Liberty in Translation – Richard Gunderman

2025 marks the 500th anniversary of perhaps the most momentous literary event in the history of the rule of law and the promotion of personal liberty.

It was in the year 1525 that William Tyndale , working in the German city of Cologne , began publishing portions of his English translation of the New Testament .

Peter Bergen : Through his translation, many new words into the English language include Passover , scapegoat and scapegoat.

Frida Ghitis: Tyndale’s translation of the Bible had a profound effect on the rule of law and the promotion of liberty.

She says he preached a message of freedom and responsibility, the bedrock of self-governance.

Ghitis says the Bible was not meant, he held, to reside in some remote and ornate sanctum sanctorum but in the homes and hands of every person, just as schoolchildren today might memorize the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address .