Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Family, Parenting and Religion
What These Books Make Me Ponder 500 Years After Tyndale

What These Books Make Me Ponder 500 Years After Tyndale

Last updated on: September 3, 2026 at 2:55 pm by Tosha Lamdin Williams

What These Books Make Me Ponder 500 Years After Tyndale 2026-09-03T14:55:59-06:00 Tosha Lamdin Williams

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

| Image courtesy of the author.

I was assigned this desk at Tyndale House Library. Frankly, I wouldn’t have chosen this spot, but that’s why what I found here feels especially significant to me.

My husband and I are spending several days studying and writing at Tyndale House Library in Cambridge, England. Of all the desks in this extraordinary library, we were sent to this inauspicious room upstairs. Frankly, there is nothing impressive or beautiful about this spot. In fact, it is rather drab.

Then I started researching various topics, found references for histories about this place, and—after I went looking for them—realized there were on the shelves directly behind me.

I pulled down David Daniell’s William Tyndale: A Biography. Then I grabbed Brian Moynahan’s William Tyndale: If God Spare My Life: A Story of Martyrdom, Betrayal and the English Bible. Now both books are sitting open on the desk in front of me.

The Question Behind the Books

There is something almost surreal about sitting in a library named for William Tyndale, with books about his life pulled from the shelves immediately behind my assigned desk. I look at his story as I simultaneously work on Family Disciple Me resources designed to help ordinary people know and share the Word of God. Seek Him Speak Him, we call it.

I don’t want to make too much of an assigned desk, but I can’t help smiling at the significance. Because five hundred years ago, William Tyndale was consumed with a question remarkably similar to the one that consumes much of my own life’s work: How do we help common Christians understand and know the Word of God?

For Tyndale, answering that question would eventually cost him his life.

When Access to Scripture Was Dangerous

Tyndale was born into a world in which the idea that ordinary English-speaking people should be able to read God’s Word for themselves was controversial—and even dangerous. John Wycliffe had already been posthumously condemned; decades after his death, his remains were exhumed and burned. Jan Hus had been burned at the stake as a heretic, all because he advocated for upholding the authority of Scripture. Biblical literacy among many clergy was troublingly low, and access to Scripture among ordinary English-speaking people was severely limited.

Scripture in the Western Church was primarily encountered in Latin. There was, of course, nothing wrong with Latin. The problem was that most ordinary English people could neither read nor understand it. Unauthorized translation of Scripture into English was prohibited.

Into this world came William Tyndale.

While relatively little is known about his childhood and early years, Tyndale studied at Oxford University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1512 and master’s degree in 1515. He became an exceptional linguist and scholar, eventually possessing the language skills that would enable him to work directly from the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament. He also spent time in Cambridge, where reforming ideas that would help fuel the English Reformation were beginning to circulate.

These were dangerous ideas.

But what Tyndale and others set out to do would eventually impact the world.

A Boy that Driveth the Plough

Tyndale became increasingly convinced that ordinary English-speaking people needed access to Scripture. According to John Foxe, during one confrontation with a learned clergyman who maintained that the pope’s laws were more important than God’s, Tyndale famously replied:

“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.”

I’ve been thinking about that boy as I sit here.

Tyndale’s vision wasn’t merely that theologians would have better tools or that educated people would have another translation to study.

He wanted the ordinary person to know Scripture. Not merely clergy, scholars, or those educated in Latin.

He believed that an ordinary person doing an ordinary job should be able to encounter the Word of God in words he or she could understand.

That conviction sounds remarkably unremarkable five hundred years later.

For Tyndale, it put a price on his head.

The High Price of Making Scripture Accessible

Unable to receive the support and permission he needed to undertake his translation work safely in England, Tyndale left his homeland. He would spend the remainder of his life on the European continent, frequently moving as he pursued his work and sought safety.

All along, he kept translating.

Working directly from Greek, Tyndale produced his English New Testament. In 1526—five hundred years ago as I sit here writing this—printed copies began making their way into England.

Imagine holding one of them. For the first time, ordinary English-speaking people could possess a printed New Testament translated directly from Greek into words they could understand.

Authorities tried to stop it. Copies were confiscated and burned. Tyndale was pursued, but still, he kept translating.

He turned his attention to Hebrew and translated portions of the Old Testament, publishing the Pentateuch in 1530 and continuing his work on other books.

Eventually, Tyndale was betrayed and arrested near Antwerp. He was imprisoned at Vilvoorde for more than a year and ultimately condemned for heresy.

In 1536, at approximately forty-two years old, William Tyndale was executed. He was strangled to death, and then his body was burned.

However, while his earthly life was over, his work was not.

A Spiritual Legacy that Lives On

As far as history records, Tyndale never married or had children of his own. He had no son or daughter to carry his name into another generation.

Yet few people have left a greater spiritual and linguistic legacy to generations they would never meet.

He was silenced, but the Word of God was not. For the first time, common, ordinary Christians could read, understand, know, and apply Scripture for their lives.

Which brings me back to this desk.

Five hundred years separate Tyndale’s world from ours. He lived in a world where ordinary people desperately needed access to God’s Word.

We live in a world of almost unimaginable access to it. Bibles sit on our shelves. Scripture lives on our phones. We can listen to it while driving. Read it over breakfast. Search a word in seconds. Compare translations instantly. Carry dozens of versions in our pockets.

But all this leaves me pondering an uncomfortable irony: Tyndale and his generation had to fight for access to the Word of God. Our generation must decide what we will do with the access we’ve been given.

Most of us don’t have to smuggle Scripture into our homes. We don’t have to hide it from authorities. We don’t have to risk our lives to read it aloud to our children. We simply have to open it. And perhaps abundance presents its own kind of spiritual danger, because what is scarce is easily treasured while what is everywhere can easily be ignored.

Tyndale dreamed of a ploughboy—a simple farm boy—who could know Scripture. Five hundred years later, the ploughboy has the Bible.

So do I. If you’re reading this, so do you. The question is whether we know it.

In a few hours, I’ll finish my work here. I’ll gather the books scattered across this assigned desk and return Daniell and Moynahan to the shelves directly behind me.

Other scholars and students will sit here. Other books will be pulled down. Other words will be written.

And I still don’t want to make too much of the fact that, of all the places we could have been assigned to sit at Tyndale House, somebody assigned us to this inauspicious spot.

But I’m grateful for it, because these books have reminded me that the Bible sitting beside my computer did not arrive in my language cheaply.

People studied, sacrificed, suffered, and even died for it. They believed ordinary people should be able to know the extraordinary Word of God, and now we can. What a privilege.

The Question Remains

Before I leave this desk, I’ll put the books back on the shelves behind me, but I hope I don’t put the question back with them.

What will I do with the biblical, relevant, easily accessible Scripture I’ve been given?

What will you do with it?

I say, let’s be people of the Word, who Seek Him Speak Him. Let’s be people who Meet With God and Make Him Known.

This was a life-worthy endeavor for Tyndale and many other godly people, and may it be so for us.

Be Encouraged! Tosha

Further reading:

Daniell, David. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Moynahan, Brian. *William Tyndale: If God Spare My Life: A Story of Martyrdom, Betrayal and the English Bible.*London: Little, Brown, 2002. (This is published in the US under the title God’s Bestseller, and it is a wonderful historical read.)
Foxe, John. Actes and Monuments (commonly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs). 1563. (I have listened to the audio version of this entire book. I think that it is something every Christ follower should read or listen to.)

General Christian

History and Religion

discipleship

family

ministry

next generation for jesus

God's Word

legacy

Tyndale

Tyndale House Library

Previous Post

March 31, 2026

The Great Instead - A Poem for Good Friday

Next Post

September 27, 2026 As Sure As the Moon

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category children Devotion discipleship easter family kids marriage ministry ministry to kids next generation for jesus travel Uncategorized women in ministry women pastors

Select a Month September 2026 March 2026 February 2026 August 2025 April 2025 March 2025 January 2025 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 June 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 December 2022 November 2022

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz