The first complete English Bible became available in October 1535, probably printed in Cologne it was the work of Myles Coverdale.
In 1550 Princess Elizabeth’s tutor rode through Vilvorde and appropriately noted the spot ‘where worthy William Tyndale was unworthily put to death’. In October 1536 this man, to whom English-speakers owe so much, was led out to die in Vilvorde, near Brussels as a distinguished scholar, he was burnt only after being strangled. Although all Tyndale’s property was seized, his translations were elsewhere, safe for future publication.
In the years that followed, before his arrest on, Tyndale translated the other historical books, from Joshua to 2 Chronicles, and also Jonah. These began to appear in 1530 and could be bought either separately or all five bound up together. Tyndale went on to render the Hebrew of the Old Testament into English, beginning with the Books of Moses. can be solved by considering the arrival of the whole of Paul’s Epistles in print and in English.’ This is true, but a further factor – which secular historians ignore – must be borne in mind: God blessed his own Word. A historian of Bible translations into English comments: ‘Puzzlement about how the English became so quickly Protestant. 1 Ploughboys in England and Scotland could now learn the truths of Scripture, although there would have been serious problems with affordability and literacy. Bishop Tunstall railed because ‘in the English tongue that pestiferous and most pernicious poison dispersed throughout all our dioceses of London in great number’. The bishops let loose a wave of persecution against those who were caught with these prohibited volumes. Copies of the New Testament were smuggled in large numbers into England and Scotland from 1526 onwards. It was in exile on the Continent that Tyndale translated the New Testament directly from Greek into English. Tyndale was to find it impossible to carry out his intention in his native England, such was the opposition of the pre-Reformation Church to the Word of God. For the first time, English-speaking people in the British Isles could purchase a Bible in their own tongue translated, in its entirety, directly from the original Hebrew and Greek – a notable milestone on the road begun by William Tyndale, who famously intended to make it possible for a ploughboy to know more of the Scripture than the learned man who claimed that it was better to be without God’s law than the Pope’s. In Geneva, 450 years ago, a new version of the Bible in English began to come off the printing presses.
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