How Much Is a Bible Worth?

THE British Library recently agreed to pay almost $1,600,000 for a copy of William Tyndale’s English translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. Published 468 years ago, it is the only complete first edition of the Tyndale Bible to have survived the determined efforts to destroy it. This Bible has been on public display in London.

The Tyndale Bible was purchased from Bristol Baptist College in England, where it has been kept since 1784. Dr. Roger Hayden, vice-chairman of the college committee, said: “This is a national, cultural and Christian document of huge importance and we wanted it to be more widely accessible, as we have kept it in the vaults.”

For centuries the Bible had been available mostly in Latin and could be read only by the clergy and an educated elite. Like John Wycliffe before him, Tyndale wanted to make available a Bible that could be read and understood by all. He once said to a clergyman who opposed him: ‘If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy who drives the plough to know more of the Scriptures than you do.’

This was a dangerous undertaking, since the clergy bitterly opposed any effort to make the Scriptures available to the common people. Consequently, Tyndale fled from England to Germany. There he translated the “New Testament” from the original Greek. Some 3,000 copies were printed and smuggled into England. The bishop of London bought every copy he could find and burned them publicly in St. Paul’s churchyard. Eventually, Tyndale was captured, tried, and convicted of heresy. In 1536 he was strangled and burned at the stake. How interesting it is that a Bible so hated by the clergy is now worth so much!

Jehovah’s Witnesses earnestly strive to impart accurate Bible knowledge to all who seek it. Besides printing and distributing other versions, they have produced from the original languages a translation of the entire Bible that is both accurate and easy to read. By 1995 well over 74,000,000 copies of this New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures had been published in 12 languages. Of course, the real value of any Bible is its life-giving message.

[Picture on page 32]

William Tyndale

[Credit Line]

From an old engraving in the Bibliothèque Nationale