We can be quite sure there won’t be any fuss made in wider society, but July 2025 marks a special anniversary. According to Encyclopædia Brittanica, 500 years before, in July 1525, the New Testament was first published in modern English having been translated by William Tyndale.
I’m not one for celebrating historical anniversaries just for the sake of it, but it made me wonder if this could be an opportunity. Could the anniversary be a means of sharing the Bible with our community? Could we make the most of this by connecting with people and making the gospel known via this historical marker? It’s worth making the most of every opportunity, right?
What happened?
Tyndale wasn’t the first person to realise the need and undertake the task of producing an English Bible. There is actually a long history of translating the Bible into English, including efforts by Aldhelm, Bede and Ælfric, the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Wessex Gospels. We may particularly be aware of John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible a couple of centuries before Tyndale.
