It is a great honour to be asked to be the editor of the Tyndale Journal on the threshold of the new Millennium. I am aware that I have to follow in the footsteps of my very competent predecessors and, in particular, the hugely computer literate Deborah Pollard. It was her quiet keyboard management that probably made the Chairman realise that technology has advanced to the extent that the editor no longer has to live on the doorstep of the printer: not even in the same country or come to that on the same continent. This certainly did not apply to one of my major historical projects in the last millennium when my collaborator moved to a house just opposite to mine - leaping across the road to put copy in letterboxes Was time and cost efficient and it saved on telephone bills!
Now at the clatter of a keyboard, the flick of a switch I can wing copy to an ever patient printer hundreds of miles away. There has been a revolution in these last few years at least equivalent to, and possibly surpassing, the one William Tyndale witnessed five centuries ago. Then monks, clerics and reformers were reluctantly discarding their illuminated manuscripts, leaving their quills unsharpened and hurrying to the nearest town - such as Antwerp, Cologne, Basle, Lyon to see their copy through the printers. Still cumbersome, this was a speedy process in comparison with the former methods - but not by our standards. The invention of printing brought the overwhelming advantage that large numbers of copies of the same work could be produced -- the readership was increased a thousand-fold. Tyndale suffered many trials -- losing manuscripts in a shipwreck, fleeing from the authorities with his printed pages under his arm, having his books burnt by the hundreds. It was very alarming and stressful.
The techniques of the twenty first century are far superior -- at least in the right hands, which hopefully will be mine in the not too distant future. Copy arrives buy fax, computer and mail with the greatest of ease -- well, when the fax machine does not run out of paper and contributors get used to the fact that I live in Bernex not Berne -- and unlike Tyndale, I am not, to date, being hounded by the authorities for producing seditious and dangerous work, in English and distributing them on the Internet (Nonetheless there are, such as the fax machine giving up on day one, the telephone answering apparatus coming out in sympathy, and my computer deciding not to type the letter 'n' - a disaster for the Tyndale Journal which nearly metamorphosed into the Tydale Joural.
Seriously though, I am anxious as editor of this Journal that it should include the activities and opinions of all our members, be they in America, Britain. Continental Europe, or other far flung regions of the earth. It was a pleasure to meet so many enthusiastic Tyndalians at the San Diego Conference in February. It was evident that there is a great deal of activity which is not being reported on or publicised. This broadening of the Journal's scope can only be achieved by readers keeping me informed and sending me copy -- please do so. Finally I should like to thank the authors who have contributed articles for this issue.
Valerie Offord