The British Library is now offering the first complete full-color facsimile of William Tyndale’s pioneering translation of the New Testament from Greek into English. The library holds one of only two surviving copies of Tyndale’s Bible, from the 3,000 copies originally printed.
This new edition, The New Testament 1526, contains an authoritative introduction by David Daniell, Chairman Emeritus of the Tyndale Society and author of William Tyndale: A Biography.
Between 1525 and 1535, Tyndale produced the first English Bible, translating the whole of the New Testament and half of the Old Testament. Tyndale’s Bible was printed by Peter Schoeffer in the German city of Worms since its publication was illegal in England.
Under the 1408 Constitutions of Oxford, England forbad any version of the Bible other than St Jerome’s fourth century Latin translation, also known as the Vulgate. During the reign of Henry VIII, the ban was enforced by Cardinal Wolsey and the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More in an attempt to prevent the spread of Protestantism.
Tyndale’s translation was pronounced heretical the English authorities. Despite the ban, Tyndale’s Bibles still made it to England, smuggled into the country in bales of cloth.
Although Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church in the early 1530s, Tyndale was still accused of spreading sedition. He was captured, condemned as a heretic and finally strangled and burned at the stake outside Brussels in 1536.
Tyndale, however, would have the final word, quite literally. The New Testament of the King James Bible of 1611 was heavily influenced, sometimes almost word for word, by Tyndale’s translation. .
The British Library purchased the 1526 edition of Tyndale’s Bible in 1994 for a little over a million pounds. The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world’s greatest research libraries. The library’s collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilization.
The New Testament 1526 edition translated by William Tyndale is published in hardback by the British Library. Price £30.00, 700, ISBN 978 0 7123 50 28 0.
The book is vailable from the British Library Shop.