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With the sponsorship of some wealthy merchants, Tyndale left for Germany, where he completed the New Testament in two years. After only a few pages had been printed in Cologne, however, the city senate halted the printing. Tyndale hastened to the city of Worms, where 6,000 copies were printed. By April 1526, they were selling in England.

Of these 6,000 copies, only two survive. This is in part because Bishop Tunstall, through an intermediary, bought the remaining stock in order to have them burned. Ironically, this money paid off Tyndale's debts and financed a new and corrected edition!

Tyndale reprinted his New Testament a number of times while he started on the Old Testament. In 1530 he published his translation of the Pentateuch, with a revised edition of Genesis appearing in 1534. Tyndale also translated Jonah and all of the books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles, but he did not live to see them through the press.

Tyndale translated directly from the Greek and Hebrew (with the help of grammars and Latin and German translations). He is truly the father of the English Bible: some 90 percent of his words passed into the King James Version and about 75 percent into the Revised Standard Version.

Tyndale's translation was also unpopular with church authorities. It was unauthorized and had not been made from the Vulgate, the official version. Furthermore, Tyndale had abandoned traditional terms, substituting "repent" for "do penance," "congregation" for "church," and "elder" for "priest."

In addition, Tyndale had included strongly Lutheran prefaces to various books (some being translations of Luther himself) and strongly Protestant marginal notes, some of which sharply criticized the Catholic church. In the margin of Exodus 32:5–7, for example, where the people are told not to bring any more offerings for the building of the tabernacle because they have contributed enough, the note reads, "When will the Pope say 'Hoo! [Hold!]' and forbid an offering for the building of St. Peter's Church?"

Tyndale lived with English merchants in Antwerp, a position of comparative safety. In 1535, however, he was betrayed by a fellow Englishman and arrested. After a year and a half of imprisonment, he was strangled and burned at the stake in Brussels, on October 6, 1536. It is reported that his last words were "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes."

Tyndale's final prayer had, in a manner of speaking, already been answered. In 1534 the Church of England had broken free from Rome, and that December the Canterbury Convocation petitioned the king for an English Bible. Miles Coverdale, who had once worked with Tyndale, published it in 1535.

Coverdale's Bible was more acceptable than Tyndale's because it contained no contentious prefaces or notes, and there was an obsequious dedication to the king. As with all Bibles at the time, the Apocrypha was included, but Coverdale was the first to place these books together, separated from the Old Testament, a practice followed in all subsequent Protestant English Bibles.

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