This year is the 504th Anniversary of The Reformation and the 410th Anniversary of the King James Bible. Along with the Reformation igniting a widespread return to biblical faith throughout Europe, with the realization that it is Jesus Christ who saves and not the religious institution, there were also a number of Bible translations that came forth. This would result eventually in the publication of the King James Bible later in England.
The following is a brief overview of how that
came about.
King James and the Bible
King James had been taught from his
earliest days by a Protestant tutor. Thus raised as a Protestant, the new
King in England, who for the first time ruled both England and Scotland, was approached by a
group of Puritans who brought forth a number of requests known as the
Millenary Petition, a document signed by one thousand Puritans.
The Puritans
originally were a revival movement in England that came out of the
Reformation, whose name indicated a desire to purify the Church and return
completely to the New Testament.
Though raised as a Protestant, King James
still had a lot of his own ideas, and he viewed the Puritans as quite
extreme.
He would, however, grant one of the Puritans’ requests and publish
an authorized official version of the Holy Bible.
This one request King
James granted became his most enduring legacy. The King James Bible, known
in England as the Authorized Version and in America as the King James
Version, became renowned throughout the English-speaking world for
centuries, and from its publication to our present day it has been widely
used.
Martin Luther’s Influence on the English Reformation
Martin Luther was
reading the book of Romans when he experienced the grace of God that is
given through faith in Christ. Luther had suffered under the burden of
performing the ongoing rituals prescribed by the Catholic Church to merit
salvation. However, he came into a place of liberty and freedom in Christ
having the heavy burden lifted off when he read about the forgiveness and
grace given to us when we just put our faith in Christ and receive the grace
and forgiveness He gives through His work on the cross.
Luther began
teaching on this amazing grace after his born-again experience and also drew
up a list of things he wanted to challenge and debate with other theologians
regarding the errors the Catholic Church was teaching. He tacked this list,
called the Ninety-Five Theses, to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on
October 31st in 1517.
Luther’s Theses sparked The Protestant Reformation,
igniting a widespread return to faith in Christ in Europe, with the
realization that it is Jesus Christ who is the one who saves, not the
religious institution. The New Testament teaching that salvation is a gift
given through faith in Christ by grace, not by religious performance of
rituals, spread far and wide in Europe.
Repercussions Across the Channel
The
Reformation’s impact eventually began to come across the English Channel
into Great Britain and it was regularly discussed at Cambridge University.
One of the places in Cambridge that held lively discussions on the topic was
a pub known as the White Horse Inn, where long discussions would take place
late into the evenings. Cambridge became known as a Little Germany and
Little Wittenberg due to the adoption of Reformation truths.
Those that were
able to read the New Testament, saw that Luther was just drawing from its
central teaching and merely saying that Christ has paid for our sin on the
cross already, which is to be received by faith and is not something that we
can earn or work for by performing religious rituals, nor can this
forgiveness and salvation be merited by any other religious performance nor
work.
Here lay an important problem though, as the religious institution of
the day, the Catholic Church, saw to it that the Bible was not available.
They had made it illegal for common people to own or possess the Scriptures
in any way. In fact, at the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, the Catholic Church
officially forbade the laity to possess the Bible, and from that time onward
people were burned at the stake—including women and children—for possession
of illegal Bibles or sometimes merely having just some pages of the Bible.
They also opposed translations into the common vernacular languages. The
Catholic Church wanted the Bible kept only in Latin so as to limit who could
read it or have access to it. Latin was a long dead language at this point
and the vast majority of people, including most of the clergy in the Catholic Church, could neither read it nor understand it. Scholar David Daniell says:
“The Bible might as well have been in Chinese for all the good it did
forcing it to be kept in Latin.” Because Luther had been studying to be a
lawyer before he entered the monastery, he was able to read Latin.
Luther
had made a translation of the New Testament into German while hiding in the
Warburg Castle escaping those who wanted his death. His translation further
fueled the Reformation. Now people could read for themselves that the New
Testament taught that salvation is a gift from God given through faith in
Christ. He later finished translating the rest of the Bible into the German
language once he was able to return home to Wittenberg.
William Tyndale
William Tyndale had been a Catholic priest in England, and like Luther, had
also experienced a conversion to Christ and was touched by the grace of God.
He had spent time studying in Cambridge and having discussions at the White
Horse Inn, and being influenced by the Reformation and Martin Luther, wanted
to make a Bible translation available in the English language.
Tyndale had
transferred from Oxford to Cambridge because Oxford towed the Catholic line
and held in its Constitutions prohibition against the Bible being in the
common English language.
Influenced by the impact Martin Luther had in
translating the New Testament into the German vernacular, Tyndale sought to
do the same for the English-speaking world.
He set out to create a
translation of the New Testament first, and then the rest of the Bible. In
an effort to begin his quest, Tyndale left Cambridge and found favor with a
couple who provided him a place to stay and work out in Little Sodbury where
he began his work of translation.
Tyndale eventually came over to Germany to
meet with Martin Luther in Wittenberg, after leaving England due to
persecution.
It was shortly after this time with Luther that Tyndale began
to have his translation of the New Testament printed first in Worms,
Germany, then smuggled into England.
Tyndale’s pocket-sized New Testaments,
which could be easily hidden, became a huge hit in the United Kingdom and
caused quite a stir, to the consternation of Woolsey, the Catholic Bishop in
London who sought to buy them up so he could burn them.
This plan of Woolsey
backfired in numerous ways. The larger population was outraged that a
clergyman would have the outrageous audacity to burn the Holy Scriptures.
Furthermore, the seller of the New Testaments had the money secretly sent to
Tyndale who printed three times as many of his translation of the New
Testaments which further flooded into England.
Woolsley was shocked when he
was told he had actually been unwittingly funding Tyndale through his
fanatical efforts to liquidate the Word of God.
One of the great blessings
that Tyndale and Luther both had was the work of Didier Erasmus, a Cambridge
professor from The Netherlands who assembled and published a Greek text of
the New Testament which gave them accessibility to the original text.
Thus,
Luther and Tyndale made their translations of the New Testament from the
original Greek. John Wycliffe, a little more than a century earlier, had
made an English translation but only had the Latin version to work from.
Wycliffe Bibles also had to be copied by hand, as the printing press had not
yet been invented, and most copies were rounded up and burned along with
many believers. The invention of the printing press greatly accelerated the
Reformation and the distribution of the Scriptures.
Tyndale and His Dying Words
Tyndale was persecuted, and was eventually betrayed, arrested, and put
to death. His dying words, as he was about to be burned at the stake, were a
prayer: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”
A year after the death of
Tyndale, King Henry VIII had Bibles placed in churches to be available to be
read by the people. The dying prayer of Tyndale went even further though,
when King James later granted the Puritans one request, which was the
publication of an authorized version of the Bible, which became known in
America later as the King James Bible.
Scholar David Daniell says the sages
and scholars King James assembled to do the work used Tyndale’s translation
as their framework, and actually 90% of the King James New Testament is
Tyndale’s work. The Lord carried forth this reformer’s effort and prayer
into an amazing legacy
We have numerous videos for more on these subjects:
