The next translator, William Tyndale, was less fortunate, for Tyndale was still alive when the authorities clamped down on him, and he was strangled and burned for his pains. But Tyndale had two advantages in making his translation that Wycliffe did not have. Johann Gutenberg had invented movable type, so that Tyndale's translation was able to be printed in large quantities. And the Dutch scholar Erasmus had produced a scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament, so that Tyndale was able to base his translation on the original tongue, rather than being dependent on the Latin.
When things got too hot for Tyndale in England, he went to Germany and had his English Bible printed there. The Bibles were then smuggled into England in great bales of cotton. One angry bishop bought a lot of the Tyndale New Testaments and burned them publicly. Tyndale took the profits made from the bishop's purchases and printed a new edition!
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