Commontide
Proper 21
Liturgical Color: Red
The 17th Sunday after Trinity
O merciful Lord, grant to your faithful people pardon and peace, that we may be cleansed from all our sins and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Priest, Martyr, and Biblical Translator
Anglican Commemoration
William Tyndale was the scholar who first translated the Bible into English from the Hebrew and Greek, and died for it. Born in Gloucestershire about 1494, he was strangled and burned at Vilvoorde, near Brussels, in 1536. So much of his wording passed into the King James Version that he is remembered as the father of the English Bible. His feast is October 6.
William Tyndale was born around 1494 in Gloucestershire. He studied at Oxford and Cambridge, mastering Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Convinced that Scripture must be accessible in English, he famously declared to a clergyman that he would cause the boy who drives the plough to know more of Scripture than the clergyman himself.
Denied permission to translate by the Bishop of London, Tyndale left England in 1524 and spent the rest of his life in continental exile. Working in Worms, Hamburg, and the Low Countries while constantly fleeing persecution, he completed his New Testament translation in 1526 (revised 1534) and the Pentateuch in 1530. These were smuggled into England through merchant networks. He also wrote theological treatises including The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528) and The Practice of Prelates (1530).
Betrayed and arrested near Antwerp in 1535, Tyndale was imprisoned at Vilvoorde castle for over a year. A surviving letter from prison requests his Hebrew grammar and dictionary so he could continue translating. Condemned as a heretic, he was strangled and burned on October 6, 1536. John Foxe reports his dying prayer: 'Lord, open the King of England's eyes!' Within months, English Bible translation resumed under royal sanction — Tyndale's prayer answered almost literally.
Tyndale became a Protestant martyr-hero, celebrated as the father of the English Bible. His dying prayer and its apparent fulfillment within months became iconic in Protestant hagiography. His influence extends through every subsequent English Bible translation.