500 years ago, the first New Testament in English was published – and stirred up a hornet’s nest

In 1526, books appeared in England that no one had seen before: printed New Testaments in the English language. The public snapped them up. For the first time, people read now-common phrases such as “the powers that be” and “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” But religious authorities condemned the English Bible and burned the copies they could find.

Today, 500 years later, Christians take for granted that anyone should be able to read the Bible in a language they understand. But at the time, vernacular Bibles were associated with heresy. The Catholic Church preferred to use the Latin version of the sacred text.

In England, there were legal prohibitions against unauthorized Bible translations. And critics were suspicious about the religious views of the translator, William Tyndale. One of those critics was the Renaissance humanist and statesman Thomas More, who entered a bitter debate with Tyndale – a portion of which I included in my “Reformation Sourcebook.”

In the present day, when artificial intelligence is taking over much translation work, this 500-year-old conflict reminds us that translation is never a simple matter of substituting one word for another. It requires human interpretation.

‘A dangerous thing’

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Bible used throughout Europe was the Latin “Vulgate,” which means “the common version.” Few commoners could read Latin, which helped the clergy retain a monopoly on biblical interpretation.

Translations of parts of the Bible into vernacular languages – the languages people actually spoke in their daily life – were not uncommon, however. The famous Lindisfarne Gospels, a richly decorated copy of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that were produced in northern England in the eighth century, contain translations into Old English written between the lines of Latin.