William Tyndale
born c.
1490–94, near Gloucestershire, Eng.
died Oct. 6, 1536, Vilvoorde, near Brussels,
Brabant
English
biblical translator, humanist, and Protestant
martyr.
Tyndale was educated at the University of Oxford
and became an instructor at the University of
Cambridge, where, in 1521, he fell in with a
group of humanist scholars meeting at the White
Horse Inn. Tyndale became convinced that the
Bible alone should determine the practices and
doctrines of the church and that every believer
should be able to read the Bible in his own
language.
After
church authorities in England prevented him from
translating the Bible there, he went to Germany
in 1524, receiving financial support from
wealthy London merchants. His New Testament
translation was completed in July 1525 and
printed at Cologne and, when Catholic
authorities suppressed it, at Worms. The first
copies reached England in 1526. Tyndale then
began work on an Old Testament translation but
was captured in Antwerp before it was completed;
he was executed at Vilvoorde in 1536.
At the
time of his death, several thousand copies of
his New Testament had been printed; however,
only one intact copy remains today at London’s
British Library. The first vernacular English
text of any part of the Bible to be so
published, Tyndale’s version became the basis
for most subsequent English translations,
beginning with the King James Version of 1611.
