* From the Latin vulgata, meaning common or popular It also secured Latin as the official or standard language of the Bible. The result was the Latin Vulgate* translation which became the authorized Bible of the Catholic Church. 347–420) to revise and translate the entire Bible into Latin. In fact, there were now so many translations and versions of the the Bible texts, that the then pope, Damasus I, in an attempt to bring some order to this apparent chaos, commissioned Jerome ( c. Image from Bodleian Libraryīy the fourth century the Bible had been translated from its original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) into a number of others, including Latin, the lingua franca of the vast Roman Empire. The earliest translation of the Bible into English. Although his translation has not survived, it is attested to by the eighth-century English historian Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and survives in later copies, the earliest being the Junius Manuscript, the first section of which was copied in about the year 1,000 AD. He translated parts of the Bible into the earliest form of the English language, Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. The earliest dates to the seventh century, by the monk Cædmon, who also happens to be the earliest named English poet. Tyndale’s translation was by no means the first. His crime? Daring to challenge the Catholic Church and his insistence on translating the Bible into English.

On a cold morning in early autumn of 1536, in a small town on the outskirts of Brussels, William Tyndale was led from a tiny prison cell, then chained to a stake, strangled and burned.

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