Today in 1536, William Tyndale, “God’s Outlaw”, was martyred by strangulation and burning . He was an enormous impetus in the formation of future Bible translators and their translations.
Part of his legacy, includes the following (from Wikipedia):
“In translating the Bible, Tyndale introduced new words into the English language, and many were subsequently used in the King James Bible:
- Jehovah (from a transliterated Hebrew construction in the Old Testament; composed from the Tetragrammaton YHWH.
- Passover (as the name for the Jewish holiday, Pesach or Pesah),
- Atonement (= at + onement), which goes beyond mere “reconciliation” to mean “to unite” or “to cover”, which springs from the Hebrew kippur, the Old Testament version of kippur being the covering of doorposts with blood, or “Day of Atonement”.
- scapegoat (the goat that bears the sins and iniquities of the people in Leviticus, Chapter 16)
He also coined such familiar phrases as:
- let there be light
- the powers that be
- my brother’s keeper
- the salt of the earth
- a law unto themselves
- filthy lucre
- it came to pass
- gave up the ghost
- the signs of the times
- the spirit is willing
- live and move and have our being
- fight the good fight”
