“If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth

the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou dost”

-William Tyndale

If it wasn’t for William Tyndale, we would be without the Bible. Well,

maybe that is a little drastic, eventually there would have been

an English translation, but I feel that it would have taken

much longer. But really, next time we are trying to think of things to

be grateful for, add this man to your list. Living in a time when

reading or translating scripture in English was outlawed, William Tyndale fought

against it and worked on translating the Bible anyway. He translated it from its purest forms; Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old Testament. If this

little blurb has spiked your curiosity I would recommend reading “Fire

in the Bones” by S. Michael Wilcox. He gives you a prospective of how

important Tyndale’s work was; something you might have never realized

before, or at least I didn’t.

Wilcox does a great job at showing us his importance through Tyndale's personal experience; one of which was his intellectual preparation by attending Oxford.

I think one of the most interesting parts in the book was how Wilcox

points out the beautiful phrases that Tyndale  created from translating

the bible from Greek that. Such phrases as: “Atonement, Jehovah, mercy seat, the still small voice, let

there be light, in my Father’s house are many mansions….are all

Tyndale’s creations. He gave them birth; but time has nursed them to

maturity. 

“Hailed as a saint and condemned to the blackest pit of hell, William

Tyndale lived in a world-changing time, a world of whispers and

shouts. He altered that world more than any of his contemporaries, and

in doing so he brought all of us closer to God.” – S. Michael Wilcox