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018 | The English Bible: Translation and History | Understanding the Canon
579 Plays5 years ago
How does translation work? Are some translations better than others? And how did we get the English bible we have today? All this and more in this episode!
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Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered-down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome back,
Why Read Multiple Bible Translations?
00:00:31
Speaker
friends. Today we are going to be talking about translations and translation processes. I am asked every single time I do Ask Anything Monday, my weekly Q&A show on Instagram, what translations do you recommend? And I always answer, read more than one, because when you read more than one translation, you're getting multiple perspectives.
00:00:54
Speaker
So whether that's theologically or denominationally based on the committee that did the translation or just the methodology that they brought to the translation, reading several different ones will give you a well-rounded perspective on the Word of God.
00:01:12
Speaker
And if you've been confused by that, today's episode may bring you some clarity because we're going to talk about what goes into translating a Bible and the methodology, the ideas, the principles that are at play in the pursuit of that. We're also going to talk very shortly about the history of the English Bible. We're going to stop at the King James Version, though, because we're going to start up next week with an exclusive episode only about the King James.
00:01:41
Speaker
This will be a partial history of the English Bible. So without further ado, let's jump right in.
Understanding the Bible Translation Process
00:01:49
Speaker
When translators are putting together your NASB Bible, they are looking at the original languages, Hebrew and Greek, and then the receptor language, which in this case is English.
00:02:04
Speaker
It would be a different language, obviously, if you are translating to do a Spanish Bible or a German Bible or something like that. In fact, if you'd go on YouTube and you look up Wycliffe Bible Translators, they have some really cool videos explaining their processes for translating a Bible into, say, these new or unknown languages or languages that are completely oral with no written alphabet. It's pretty cool stuff.
00:02:31
Speaker
So in those cases, the particular language that they're working with, some of these tribal languages that have no alphabet, that is the receptor language. But the original languages are still Hebrew and Greek because that is what these books were written in.
00:02:49
Speaker
It's important as we get started though to make a point about inspiration. You may remember that earlier in this series, we talked about inspiration way back at the beginning and how it's not that certain Bible versions are inspired, but that the original texts were inspired by God.
00:03:09
Speaker
The original manuscripts were inspired by God. And so translations are not considered inspired. And this is actually from Dr. Don Wilkins who helped to translate the NASB. He says, no translation is inspired. Therefore, none is necessarily error free or beyond improvement. This is very important.
00:03:32
Speaker
Now this should not undermine your confidence in the authority of the Bible because as you will see when we discuss translation processes, we're working from the same manuscripts. We're working from the oldest manuscripts and we have so much authoritative evidence for these manuscripts and they're looking at extra-biblical resources as far as the usage of the Hebrew in Greek to guide them in what words to use. So the fact that we're saying, hey,
00:04:01
Speaker
Look, the original manuscripts were inspired by God, but any translations successively are
The Role of Community and Texts in Translation
00:04:09
Speaker
not. They're an echo of that inspiration that shouldn't upset your apple cart theologically. It might be a reframe if you grew up in a church that said only this version is inspired.
00:04:21
Speaker
But if you think about this from the big picture perspective, God inspires this word in Hebrew or in Greek, and then it's copied and recopied and copied again, that original inspiration, that stands. But
00:04:38
Speaker
Through time, as those copies are made, there is potential for errors, which is why there is that community accountability, the doctrinal accountability, the copyist accountability that we've talked about thus far, and why translation is such an important process and such a great responsibility.
00:05:00
Speaker
So the standard text today used for most of the Old Testament is the Masoretic Text. And that's, again, for the Old Testament. For the New Testament, it is the Novum Testamentum.
00:05:13
Speaker
And some such as translators of the KJV and the NKJV still use the Textus Receptus. This was what Erasmus used when he was originally translating from the Vulgate, which is the Latin Bible, remember, to a Greek New Testament. He was working from the Greek manuscripts that he had of the New Testament at the time.
00:05:35
Speaker
and about seven of them. And we'll talk about him a little bit later. But this is the Textus Receptus. And you'll hear this phrase brought up a lot in the King James conversation. So we're going to save that for the next episode. But I wanted to at least mention that King James translators would be depending on that text, Byzantine text, as opposed to the majority of translators today who are using a different New Testament text that is older than
Translation Factors: Philosophy, Funding, and Teams
00:06:05
Speaker
that one.
00:06:05
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So what's going into translation? What are some things that are influencing translation? A couple. Who is funding it? Money matters. Publishers are funding a lot of these. They are helping churches that have denominational translation committees. They're helping to fund it and so funding matters. You have to have the money to do the translation.
00:06:32
Speaker
And the question is how much money is available, also how much time is available.
00:06:38
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What is the translation philosophy? So is there a theological understanding? And this isn't to say that, say, a bunch of Southern Baptists get together and they do a translation, but that the Southern Baptists might commission a translation and then scholars would be found to work on that translation. And not all those scholars may be Southern Baptists, because you're looking for those Old Testament and New Testament scholars to do this.
00:07:05
Speaker
but it will likely reflect Southern Baptist ideologies and theology.
00:07:12
Speaker
So the translation philosophy is a factor. And the type or style of translation, such as dynamic or functional equivalents, which one is it? And we'll talk about those definitions in a second. Is it solo or committee-based? And most of what we're looking at today is committee-based translation. So more than one translator working together to review it. Solo is faster.
00:07:38
Speaker
and it's more cohesive in the tone but committee-based translations have more credibility typically. So I wanted to read a few quotes from Dr. Wilkins because I thought as I was reading some of his material it was very helpful in understanding how translation works and what it looks like to be analyzing these texts and translating them.
00:08:01
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with good stewardship because of how weighty a responsibility this is. So he was talking a little bit about adding footnotes into the Bible. Why do translators do that as they're going through this process? And he said, these notes point out alternate readings in the ancient manuscripts. They may not affect doctrine or theology, but they do result in changes in the wording of the original texts.
00:08:28
Speaker
And the notes are there to allow translators to decide whether to choose an alternate reading or to accept the reading chosen by the editors for the text. So he's saying here that these notes that are added, these footnotes, are giving some context to why the word maybe was changed or translated differently.
00:08:49
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I think this is important to keep in mind because whenever I see people arguing against modern translations, it's often that they change this word or they change this sentence. As you'll see in a minute, translation is very tricky. You're taking Hebrew and Greek.
00:09:07
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which we have no living modern day speakers of these ancient languages. Like we don't have an ancient Hebrew man standing here today who speaks it. We don't have an ancient Greek speaking it exactly the way that they spoke it. So they're trying to piece together from what we have historically in the language to come to the best conclusion for what word, what is being expressed here.
00:09:32
Speaker
And remember that Hebrew can have so many different meanings in one word. So for instance, hesed. This is a word that you might have seen it in Micah 6-8. Seek justice, love mercy, walk calmly with your God. Well, that word mercy, that's translated mercy, and that's how it was translated in the KJV,
00:09:53
Speaker
Mercy can also mean loving kindness, or covenant faithfulness, or loyalty. And it has a whole slew of other meanings that can come as subsidiaries of those original meanings for Hasid. And you'll see that word in Ruth several times describing her loving kindness towards Naomi, or Boaz's loving kindness toward her.
00:10:14
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So when we have a word that can have all these different meanings, it means that the translators have to be very cautious and careful in how they're choosing the correct word for the context. And so that means that they have to look elsewhere in Scripture and look at other works from that time period to kind of come to a conclusion about the usage of that word. And so sometimes they'll put a footnote
00:10:39
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and the text to say, hey, we changed this word from the original text either for readability or because it was a better fit during a revision of that version. What about translation styles?
Exploring Translation Styles: Formal vs. Dynamic
00:10:54
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There are several different styles of translation and I'm going to give you three. Formal equivalence is the first and this is word for word translation. Now,
00:11:08
Speaker
Oftentimes people hear word for word and they think more accurate or they'll say literal, which any Bible scholar will tell you, any translator would tell you that using the word literal for Bible translation, it doesn't even work. It's not a word that applies to Bible translation. All of it is literal because they're taking literature, they're taking the words and they're literally translating them into another language.
00:11:33
Speaker
So literal is not a good term to use with Bible translations, saying, is this a literal translation? All translations are literal, okay? So what people often mean when they ask, is this a literal translation? Is this a word for word translation? And they believe that word for word is better, which is not necessarily true. There's just a difference in the goal of the translation. So word for word or formal equivalence attempts to express as exactly as possible
00:12:02
Speaker
the full force and meaning of every word and phrase in the original. So it wants to maintain the meaning as best it can of the original word, even if the sentence is super clunky or confusing in English. So as much as possible, they attempt to keep the same word order as the original two. So again, readability is often sacrificed in these types of translations so that they can stay true to the words that were being used.
00:12:30
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This means it prefers to reflect the sentence structure, the verbal nuances, and the idioms of the original language. And it's also why you'll see in word-for-word translations, they'll italicize words that are not in the original text but are needed to make sense of that sentence.
00:12:49
Speaker
Some examples of this would be the KJV, the NKJV, the NASB, the NRSV, the Amplified Version, the NAB, and the ESV. I have many of these versions myself. I love my NASB and my ESV especially, but you will notice that they sometimes are a little less readable as far as modern English goes than your dynamic equivalence translations, which is what we'll talk about next.
00:13:17
Speaker
So dynamic equivalence or sometimes called functional equivalence attempts to translate thought for thought or phrase for phrase rather than word for word. So it's attempting to bring the same meaning of the text as the original readers would have had. So the meaning would be the same as if the original readers were reading it but the wording may be slightly different.
00:13:43
Speaker
This seeks naturalness of expression, and that's again according to our Dr. Wilkins. He uses modern style structure or idioms to reflect the original meaning. Some examples of dynamic equivalents would include the NLT, the GNT, NCV, and the CEV.
00:14:08
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Now there is one other option and it's called optimal equivalence or a hybrid. And there's some debate over whether this even really exists or if it's ultimately they're all phrase for phrase because they're trying to work with the language and translating it to English.
00:14:25
Speaker
But the HCSB, or the Christian Standard, or the Holman Christian Standard Bible, which is my personal favorite that I use every day, is optimal equivalence. And so what they say, Holman Christian, wanted to, they made an effort to provide this accurate, readable text that worked together dynamic and functional equivalence. And this is from the introduction to the Holman Christian Standard, it says.
00:14:52
Speaker
This approach seeks to combine the best features of the formal and dynamic equivalents by applying each method to translate the meaning of the original with optimal accuracy. In the many places throughout scripture where word-for-word rendering is clearly understandable, that rendering is used. In other places where a literal rendering might be unclear in modern English,
00:15:14
Speaker
a more dynamic translation is given. The HCSB has chosen to use the balance and beauty of optimal equivalence for a fresh translation of God's Word that is both faithful to the words God inspired and user-friendly to modern readers. I have definitely seen this balance in my five years, or actually I think it's seven years now, of using a HCSB Bible or a CSB Bible.
00:15:40
Speaker
And I really enjoy the blending of a dynamic and functional equivalence in the text. I think all of us have been at a women's conference where we were told, you are a beautiful daughter of the Most High King. And it's true, but it's not the whole truth. The beauty of being God's daughter has some backstory and it's left out in a lot of messages preached to women.
00:16:05
Speaker
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00:16:23
Speaker
I'm going to talk about pursuing the truths of who God is and who we are in relationship to Him, how to study scripture, how legalism, shallow theology, and false teaching keep us from living boldly as a woman of the Word. I'm so excited to put this book in your hands. You can grab your copy on Amazon, or for more information, head to my website, FeliciaMasonheimer.com, and click the book tab.
00:16:48
Speaker
Okay, so we've talked about the different translation styles, a little bit about footnotes and when scholars use those. Now we want to talk about interpretive versus non-interpretive translation. And so Dr. Wilkins says about this.
00:17:04
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The best way to describe this is when two or more meanings are possible for a passage, the translators attempt to word it in such a way that it's open to all possible interpretations.
00:17:23
Speaker
this openness to interpretation rather than working in their own interpretation. So he says the task for the translator is to write a first draft in which the meaning is not clearly one thing or another if the meaning of the text in the original language is not clearly one or another.
00:17:41
Speaker
What could very well be the object of criticism in one committee, as in, I can't tell exactly what this is supposed to mean, would be praised in a committee aiming for non-interpretive translation. So if the goal is non-interpretive translation, then them not having the clear meaning in a specific passage may be a good thing as opposed to interpretive translation. So that's another factor that's being decided.
00:18:08
Speaker
Okay, so say you have your your revised standard version and your RSV and the functional equivalent translation, but it's written, you know, earlier in the 20th century.
00:18:25
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and now it needs an update. Why are Bibles revised? Why would somebody mess with a translation and update it after the fact?
Why Revise Bible Translations?
00:18:34
Speaker
Well, there's a couple reasons, and Dr. Wilkins mentions three. First is changes in the original languages.
00:18:41
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So updated manuscripts, changes in the receptor language. So you know how words change in English. We have words that mean things now that they didn't mean years ago. He gives the example of the word dumb. So today dumb means stupid, right? But years ago the word dumb meant mute, unable to talk.
00:19:04
Speaker
And so if we use dumb in the Bible today, then we want it to reflect the modern understanding of that word as opposed to the antiquated meaning of that word. And then the third reason is textual criticism changes. So all of these changes will happen over time. And so he says there would be a revision every 10 to 20 years, sometimes sooner. And there also might be changes in the philosophy of the translation.
00:19:31
Speaker
So he says if those philosophies are too significant though, it would end up with a whole new translation rather than a revision. So revisions are good things. They help us keep our Bibles current and accountable to any update in manuscripts we find. Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 40s, the 1940s, and so these gave us
00:19:54
Speaker
the oldest manuscripts we had to date at that point that allowed for renewed textual criticism and checking these manuscripts against what we've been working from. And that's a good thing. It helps us be even more accurate in what we are translating.
00:20:11
Speaker
William Barclay said about translation, and I thought this was just a really good quote, there's a sense in which translation begins to go out of date on the day it was completed, for language is never static, but always on the move. And it's true, especially these receptor languages, our languages are always changing, they're adapting, they're giving us new words, and so we need to be able to adapt our translation to reflect that for the modern era.
00:20:38
Speaker
Now, we'll get to this more in the KJV episode, but sometimes I hear from people saying like, look, the KJV was good enough for the ancients. It's good enough for me. I have heard some people joke, it's good enough for the Apostle Paul. It's good enough for me. And I do get a good kick out of that joke. The joke is Paul didn't have the KJV.
00:20:58
Speaker
But that aside, when people argue, well, you know, we should just be able to deal with the older language and if people just, you know, paid attention and worked harder than they would understand it, truth is the KJV and the other English versions that came before it, all
00:21:15
Speaker
were in the modern language of the time. They were all in the modern language of the time, and they were so controversial that people got killed over them. So at one point, the KJV was very controversial because of its modern language. And so things change over time, especially language, and we should not get upset when other versions are being used that are in modern language today.
00:21:42
Speaker
Language changes. The Word of God doesn't. All we're doing is updating the language to reflect what is understandable for today's people.
Tailoring Translations for Accessibility
00:21:51
Speaker
Now, before we go into a quick history of the English Bible, I wanted to read a little note from my friend Lori. So Lori used to work at Thomas Nelson, huge Bible publisher, and oversee Bible translation and marketing and reviewing it.
00:22:08
Speaker
And so she had some really neat things to say that gave some context to the translation process from a high level view. And I thought this was super helpful. She says translations are targeted to a specific reading level. The KJV reads at a 12th grade reading level. The average person in America reads closer to a fourth or fifth grade reading level.
00:22:30
Speaker
Reading levels do not indicate intelligence, nor the grade in which one completed. There is a standard system for determining what level Americans read. This is then used for writing purposes to ensure readability. Newspapers and journalism sets this level. The New York Times would rank at the top tier of the media reading level, whereas a hometown paper is going to be quite a bit lower.
00:22:51
Speaker
So when a publisher commissions a new translation, they're looking to meet the needs of their intended audience. A translation does have an audience. The Holman Christian Standard targeted Southern Baptists, the ESV targets are formed, the RSV is mainline, but they're also looking at reading level.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I thought that was really interesting that this is a factor that's going into the translation process. Who's our target market? Who are we writing this for? How readable does it need to be? And then bringing in the scholars to accurately translate this inspired word of God in a way that is available for, as I believe Tyndale said,
00:23:29
Speaker
the average plow boy. Today, who's the average plow boy? He's the clerk at the grocery store, the 15-year-old clerk. Can he understand the Bible that we're giving him? Can he understand it in his language? That is the same mission that Tyndale had. And I think we need to keep that in mind before we get riled up about certain translations.
00:23:52
Speaker
She also wanted to go on and say, and this kind of confirms something that we talked about earlier, most believe a word for word translation is more accurate. The KJV is after all word for word, so it must be best. However, she says, when I started working with translators on a minor revision to my translation, it opened my eyes to a different perspective.
00:24:14
Speaker
Bible translators would argue that there's no such thing as word-for-word translation. The reason is because the translation between Greek and Hebrew into a given language, even English, can never be done word-for-word. If you were to take the biblical manuscripts and translate them word-for-word, then you're left with a jumble of words that are out of context and will often not make sense.
00:24:34
Speaker
This means that by default all translations are thought for thought. You must look at an entire verse or clause to get a better understanding of what the author intended. Then you translate this into the English language using the grade level you're translating for and given the theological bent.
00:24:50
Speaker
And so taking this and looking back at what we talked about with functional equivalence, this lines up with what I was reading from Dr. Wilkins, who's basically saying that yes, word for word exists, but to accomplish word for word, you have to do what Laurie's saying here. You have to look at the phrase, you have to look at the clause, you have to look at the context, you have to utilize outside resources to achieve an accurate translation.
00:25:16
Speaker
I've also heard people use the idea of scripture interpreting itself as a reason to never look at outside materials. But that's just foolish and not what these translators who I was reading were recommending. They were saying we need those resources to know what was going on historically
00:25:34
Speaker
and linguistically at the time so that we can translate these words with as much accuracy as possible. I find this all very fascinating and I think it's so helpful and makes us appreciate our Bibles more when we know the history and the work that goes into it.
A Brief History of the English Bible
00:25:54
Speaker
So as we wrap up this episode I wanted to do a quick rundown of the English Bible's history.
00:26:00
Speaker
If you remember, we've talked about in previous episodes the Vulgate, the Latin Bible, which was translated by Jerome, and this became the standard Bible of the church up until John Wycliffe.
00:26:16
Speaker
So remember that as the church is expanding into Northern Europe, you've got England, you have Germany, and you have the surrounding nations. These people, most of them don't speak Latin. They speak English or German, you know, whatever their language in their area was. And so the church having a Bible in Latin and doing Mass in Latin really wasn't serving many of them because they could not understand this language.
00:26:46
Speaker
John Wycliffe was the first to make it his mission to get the Bible in English to the people. And this was very early, this was in the 1300s. So a little bit about Wycliffe, he had an Oxford degree, and what made him controversial with the church, and the church at the time did not like him, was because he said Christ's law is enough, that church tradition was not the guide, but scripture itself was the guide.
00:27:16
Speaker
And so in 1374 he was pastoring in Lutterworth.
00:27:20
Speaker
And it's when he decided that there needed to be an English Bible and said, doctrine should not only be in Latin, but also in the common tongue. Now, while Wycliffe didn't actually do the translation himself, he did use his influence to have the Bible translated roughly from Latin to English. Now, there is a problem with this. The problem here is because it's a translation from Latin to English, it's a translation of a translation.
00:27:49
Speaker
which means it's not going to be super accurate, but it was better than nothing. So these manuscripts were copied manually because the printing press had not yet been invented. They were hand copying these Bibles in English for the people and they were secretly distributing them because it was not okay with the church for them to be doing this.
00:28:15
Speaker
to the point that Wycliffe got in trouble with the church multiple times, but they never ended up condemning him. He went on trial, I believe, three times, but they never ended up condemning him until 34 years after his death. At that point, Wycliffe's body was exhumed and burned because of his work to provide the gospel in the English tongue.
00:28:35
Speaker
And when his body was burned, he was actually burned alongside John Huss, who was also using the basis of the English Bible in the call of the Gospel to reach unreached people with the Word of God. And interestingly, it is the example of Huss that inspired Luther in many ways.
00:28:57
Speaker
So Wycliffe really kind of opened the door to this idea of a translation in the common tongue, of course, at the time being English. But there's another person who is in our series of canon fathers, if you will,
00:29:15
Speaker
who may also sound familiar, and this is Erasmus. So Erasmus was a Dutchman and he loved Greek. In fact, there's a quote of him saying that he loved Greek so much, he used his money to first buy Greek books and then to buy clothes. He would rather be naked than go without his Greek books, apparently.
00:29:35
Speaker
When he developed his New Testament, he used seven Greek manuscripts. And the first of these manuscripts was pretty poorly edited, but his second was better, and this actually became the source text for Martin Luther's German New Testament. The final and third edition that Erasmus produced was used by Tyndale.
00:29:57
Speaker
Now, anytime you see the term, again, Texas Receptus, this is referring to any of the published Greek New Testaments traced back to the texts Erasmus collated. So the KJV is based on these texts that Erasmus compiled and was using. That's the Texas Receptus.
00:30:18
Speaker
And so Erasmus actually laid this foundation that Tyndale could then work from and Luther could then work from. And Tyndale is the next person that we're gonna talk about. William Tyndale attended Oxford and Cambridge. He was fluent in eight languages. What? Oh my word. The guy is so smart.
00:30:41
Speaker
And at one point, the story goes, he got in an argument with a priest about the law of the church versus the law of God. And the priest said that the law of God could pass away, but the law of the church basically was supreme. And at this point, Tyndale retorts, if God spares my life, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the scripture than you do.
00:31:06
Speaker
whoa spicy words but that's what he did his mission was to get the boy with the plow the availability of the gospel and what a beautiful mission that is so he requested permission first he did go through the proper channels he requested permission from the church to translate
00:31:25
Speaker
but he was denied. So he moved to Germany and he did so himself. But unlike anybody before him, he translated directly from the original Hebrew and the Greek. Now this is from Paul Wagner and his writing on Tyndale.
00:31:42
Speaker
as well as Timothy Paul Jones and to be honest I was like well Erasmus was translating from the Greek but I think that what they mean here is he's using the Greek that Erasmus had put together for him.
00:31:58
Speaker
So in 1526, he had his English Bible printed and smuggled into England. It was actually smuggled into England in pieces and then put together once they arrived. And this was a super controversial thing. Seriously, it did get him killed. And it could have got him killed at any point in time, but it was so important to him to get these English Bibles in the hands of the common people that he did it anyway.
00:32:24
Speaker
And it said that the bishops of the churches were actually buying up the Tyndale Bibles and burning them. And Tyndale said, good for them. Go ahead, buy them up. The more you buy, the more money I have to produce more. And truly believe that his mission would be blessed by God, and it was blessed by God. A couple of fun facts about Tyndale. He has coined words we still use today, like fisherman, seashore, scapegoat, and even beautiful.
00:32:54
Speaker
He was the first one to put these words into a text in a way that was the modern understanding and definition of those words.
00:33:03
Speaker
So why was Tyndale under such fire? Well, part of it was he was coming against the church, but that wasn't the only problem. The other problem was he opposed the king because of Henry VIII's divorce. So when that happened, Henry VIII, who we all know is a super stable guy, right? He got a little ticked off and he decided that Tyndale's translation was to be utterly opposed and expelled from England because he was mad that Tyndale didn't endorse his divorce.
00:33:34
Speaker
And ultimately, this resulted in Tyndale's death. And it always is kind of emotional for me to read about the death of Tyndale and the burning of Wycliffe because it's amazing to me how much resistance there was to getting the gospel out.
00:33:51
Speaker
And remember, when we're looking at history, it's easy to go, oh man, these people, they're just so evil. And yes, there was evil. There were evil people doing these things. But there's also clearly a spiritual war going on here. There are men trying to advance the gospel. And yet, here they are being so strongly opposed that they end up losing their lives. This is 1,300 and 1,500 years after the early church and their martyrdoms.
00:34:20
Speaker
And yet here they're still being martyred for the gospel, just for trying to get it into the hands of people who need to hear it. It's just super powerful. And so when Tyndale was burned, his last words were, Lord, open the King of England's eyes. And a year later, the King actually approved the Matthew's version of the Bible, which was primarily the work of Tyndale.
00:34:49
Speaker
just such an amazing story.
Tyndale's Legacy and Beyond
00:34:51
Speaker
I think that is just so, just amazing grace of God to use Tyndale's life and then kind of sneakily justify him by having Matthew's Bible approved, which was mostly the work of Tyndale.
00:35:06
Speaker
In fact, Thomas Matthew was basically a pseudonym for Tyndale, and in between the Old and New Testaments in Matthew's Bible are the initials for William Tyndale. A little bit later, after his death in 1539, the Great Bible, which was translated based again on Tyndale's work, was purchased by every church in England and used as the authorized version for the Church of England.
00:35:33
Speaker
once again influenced by Tyndale. And so whether or not the King of England's eyes were actually open to the truth, which is, you know, we're not quite sure, we do know that God used him to put Tyndale's work in a place where the common person could hear it.
00:35:55
Speaker
So that's all for this episode, you guys. I hope this gave you kind of an overview of translation and some things to think about, appreciation for the Bible that sits on your nightstand, or the fact that maybe you have five different Bibles in your house, different versions, and what
00:36:12
Speaker
people had to go through just to get us this Bible in our language. Next week, we're going to talk about the King James Version, which came after Wycliffe, Erasmus, and Tyndale, and had its own political and theological processes as well.
00:36:29
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.