Showing results by author "William Tyndale" in All Categories

What was so special about the Tyndale Bible? How does it sound to us today? The first text of the Bible to be printed in English was the New Testament of William Tyndale, published in 1525-6. Its repercussions lasted for almost a century, stimulated by the religious intolerances of the age, and Tyndale's influence can be seen in most of the Bible translations over the next 100 years, not least in the language of the King James Bible of 1611 - as this recording of Saint Matthew’s Gospel in the pronunciation of Tyndale’s own time makes vividly clear.

Alexander Scourby was the first to record the King James Bible in the early 1950s. Since that time, millions have been sold the world over. Although many have recorded the Bible since then, no one could ever match Scourby's unparalleled reading. The combination of Alexander Scourby reading the King James Bible is an incomparable hearing experience. The Bible verse in Revelation 1-3 seems to apply: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” 

Here hast thou, dear listener, an exposition upon the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew, wherein Christ, our spiritual Isaac, diggeth again the wells of Abraham: which wells the scribes and Pharisees, those wicked and spiteful Philistines, had stopped and filled up with the earth of their false expositions.

It is believed that this book directly inspired King Henry VIII to abandon his faith in Roman Catholicism, set up his own State Church, and confiscate the lands and property of said Church in his domain. Monks and nuns were persecuted and murdered as their property was stolen and put into the coffers of the Crown.

Give diligence, listener, I exhort thee that thou come with a pure mind, and as the scripture saith, with a single eye, unto the words of health and of eternal life by the which, if we repent and believe them, we are born anew, created afresh, and enjoy the fruits of the blood of Christ.

To understand the pith of the sacraments, how they came up, and the very meaning of them, we must consider diligently the manners and fashions of the Hebrews, which were a people of great gravity and sadness, and earnest in all their doings, if any notable thing chanced among them; so that they not only wrote, but also set up pillars, and marks, and divers signs to testify the same unto their posterity, and named the places where the things were done with such names as could not but keep the deeds in memory.