This extremely rare work by William Tyndale is now back in print. A masterly commentary from an early Reformer, this work has never, to our knowledge, been printed as a separate title since Tyndale published it and has only been in print a handful of times since then and only as part of 'collected works' editions. Tyndale was the first to translate the Bible into English and all subsequent English translations of the Bible owe Tyndale an inestimable depth of gratitude for the dangerous labor of love he undertook to give the Bible to the English people and thus the whole world. From Tyndale's Prologue: "HERE hast thou, dear reader, 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. He openeth the kingdom of heaven, which they had shut up that other men should not enter, as they themselves had no lust to go in. He restoreth the key of knowledge, which they had taken away, and broken the wards, with wresting the text, contrary to his due and natural course, with their false glosses. He plucketh away from the face of Moses the veil which the scribes and Pharisees had spread thereon, that no man might perceive the brightness of his countenance. He weedeth out the thorns and bushes of their pharisaical glosses, wherewith they had stopped up the narrow way and strait gate, that few could find them. Read here the words of Christ with this exposition following, and thou shalt see the law, faith, and works, restored each to his right use and true meaning; and thereto, the clear difference between the spiritual regiment and the temporal; and shalt have an entrance and open way into the rest of all the scripture. Wherein, and in all other things, the Spirit of verity guide thee and thine understanding. So be it."
William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. Forbidden to work in England, Tyndale translated and printed in English the New Testament and half the Old Testament between 1525 and 1535 in Germany and the Low Countries. He worked from the Greek and Hebrew original texts when knowledge of those languages in England was rare. His pocket-sized Bible translations were smuggled into England, and then ruthlessly sought out by the Church, confiscated and destroyed. Condemned as a heretic, Tyndale was strangled and burned outside Brussels in 1536. His work has survived.
Much of Tyndale's work eventually found its way to the King James Version (or Authorised Version) of the Bible, published in 1611, which, though the work of 54 independent scholars, is based primarily on Tyndale's translations.
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