1st October 2026

This year is the 500^th anniversary of the publication of William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into English. At a time when the Western church considered Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible to be the only inspired version of the Bible and forbade its translation into other languages without prior permission, Tyndale wanted to enable English speakers, irrespective of social status, to read and understand the scriptures in their own language. Tyndale’s translation was part of a growing trend in the West to make the word of God, the Bible, accessible to ordinary people in their own language. This trend precipitated major events in the second millennium in both church and European history.

In 1516, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, widely regarded as the leading Greek and Latin scholar of his day, published the first printed edition of the New Testament in Greek, the original language of the New Testament. This made a Greek text readily available in Western Europe for the first time in nearly a thousand years. The book also included Erasmus’s Latin translation of the Greek text, which he believed was more accurate than the Latin Vulgate version. Publication of the Greek text exposed some mistranslations in the Latin Vulgate version that had led to errors in Roman Catholic doctrine. Dr Dan Wallace has described Erasmus’s bilingual edition (known as a diglot) as ‘…the book that changed the world 500 years ago.’

It is said that Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched, and in 1517 Luther published his 95 Theses, which sparked the Reformation in Western Europe. Luther used the second edition of the diglot to translate the New Testament into German, published in 1522, and William Tyndale used the third edition to translate the New Testament into English in 1526.

Tyndale was martyred for his efforts, yet his work laid the foundation for future English translations, and about 90% of the King James Version of the New Testament (1611) is Tyndale’s translation, which has had a major impact on the English-speaking world. In the header scripture, Jesus, speaking to the Sadducees, uses an unusual expression, ‘have you not read what God said to you? ’ Jesus continued to quote from Exodus 3, verse 6, a book within the Torah, which was the only written scripture accepted by the Sadducees. God spoke to them in their day through the Scriptures – the Torah, written hundreds of years beforehand. Likewise, God speaks to us today through the Scriptures.   

Jesus is the supreme Word of God (John 1:1), but as Martin Luther stated, the Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid. We are instructed to grow in grace and knowledge (2 Peter 3:18), to read and study the Scriptures. In them we find a faithful witness to Jesus Christ and the gospel, and they are foundational to the church, and infallible in all matters of faith and salvation.

Local congregation: 
Grace Communion Sheffield
The Showroom and Workstation
15 Paternoster Row
Sheffield S12BX

Meeting time:
Church services take place on Sundays 10.30 am, twice a month.  Please email the local congregational contact (see below) for dates. 

Local congregational contact:
Christine Chamberlain
Email: sheffield@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church