William Tyndale If God Spare My Life : a Story of Martyrdom, Betrayal and the English Bible

William Tyndale left England in 1524 to translate the word of God into English. This was heresy, punishable by death. Sir Thomas More, hailed as a saint and a man for all seasons, considered it his divine duty to pursue Tyndale. He did so with an obsessive ferocity that, in all probability, led to Tyndale's capture and death. The words that Tyndale wrote during his desperate exile--his New Testament, which he translated, edited, financed, printed, and smuggled into England in 1526--passed with few changes into subsequent versions of the Bible. Brian Moynahan's biography illuminates Tyndale's life, chronicling the birth pangs of the Reformation, the wrath of Henry VIII, the sympathy of Anne Boleyn, and the consuming malice of Thomas More. Above all, it reveals the English Bible as a labor of love, for which a man in an age more spiritual than our own willingly gave his life.--From U.S. publisher's description.