In other words, it is my understanding that James, Revelation, Esther, Hebrews and Jude were not high on his “to-do” list when he was working on his German translation, and apart from the intervention of some friends who persuaded him to the contrary, he would have omitted them from the Bible. Thus, in his mind, they were not scripture. He removed them mentally if not in fact.
Would you agree that Luther attempted to remove James and Revelation from his German edition but was persuaded against this action by friends?
I am not familiar with these anecdotes. He obviously did struggle with these books as part of the canon as did his contemporaries, Erasmus and Catejan.
You might have the ability to read between his lines. All I do know is his Bible contains the 4 books you mention.
And that he removed certain OT books to a separate section of his bible which led to their ultimate elimination from most Protestant translations today?
I think he was in good company, dont you think?
Two key Roman Catholic contemporaries of Luther similarly expressed concern over the certainty of the canon:
Desiderius Erasmus, best known for publishing the Greek New Testament and
Cardinal Cajetan, remembered as the papal legate that questioned Luther in Augsburg in 1518. Both expressed similar doubts about particular Biblical books, and both were regarded as important sixteenth century scholars. **Similar to Luther, Erasmus questioned the canonicity of particular books. **The Catholic Encyclopedia points out,
“[T]he attitude of Erasmus towards the text of the New Testament is an extremely radical one, even if he did not follow out all its logical consequences. In his opinion the Epistle of St. James shows few signs of the Apostolic spirit; the Epistle to the Ephesians has not the diction of St. Paul, and the Epistle to the Hebrews he assigns with some hesitation to Clement of Rome…”
Erasmus went as far as removing verses from the first edition of his Greek New Testament. He omitted 1 John 5:7-8 because he could find it in no manuscript. Roland Bainton notes,
“There was such an outcry that he agreed to restore it in case it could be discovered in any manuscript. One was found…and Erasmus, having sworn, was true to his oath…Unhappily the spurious verse passed from this second edition into the textus receptus and then into the King James translation. In the late nineteenth century,
Pope Leo XIII declared it to be genuine, but forty years later a commission of the church reversed his verdict. Today no Catholic would defend its authenticity.”
Cajetan wrote a commentary on all the canonical books of the Old Testament which he dedicated to the pope.
He stated that the books of the Apocrypha were not canonical in the strict sense, explaining that there were two concepts of the term ‘canonical’ as it applied to the Old Testament. He gave the following counsel on how to properly interpret the decrees of the Councils of Hippo and Carthage under Augustine:
Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. **For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome./b] Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus,
these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.
Erasmus, Luther, and Cajetan formed their opinions previous to the council of Trent. The New Catholic encyclopedia has honestly pointed out,
“According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the Biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church (at the Council of Trent). Before that time there was some doubt about the canonicity of certain Biblical books, i.e., about their belonging to the canon.”
Their “liberty” was simply the liberty as allowed by the sixteenth century Roman Catholic Church. Erasmus, Cajetan, and Luther had every right within the Catholic system to engage in Biblical criticism and debate over the extent of the Canon. All expressed “some doubt.” The books they questioned were books that had been questioned by previous generations.**
An amazing assertion considering the facts.