SOURCE: Daniell, David. Introduction to Tyndale's Old Testament: Being the Pentateuch of 1530, Joshua to 2 Chronicles of 1537, and Jonah, Translated by William Tyndale, in a modern-spelling edition and with an introduction by David Daniell, pp. ix-xxiii. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Daniell considers Tyndale as a translator and examines the methods he used to translate the Bible.

William Tyndale's Old Testament translations laid the foundation of our English Bible. They have been even more hidden from general view than his work on the New Testament. Half of what appears in this volume has not been generally accessible since 1551.

Tyndale published his first translations from Hebrew into English—the earliest ever from that language into this—in 1530, when he printed his Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. He gave us our Bible language: the words and rhythms, for example, of the...