What If Tyndale Had Never Translated the Bible? The Man Who Invented English (and Died For It)

What if one man had never existed? William Tyndale was a scholar, a fugitive, and a martyr who died in 1536 strangled at the stake for committing what his government considered a capital crime: translating the Bible into English. But in doing it, he accidentally invented a huge chunk of the English language. "The powers that be." "Let there be light." "The salt of the earth." "Eat, drink, and be merry." All Tyndale. The King James Bible is 90% his words. Shakespeare grew up reading him. And Christopher Hitchens, one of the most famous atheists of the 20th century, called the Tyndale/King James synthesis timeless. This episode covers the history of the Bible in English before Tyndale, what he actually did and why it was so dangerous, the words and phrases he gave us that we still use today, and the What If: what would English, Shakespeare, the Reformation, and our whole cultural inheritance look like if he had never done it? Also, the comparison of the Beatitudes comes directly from the book Medieval Horizons by Ian Mortimer where he spoke about the comparison and showed how well they lined up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices