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William Tyndale
(1494-1536), an English scholar who became a
leading figure in Protestant reform in the years leading up to his
execution. He is well known for his translation of the Bible into
English. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made
the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther. A
number of partial translations had been made from the seventh century
onward, but the spread of Wycliffe's Bible resulted in a death sentence
for any unlicensed possession of Scripture in English—even though
translations had been accomplished and made available in all other major
European languages.
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Tyndale's
translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and
Greek texts, the first English one to take advantage of the printing press,
and first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation. It was taken to be
a direct challenge to the hegemony of both the Roman Catholic Church and
the laws of England maintaining the church's position. In 1530, Tyndale
also wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing
Henry VIII's annulment from Catherine of Aragon
on the grounds that it contravened Scripture.
Reuchlin's Hebrew
grammar was published in 1506. Tyndale worked in an age in which Greek was
available to the European scholarly community for the first time in
centuries. Erasmus compiled and edited Greek Scriptures into the Textus Receptus—ironically,
to improve upon the Latin Vulgate—following the Fall of Constantinople in
1453. Constantinople's fall helped to fuel the Renaissance and led to the
dispersion of Greek-speaking intellectuals and texts into a Europe which
previously had no access to them. A copy of The Obedience of a Christian
Man fell into the hands of Henry VIII, providing the king with the
rationale to break the Church in England from the Roman Catholic Church in
1534.
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. His dying prayer was that the King of England's
eyes would be opened; this seemed to find its fulfillment just two years
later with Henry's authorization of the Great Bible for the Church of
England, which was largely Tyndale's own work. Hence, the Tyndale Bible, as
it was known, continued to play a key role in spreading Reformation ideas
across the English-speaking world and, eventually, to the British Empire.
In 1611, the 54
scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale,
as well as from translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests
that the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's and the
Old Testament 76%.[8] His translation of the Bible was the first to be
printed in English, and became a model for subsequent English translations;
in 2002, Tyndale was placed at number 26 in the BBC's poll of the 100
Greatest Britons.
Extract from en.wikipedia.org read more
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