The New Testament: The first English Bible

Translated by William Tyndale (Facsimile of the 1526 edition)

by Simon Webb 20th September 2024

In 1994, the British Library (BL) bought one of the very few surviving copies of William Tyndale’s 1526 English New Testament, for over a million pounds. Thanks to last year’s reissue of the facsimile edition, readers can now get an idea of the physical reality of this book – for about one fifty-thousandth of what the library paid. Seldom has the size and weight of a book been more important. Tyndale’s NT was designed to be smuggled into England, and carefully concealed. It was extremely dangerous to own any part of the scriptures translated into the vernacular.