Dear Devon and Caleb,
How are y’all doing? I miss you guys and I hope I can go
down and visit y’all soon. I might come down for Father’s Day (just the day)
but I’m still not sure.
Anyway, remember when I was down for the weekend and we
watched that documentary about the coming forth of the King James Bible?
(Caleb, I think you were in your room most of the time, but Devon you got most
of it while you were awake) ;) It was all about how different translations of
the Bible, like the Vulgate, John Wycliffe’s bible, Martin Luther’s German
bible, etc. all led to the King James Bible as we know it today. All of these
people were influential and we should be grateful for them and their contributions
to get us the bible, but the person who I think we most have to thank for the
Bible we have today is William Tyndale. He was the first one to translate the Hebrew
and Greek texts of the Bible into English.
I could stop here and y’all would be like, “Yup. That’s
pretty cool.” But guys, listen! Do you know how hard it is to translate
something? I had to translate some stuff on my mission (more of it was
interpreting) but here in Provo I volunteered at this place called Centro
Hispano and every time I go there, all I’m asked to do is translate birth
certificates and other important documents from Spanish to English. The first
time I went, it took me probably two or three hours just to do one. And it wasn’t
even to the bottom of the page! Then the lady who works there gave me one in
French (which I don’t know, obviously) and said, “Good luck!” I managed to do
it in an hour or two, but realize to do all of this I rely heavily on the
internet. I have instant access to so much information from people who are
experts, who have already done a thousand translations of this type of thing,
and it still is a struggle.
So translating takes time and it’s hard. So what? Well, just
imagine how long it would take me to get through Genesis. Yeah. It took him
more than five years to do it, and he didn’t have this fancy thing called the
internet, AND he was being hunted most of the time because apparently it wasn’t
okay for the common man to be able to read the bible in his own language.
Weird, right? That was what Tyndale wanted—for anyone and everyone to be able
to study the word of God. He ended up dying for what he had done, and his last
words were (if you remember from the movie) “Lord, open the King of England’s
eyes!” Well, his prayer has been answered and essentially the whole world can
read the Bible, but more importantly, we can have family and individual
scripture study, we can learn of God’s will for us with such beautiful phrases
like “consider the lilies of the field” (Matt. 6:28), in a Bible that is
estimated to be 90% Tyndale’s translation.
Well, I love y’all. I suppose the best way for us to show
our appreciation for Tyndale is by studying what he gave us and trying to live
by it. I definitely need to work on that. I bet we all can.
Love from your favorite brother,
Kimball :)
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