William Tyndale

      William Tyndale, 1494 - 1536, an English scholar and Christian that translated the bible into English.  Tyndale's translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts.

     In 1530, Tyndale also wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon on the grounds that it contravened Scripture.

     Tyndale's English translation of the bible became the source for future English versions of the bible.  Beginning with the Great Bible for the Church of England and in 1611 scholars drew heavily upon Tyndale's work in producing the King James Bible.

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     In translating the bible, Tyndale pointed out the adverse effects that Pharisaic Judaism has had upon the bible.  Tyndale stated the following, "Here hast thou an exposition upon the 5th, 6th and 7th chapters of Matthew.  Wherein Christ, our spiritual Isaac, digs again the wells of Abraham.  Which well the scribes and Pharisees, those wicked and spiteful Philistines had stopped up and filled up with the soil of their false expositions.  Christ restored the key of knowledge which the Pharisees had taken away with their false glosses.  He plucked away from the face of Moses the veil which the scribes and Pharisees had spread thereon.  He weeded out the thorns and bushes of their Pharisaical glosses wherewith they had stopped up the narrow way and straight gate." 

     William Tyndale was put to death and his body burned at the stake as a heretic in 1536.