Tyndale and more Tyndale

(new article tomorrow)

Here is outtake from the study by Michigan preacher Bryan Ross given at my church's summer Bible conference in Chicago:

"The King James Bible is what it claims to be on the title page. In the dedicatory epistle to the king, reading the bolded part only, it says: 'Out of the original sacred tongues, together with comparing of labors, both in our own and other foreign languages, of many worthy men who went before us, that there should be one more exact translation of the Holy Scriptures into the English tongue."

"So did they do exactly what it says? Did they start with the Bishops' Bible and compare it to the Greek? Then they say, 'Does one of these English bibles here better capture the Greek than the Bishops'? If they say, 'Yes,' they change it. If they say 'No,' then they do their own translation. So, rule one was followed.

"If you take that 1602 Bishops' Bible and that 1611 King James, 91 percent of it is the same.

"Here's what you're thinking? 'Isn't the King James Bible 91 percent William Tyndale?' Hasn't everybody always said that? Yes, but why?

"The King James Bible is a revision of the Bishops' Bible, which came from a revision of the Great Bible. Anglican bishops sat down in 1568 and they revised the Great Bible that created the Bishops' Bible. The Great Bible was a revision of the Matthew Bible (1537) done by Miles Coverdale.

"I'm telling you, the most overlooked, understudied and underappreciated Bible in this whole thing is the Matthew Bible. Here's why. The Matthew Bible, published by John Rogers, was the complete work of William Tyndale. It is two-thirds the work of Tyndale.

"John Rogers was friends with Tyndale. When they arrested Tyndale and were going to put him to death, Tyndale bequeathed to Rogers all of his unpublished translations of parts of the Old Testament that had not been published yet.

"So when John Rogers now does the Matthew Bible, he includes all of that heretofore unpublished material from Tyndale into the Matthew Bible. 

"What ends up happening is when the king decides that he wants a Bible, and he commissions Coverdale to make one in 1539, Coverdale revises the Matthew, which is two-thirds Tyndale.

"Wait a minute! Didn't the king just burn Tyndale? And now he's authorizing a Bible that's two-thirds Tyndale and he doesn't even know it!

"How is it that the King James Bible is 90 percent William Tyndale? Because of where it came from. It is 91 percent Bishops' while being 90 percent Tyndale because they are all revisions coming from the same what? Same source."