“Very many of the treasures which have enriched the lives and language of English speakers since the 1530s were made by Tyndale: a long list of common phrases like ‘the powers that be’ or ‘let there be light’ or ‘the spirit is willing’; the haunting phrasing in parables like the Prodigal Son, ‘this thy brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found’; the gospel stories of Christmas (‘there were shepherds abiding in the field’) […] came as something new to the men and women of Tyndale’s time in the 1520s and 1530s. That was because Tyndale translated them for the first time, from their original texts in Greek and Hebrew, into English […]”
from David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography, 2000.
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