The British Library is to publish the first reprint in almost 500 years of the New Testament that cost William Tyndale his life.

Although the beauty of the language of the 1611 King James version is universally acknowledged, few realise that it incorporates most of Tyndale's 1526 text.

Copies of his pocket sized book had to be smuggled into England, since a bible in the language of the people was seen as highly subversive, and Tyndale was burned at the stake for heresy in 1536.

His translation from the Greek is credited with coining the phrases "salt of the earth", "sign of the times" and "eat drink and be merry".

The first run of the new edition will be the same as Tyndale's, 3,000 copies, and will be on sale from today, in the library's bookshop in Bloomsbury, for £15.

The text retains the old spellings but uses a modern typeface.

The library hopes for a slightly better survival rate than that of the original run, which was destroyed. Fragments of one copy and two complete copies survive, one in Germany, and the one bought by the library from the Bristol Baptist college in 1994, for more than £1m.