Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – William Tyndale and the English Bible – Part SIX

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Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives William Tyndale and the English Bible – Part SIX

The Lord did indeed answer the dying PRAYER of Tyndale in the most remarkable way; as we shall soon learn. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Thos. Cranmer) & Vicar General (Thos. Cromwell) both committed to the Protestant cause being esteemed counselors to King Henry the 8th PERSUADED Henry to approve the publication of the 1535 COVERDALE translation. By 1539 every PARISH church in England had a copy of the Coverdale Bible. His edition was the first complete English translation of the entire Bible.• Miles Coverdale was a good friend of Wm. Tyndale and a fellow Cambridge graduate. The Coverdale Bible was mainly Tyndale’s work except for portions of the OT that William didn’t have time to translate before his death.• Being declared a heretic would disqualify William’s name to be used on any Bible. So in 1537, John Rogers the friend who had rescued Brother Tyndale’s manuscripts prior to his arrest in Brussels published all of Tyndale’s NT translation plus all of his up-to-date OT work; using the balance of Coverdale’s OT to publish the Matthews Bible.• Brother Rogers could not honestly claim the work as his own, and so he used a pseudonym–Thomas Matthews. Archbishop Cranmer obtained a copy of the Matthew manuscripts and requested Vicar General/Chancellor Thomas Cromwell to petition the king to license the new translation. • Henry VIII once again took the advice of his counselors which gave BIRTH to the MATTHEW BIBLE. THUS, William Tyndale’s translations continued its God called course as evidenced in the Coverdale and Matthews Bibles. Next in the lineage of English Bibles would be the 1539 Great Bible which was also authorized by King Henry VIII as a Bible that would be more in the vernacular of the common man & could be read aloud during church services in England. Once again Myles Coverdale under the watchful eyes of Lord Cromwell would produce the Great Bible. The NT was largely that of Tyndale with MINOR linguistic ADJUSTMENTS and occasional parenthetical insertions from the corrupt Latin Vulgate. As you can see English Bibles were spreading across Europe: Tyndale’s 1535 version, the 1535 Coverdale, Matthews in 1537, and the Great Bible of 1539. Prepared by Thomas E. Kresal from my sermons on Wm. Tyndale