William Tyndale and Cold War Bible Smugglers

Tyndale was by far the most important precursor to the King James Bible. In the 1520s he first began openly breaking English law by publishing his own translations of the Bible. I think the most apt comparison that illuminates what Tyndale was doing, then, were the Christians of the twentieth century who risked their lives smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Like them, Tyndale saw his as a holy work, and civil disobedience that obeyed the law of God.
Tyndale often worked in the middle of the night, in vacated buildings, away from the watchful eye of the king’s men, ready to flee when the authorities got close. He was willing to die but, like the apostle Paul, wanted to keep living while there was work to be done. On one occasion, just a year before his first complete New Testament was published, Tyndale and a helper even escaped by night in a covered boat on the Rhine River.