The Newe Testament

1536 (1999 facsimile)

Special Collections BS140 1999

Columbus, Ohio: Lazarus Ministry Press

About 1523, William Tyndale (c.1494-1536) began translating the New Testament into English, fulfilling his mission to make the Bible accessible to the common English reader. Tyndale knew he was breaking the rules, undermining the Catholic Church’s grip on both the access to and interpretation of Scriptures. Like Luther, he believed there was no longer a need for an intercessor between the people and God. Traditionally the scriptures were in Latin, and under the 1408 Constitutions of Oxford, it was forbidden to translate the Bible into the native tongue. Tyndale’s English translations appeared between 1525 and 1536 and were classed as ‘heretical’. They were banned and burnt; a fate Tyndale also suffered on 6th October 1536. This black-letter facsimile of the 1536 New Testament shows the Gospels of St John: ‘In the begynnyng was the woorde…’.