This controversy about the Bible continued for more than one hundred and thirty years
after the death of Wycliffe. Another great hero named William Tyndale – a Gloucestershire man, who was born in 1483, continued the work that Wycliffe began. He was an outstanding scholar of Oxford and Cambridge universities. He too, knew the severe consequences for translating, printing or even just reading the Bible but Tyndale noted, “Wherefore, I perceived that not only in the bishop of London’s palace, but in all England, there was no room for attempting a translation of the Scripture.” So, with his determination that England should have the Word of God, he left his native land (never to see it again) and went to Hamburg, Germany, where as an exile in poverty and constant imminent danger, he worked on his translation. Thousands of copies were ceremonially burned in England. This was called “a burnt-offering most pleasing to Almighty God.” Ultimately, on the 6th October 1536, William Tyndale was bound to the stake, first he was strangled and then his corpse was burned to ashes.

In the year 1604, sixty-eight years after the death of William Tyndale, King James I held a conference of bishops and clergy, in which they considered the revising of The Bible. The king subsequently authorized forty-seven of the most outstanding scholars from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to translate the Bible. They were divided into six groups: three groups translated the Old Testament, two groups translated the New Testament and one group translated the Apocrypha.

They were given the best available resources to assist them in their arduous task. With this, they meticulously studied the Greek and Hebrew. They also used the finest commentaries of European scholars; the Bibles in Spanish, French, German and Italian to help them arriving at an accurate interpretation of the various passages of Scriptures. Their work took seven years and was complete in the year 1611. The king authorized that it should be read in all the churches, hence it is called the “King James Authorized Version.”