Bible (Archive 4)

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Subject: Tyndale gave us our English Bible

Bible Note: --"William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. The sages assembled by King James to prepare the Authorized Version of 1611, so often praised for unlikely corporate inspiration, took over Tyndale’s work. Nine-tenths of the Authorized Version’s New Testament is Tyndale’s. The same is true of the first half of the Old Testament, which was as far as he was able to get before he was executed outside Brussels in 1536. Here is a sampling of the English phrases we owe to Tyndale: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) “The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be merciful unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “There were shepherds abiding in the field” (Luke 2:8). “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9). “The signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3) “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). “He went out . . . and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75). Those two words are still used by almost all modern translations (NIV, NASB, ESV, NKJV). It has not been improved on for five hundred years in spite of weak efforts like one recent translation: “cried hard.” Unlike that phrase, “the rhythm of his two words carries the experience.” “A law unto themselves” (Romans 2:14) “In him we live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels” (1 Corinthians 13:1) “Fight the good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12).
According to Daniell, “The list of such near-proverbial phrases is endless.” Five hundred years after his great work “newspaper headlines still quote Tyndale, though unknowingly, and he has reached more people than even Shakespeare.”
Luther’s translation of 1522 is often praised for “having given a language to the emerging German nation.” Daniell claims the same for Tyndale in English: In his Bible translations, Tyndale’s conscious use of everyday words, without inversions, in a neutral word-order, and his wonderful ear for rhythmic patterns, gave to English not only a Bible language, but a new prose. England was blessed as a nation in that the language of its principal book, as the Bible in English rapidly became, was the fountain from which flowed the lucidity, suppleness and expressive range of the greatest prose thereafter. His craftsmanship with the English language amounted to genius. He translated two-thirds of the Bible so well that his translations endured until today. This was not merely a literary phenomenon; it was a spiritual explosion. Tyndale’s Bible and writings were the kindling that set the Reformation on fire in England.'--
2006 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors