‘No Tyndale, No Shakespeare’: How the Bible made Modern English

Posted on September 7, 2026 
Filed under History

“The book that the famed British Library once called the most significant in the English language was nearly destroyed before it was even printed. That book was William Tyndale’s 1526 English New Testament, whose 500th anniversary is being commemorated this year.

Not only was the book banned and burned when it was smuggled into England from Germany, where Tyndale was living a fugitive life, but before that, when the first printing had reached Matthew 22, the print shop in Cologne was raided by Catholic sympathizers. Tyndale barely escaped with his unpublished manuscript in hand.

Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament from the original Greek became the foundation of all English Bible translation until the middle of the 20th century …”

– At The Gospel Coalition, Leland Ryken reminds us of the monumental legacy of William Tyndale.