of that Reformation is now in the collection of the British Library: William Tyndale ’s New Testament . It is the next of the twenty-five objects through which we are telling the history of Christianity. William Tyndale was born in 1494 in Gloucestershire, England . Born into a wealthy family he had the privilege of studying at Magdalen Hall, Oxford and at Cambridge. He was a brilliant scholar who was soon fluent in eight languages. At Cambridge he studied theology, but r...

God's Outlaw: The Story of William Tyndale (Image via RottenTomatoes.com) William Tyndale (ca. 1494–1536) made an enormous contribution to the Reformation in England . Many would say that he made  the  contribution by translating the Bible into English and overseeing its publication. One biographer, Brian Edwards, states that not only was Tyndale “the heart of the Reformation in England,” he “ was  the Reformation in England” (Edwards,  God’s Outlaw: The Story of William Tyndale and the English Bible  [Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 1999], 170).  Because of his powerful use of the English language in his Bible, this Reformer has been called “the father of modern English” (N. R. Needham,  2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, Part Three: Renaissance and Reformation  [London: Grace Publications, 2004], 379). John Foxe went so far as to call him “the Apostle of England” (John Foxe,  Foxe’s Book of Martyrs  [Nashville: Thomas Nel...