William Tyndale is one of the most important people in English history that few rarely ever know. Through his passion to get the Bible, God’s Word, into the hands of ordinary people, he gave us the linguistic structure of what we consider modern English, perhaps just as influential, if not more so, than William Shakespeare. The following blog post from our church’s Lenten series demonstrates the Tyndale legacy…
Some dismiss William Tyndale and his followers as being hopelessly anti-Catholic, but such an assessment obscures his otherwise remarkable contribution to the history of the church.
As an aid to better appreciate William Tyndale, I found the following documentary by BBC journalist Melyvn Bragg, one of Britain’s foremost public intellectuals, linked here below on Veracity. Bragg is not evangelical in his theology, as he embraces a high-minded form of Christianity as a type of “tribal” faith celebrating the history and grandeur of English culture over against an empty atheism. Nevertheless, his appreciation for Tyndale is something that I hope evangelically-minded Christians will find contagious.
Woodcut from John Foxe’s The Book of Martyrs. William Tyndale (1494-1536) cries out, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”
Are you willing to “go the extra mile” for someone?
If you know what I am talking about, you might know that this phrase,
“go the extra mile“, comes from the Bible (Matthew 5:41). But
did you know how this phrase became part of the English language?
William Tyndale (1494-1536) was an energetic scholar, a real brainy
guy, kind of like his fellow yet modern Englishman, Tom Wright, who
wrote our study book for Lent on the Gospel of Matthew.
Tyndale was bothered that his typical neighbor was not able to read
the Bible in their native English language in the 16th century. So he
went about learning ancient Greek and Hebrew and began translating the
Bible into English. Unfortunately, the political and religious
establishment of his day…
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Veracity 
April 4th, 2014 at 8:10 am
Very interesting post. There’s so much we take for granted, that came on the shoulders of the martyrs and patristics. Thanks for sharing!
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