The 16th century spawned the Protestant Reformation because of the courageous efforts of a few Christian scholars, some within the Catholic church itself which included many priests and bishops who disapproved of the infusion of pagan doctrine and practice. Had it not been for Wycliff, Tyndale, and other valiant pre-Protestant heroes of the faith, Christianity would have been destroyed, and Satan’s Babylonian mysticism would have prevailed, effectively destroying true Christianity. One risked death by burning if caught in mere possession of Tyndale’s forbidden books. The church declared it contained thousands of errors as they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy, while in fact, they burned them because they could find no errors at all. The more the King and Bishop resisted its distribution, the more fascinated the public at large became. They were burned as soon as the Bishop could confiscate them, but copies trickled through and actually ended up in the bedroom of King Henry VIII. God foiled their plans (and in 1525/26), Tyndale printed the first English New Testament. Already hunted because of the rumor spread abroad that such a project was underway, inquisitors and bounty hunters were on Tyndale’s trail to abort the effort. Tyndale was fluent in eight languages and is considered by many to be the primary architect of today’s English language. Tyndale showed up on Luther’s doorstep (in 1525), and by year’s end had translated the New Testament into English. It could not, however, be done in England.
Simultaneously, William Tyndale would become burdened to translate the same Erasmus text into English. Luther, who would be exiled in the months following the Diet of Worms Council (in 1521), that was designed to martyr him, would translate the New Testament into German from Erasmus’ Greek/Latin New Testament and publish it (in September of 1522). Martin Luther: Declared his intolerance with the Roman Churches corruption on Halloween (in 1517), by nailing 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg Door. With Erasmus’ work (in 1516), the die was cast. Pope Leo X’s declaration that “the fable of Christ was very profitable to him” infuriated the people of God. The Latin that Erasmus translated from the Greek revealed enormous corruptions’ in the Vulgate’s integrity amongst the rank and file scholars, many of whom were already convinced that the established church was doomed by virtue of its evil hierarchy. Erasmus’ Latin was not the Vulgate translation of Jerome, but his own fresh rendering of the Greek New Testament text that he had collated from 6 or 7 partial New Testament manuscripts into a complete Greek New Testament. Latin was the language for centuries of scholarship and it was understood by virtually every European who could read or write. Erasmus and the great printer, scholar and reformer John Froben published the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the Bible in a millennium. Indirectly, he had the help of Erasmus in the publication of his Greek/Latin New Testament (printed in 1516). He worked most of his translating years alone, but had help from time to time as God discerned he needed it. William Tyndale: Was the Captain of the army of reformers, and was their spiritual leader. With the onset of the Reformation in the early 1500’s, the first printings of the Bible in the English language were produced illegally and at great personal risk to those involved.
It was, however, in Latin rather than English. Gutenberg: Invented the printing press in the 1450’s and the first book to ever be printed was the Bible. Though he died a nonviolent death, the Pope was so infuriated by his teachings that 44 years after Wycliff had died, he ordered the bones to be dug up, burned and scattered in the river! Wycliff spent many of his years arguing against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, which he believed to be contrary to the Bible. Curiously, he was also the inventor of bifocal eyeglasses. John Wycliff: The Oxford theologian produced the first hand written English language manuscripts of the Bible (in the 1380’s). How did we get it, who wrote it, who translated it and how did it get printed? We will begin this by telling about some of the main people involved who literally gave their very lives so that we were able to come out of the dark ages by the reformation that had hidden the truth from us for 1000 years. This article will answer questions about the bible. Bible – The History of its English Origin