Review: "Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice"

David Teems’ book, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice, is a lyrical, thoroughly researched, and enjoyable biography of William Tyndale.

The author’s writing complements Tyndale's in producing a text that is warm and beautiful. The author explains with great care with many examples the beauty and ingenuity of William Tyndale's use of the English language both in independent writing and in translation. The reader is captivated not only by Tyndale's use of language, but, by the way the biographer has presented Tyndale's life and writing.

Although there is not much record of Tyndale's life, the author explores every avenue presenting Tyndale's writing, the writings of those for and against Tyndale, issues raised by other biographers, and substantial looks into the lives and for of those people around Tyndale – both friends and foes.

The author's writing is warm and smooth and the reader feels as though he knows these people – one is drawn in and cares about the people being written about. The primary sources are used masterfully throughout the book, and there are three appendices at the end of the book: the first one being a timeline of Tyndale's life, the second English words first used by William Tyndale, and then the complete two letters written by William Tyndale to John Frith.

I found this book delightful to read, and I learned a great deal about Tyndale and those around him and the controversy surrounding the translation of the Bible into the English language. For that I would highly recommend this book. The only negative I would note is that there are periodic quotes from Tyndale and others disrupting – as I found it – the text. They appear in a different print, a different font, and disrupt the smooth the reading of the text. The quotes are valuable, but I would've preferred they be inserted in the text in some way, rather than have them be jutting into the text and disrupting it.

[This review appears on Amazon.com and on my blog.  I received this book for free from Thomas Nelson for this review.]