Gettin' Giddy...

When was the last time you were just giddy over the fact that you have God's Word in your language? That you can really read the mind of God and delve into the meaning of reality and why creation was created...etc Of course, the pinnacle of knowledge from the Bible is Jesus Christ and the gospel that He created through the cross and the resurrection. Sometimes I just look at my Bible and just get happy that I have one and can daily drink from this fountain of life.

That being said, my hero is William Tyndale. He was the first man to translate the New Testament (and portions from the OT) into English while translating from the original Greek and Hebrew(John Wycliffe translated from Latin a generation or two earlier). Wycliffe and others copied his translation by hand thus only producing a few large and expensive copies, Tyndale, however translated after the printing press was created and thus many more copies were available at an affordable price. The spiritual impact on the English-speaking people is incalculable and the New Testament (although outlawed by the government and church) spread through England with a spiritual power that converted great portions of the nation and altered England's history. The majority of the King James Version (or Authorized Version as it is sometimes called) was not translated by the KJV committee but rather they kept practically all of the words that Tyndale translated. Most of the phrasing (even in modern translations) still keep the 500 year old words of Tyndale!

So, being in Bible Translation myself and being an English speaker too...I love the legacy of Tyndale. I recently bought the newly released two volume set of his collected works. The following is the opening quote from a preface from the original 1526 New Testament that Tyndale wrote to orient his fellow English speakers to the glory of the Words of God. You can hear the love and concern in his pen as he desires that his own people devour the honey of the Word of God.
Are you this giddy and in wonder about your Bible?

"Give diligence, reader, I exort thee, that thou come with a pure mind, and, as the scripture saith, with a single eye, unto the words of health and of eternal life; by the which, if we repent and believe them, we are born anew, created afresh, and enjoy the fruits of the blood of Christ: which blood crieth not for vengeance, as the blood of Abel, but hath purchased life, love, favour, grace, blessing, and whatsoever is promised in the scriptures to them that believe and obey God..."