Hey, Wyr religion friends, Professor Anthony Sweat here. Welcome to another fabulous episode

of Wyr religion. Look, questions start. Have you ever had a debate with someone over the

meaning of a word? Maybe you debated with a friend how quandary is different than dilemma,

for example. Or how the word loathe has a different meaning than hate. Or maybe like

in the movie Princess Bride, how unbelievable is different than inconceivable.

He didn't fall! Incut, seebable! You keep using the word. I don't think it means what

you think it means. Sometimes the debates get so intense we may even turn to a third party

to try settle at maybe a parent or a friend, or most likely, today, Google.

Well, one of the greatest debates in the entire Western world took place in the 16th century

between William Tindale and Sir Thomas Moore over the definition of words. The debate

was so intense that it spanned five years and resulted in producing three books. That's

a big debate. Well, what was it all about? William Tindale was a Protestant reformer, and he

was producing a radical translation of the New Testament into common English from the Greek.

Thomas Moore was a Catholic, and for many good reasons opposed Tindale's translation work,

fearing that it was biased against the church. Moore remarked about Tindale's work that,

quote, whoso calleth the New Testament, calleth it by a wrong name, except they call it Tindale's

Testament end of quote. Both men knew that a lot was at stake, literally their lives on the stake,

because they both understood how words changed the way that people understand doctrine. To say it

another way, there are theological implications to translation. Words really matter.

Tindale's translation would win the day, of course, laying the foundation for the rendering of most

of the English Bibles that followed, including the King James version of the Bible.

But was Tindale's interpretation exactly right? If only we had another book that employed King James

...