The year 2025 marks the 500th anniversary of perhaps the most momentous literary event in the history of the rule of law and the promotion of personal liberty. It was in the year 1525 that William Tyndale, working in the German city of Cologne, began publishing portions of his English translation of the New Testament. When we think of the origins of modern democracy, we often think of theorists such as Locke and Montesquieu and Founders such as Jefferson and Madison, but it was Tyndale’s contributions that may have done the most for self-rule, while also shaping the English language more profoundly than even William Shakespeare.

　　Tyndale was born in England around 1494 and studied at Oxford University, becoming fluent in eight languages, including Greek and Hebrew, over the course of his life. After additional study at Cambridge, he took a position as a tutor to a wealthy family’s offspring, a period during which he began to quarrel with members of the religious establishment. Told by one clergyman that people would be better off without God’s laws than the Pope’s, Tyndale responded, “If God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the plowboy to know more of the scriptures than you do.”

　　The English reformer was powerfully influenced by his German contemporary Martin Luther, who promoted what came to be called “the priesthood of all believers.” Luther argued that each person can and should encounter both God and the scriptures for himself, declaring for example that “if a group of pious laymen were taken captive and set down in a wilderness, and had among them no consecrated priest, but agreed among themselves to choose one with the office of baptizing, saying the mass, and preaching, such a man would be as truly a priest as though all bishops and popes had consecrated him.”

　　Such views were not favorably received by the authorities of Tyndale’s day. He sought patronage for an English translation of the Bible but was uniformly rebuffed. In England at the time, the Bible was available only in Latin, which most people could neither read nor understand. More than a century earlier, John Wycliffe and his followers had produced an inferior Bible translation from Latin, resulting in their persecution and even execution. As Tyndale’s views became more widely known, he found it necessary to depart England, eventually ending up in what is now Germany.

　　Beginning to publish his English New Testament in Cologne, he was betrayed to the authorities, barely escaping to Worms, where Luther had recently been condemned as a “notorious heretic.” There, in 1526, Tyndale published his complete New Testament—of which only three copies are known to have survived. He translated from Erasmus’ Greek text, and when, over the succeeding decade, he turned to the Old Testament, he used the Hebrew text, producing English versions of the Pentateuch and a number of historical books, but he did not live to complete the project.

　　Working next in Antwerp, Tyndale was betrayed by a fellow Oxford man who handed him over to agents of the Holy Roman Empire. He was imprisoned in the dungeon of a castle near Brussels, where he remained for 16 months. During this time, attempts were made to convince him to renounce the convictions that led him to translate the Bible into the vernacular, including the notion that each person should encounter and interpret scripture for himself, but Tyndale refused. In 1536, he was tied to a stake, strangled, and then burnt, but not before crying out in a loud voice, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!”

　　Ironically, only a few years elapsed before multiple English translations of the Bible had been produced. When less than a century later the King James Version of the Bible, often regarded as one of the most important works in English literature, was published in 1611, it was presented as the work of a group of 47 scholars. Yet more recent scholarly comparisons of Tyndale’s translation and the King James Version reveal that between 80 and 90 percent of the latter is either identical to or only slightly modified from Tyndale’s work. Hence Tyndale is widely heralded as the “father of the English Bible.”

　　Tyndale’s translation and the theology behind it had a profound effect on the rule of law and the promotion of liberty.

　　Through his translation, Tyndale introduced many new words into the English language. These include atonement, Passover, and scapegoat. Among the phrases that Tyndale coined are the following: “It came to pass,” “Let there be light,” and “the powers that be.” Tyndale’s word choices sometimes reflect his opposition to the existing religious authorities of his day. For example, he translated ecclesia not as church but as congregation, emphasizing the people over the institution, and he translated presbyter as elder instead of priest, emphasizing wisdom and experience over clerical office.

　　Tyndale’s New Testaments had to be smuggled into England, often hidden in other books and bales of clothes. It was a small volume, intended to be carried unobtrusively in the pocket of a coat or even sewn into a garment. In October of 1526, the Bishop of London staged a burning of several thousand copies at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is now the site of one of the three remaining volumes. Tyndale regarded such policies as attempts to “keep the world in darkness,” so that authorities might “sit on the consciences of the people and exalt their own honor above God himself.”

　　Tyndale’s translation and the theology behind it had a profound effect on the rule of law and the promotion of liberty. Tyndale evinced a deep respect for the dignity and judgment of ordinary people, we who would one day become the citizens of nations such as the United States. Not only could we be trusted to interpret scripture for ourselves, he argued, but we had a religious duty to do so. The word of God itself took precedence over the pronouncements and policies of prelates, a viewpoint that undermines arbitrary authority and lays the groundwork for the primacy of written constitutions.

　　What mattered most were not arcane and esoteric doctrines but words that could be heard and remembered by even illiterate people. Tyndale’s efforts to sift and purify the text in this way are manifest in the remarkable simplicity of his language, which contains a striking proportion of short sentences and monosyllabic words. The Bible was not meant, he held, to reside in some remote and ornate sanctum sanctorum but in the homes and hands and on the lips of every person, just as schoolchildren today might memorize the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address.

　　Like Luther’s German version, Tyndale’s English translation sowed the seeds of literacy throughout the land. If what matters most is each person’s relationship to God, and if that relationship is grounded in scripture, then each person needs direct access to the Bible. Initially, for most, this meant having the text read to them in their own tongue, but it rapidly progressed in less than a century to a society that produced both a Shakespeare and a thriving market for his works. Words define us and give our lives meaning, and no one did more than Tyndale to provide the words to English speakers.

　　Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are often called religions of the book, and Tyndale aspired to make the Bible comprehensible, memorable, and formative for every person. No one, in his view, was unworthy to know it. In fostering this conviction in the hearts of the people, Tyndale was in effect spreading seeds of revolution and preparing the populace for democratic self-rule. We the people could interpret scripture and discuss and even argue about it with one another, helping to establish lively and sometimes contentious conversations that continue to the present day.

　　Of course, making the Bible accessible to all comes with certain risks and costs, as well.Telling ordinary people that they are capable of self-government can lead to uprisings and even revolutions, as it did in the German states of Luther’s day and more recently in the American Revolution.Moreover, some might say that the absence of a single creed inevitably leads to theological anarchy, although the interchange of different points of view may also foster insight and creativity. Finally, once people have tasted freedom, they may become more difficult to control, yet this is exactly what lovers of liberty hope for.

　　Once we the people were deemed fit enough to bear the Bible, we naturally saw ourselves as fit for the ballot box, as well. Tyndale preached a message of freedom and responsibility, the absolute bedrock of self-governance. We the people became knowers and judges in our own right—not sheep to be led about as some despot deems advantageous but possessed of certain unalienable rights. Rather than cede our thinking to someone else, we can and should do so for ourselves, establishing an enduring respect for words and ideas vital to the rule of law, as well as the private conscience essential to liberty.