153
POPULAR LITERATURE (i)
feeling for English idiom, but partly also and mainly, the explanation is to be found in the fact that Tyndale identified himself, and in consequence, his expression, so completely, with the central body of English people, neither scholars nor ploughmen, but honest men of good sense, strong in their feeling for personal sincerity and relatively untouched by the changes of literary opinion and fashion, who have been since his day, the determining elements in English life. his first and only concern in writing was to transmit his message in terms capable of conveying his meaning as clearly and deeply as he felt it himself. Literary divices which served no useful purpose to his end he ignored. Oratory be scored. He put his faith in his own sincerity of purpose and asked of language nothing more than that is should enable him to communicate simply, clearly and sympathetically with his fellow Englishmen. (p.107)
All the subsequent translations of the Bible including the Authorised version are more or less based on Tyndale's work. So much influence did his book exercise on the English language, that for more than three hundred years the English people found no difficulty in understanding their English Bible in 1870, however, a representative committee of sixty five English and thirty four American Scholars undertook the final version of Bible
