Martin Luther's translation of the bible

[JonNC]

I doubt a high percentage of Catholics in the pew even give Martin Luther a second thought.

Mary.

Probably true. Most Lutherans in the pew couldn’t care less about that anti-Christ stuff, either. In fact, most Lutherans like the recent popes.

Jon

 

[MaryT777]

Probably true. Most Lutherans in the pew couldn’t care less about that anti-Christ stuff, either. In fact, most Lutherans like the recent popes.

Jon

Don’t Lutheran youth confirm to Luther’s Small Catechism and agree to what’s in that book?

That doesn’t contain the info on the AntiChrist does it? Thereby it’s possible they are not even aware of that doctrine.

My understanding is the “AntiChrist stuff” is in the Concord book that Pastors swear to uphold at ordination.

Let me know if I misunderstand.

Mary.

 

[FollowChrist34]

Eventually I think Churches do come around to disclaiming the excessive comments, positions, etc. The Lutherans did that with Luther’s comments about Jews. They are very clear on that.

Also one of the things I really like about Pope Francis is how he so openly addresses the scandals, talks about them and the victims, apologizes for the transgressions.

 

[JonNC]

Don’t Lutheran youth confirm to Luther’s Small Catechism and agree to what’s in that book?

That doesn’t contain the info on the AntiChrist does it? Thereby it’s possible they are not even aware of that doctrine.

My understanding is the “AntiChrist stuff” is in the Concord book that Pastors swear to uphold at ordination.

Let me know if I misunderstand.

Mary.

Nope, you’re right. Catechesis is about doctrine. Historically conditional judgements that can change as circumstances do are not doctrines.

Jon

 

[JonNC]

Eventually I think Churches do come around to disclaiming the excessive comments, positions, etc. The Lutherans did that with Luther’s comments about Jews. They are very clear on that.

Also one of the things I really like about Pope Francis is how he so openly addresses the scandals, talks about them and the victims, apologizes for the transgressions.

It seems like one of his strengths is to recognize sin, then move on to confession and reconciliation. something we can all learn from.

Jon

 

[Duane1966]

Dear FollowChrist, please read what I have posted, especially the parts that are in bold.

In Germany, overall literacy has been estimated to be as low as five percent in rural areas, with the urban literacy peaking at thirty percent. Such circumstances raise the question, “How did the Reformation take hold in Germany if texts and reading were important for its success?” One answer came from “Nürnberg, [where] as in other towns, it became the practice to read the books of Luther out loud in the market-place.” Another way Luther’s publications were used was as in Speyer, where the people were “described as having the books read to them at supper, and as making transcripts of them” A literate person, such as a doctor, lawyer, or teacher, would acquire Luther’s latest pamphlet and then read it to crowds or households gathered for the purpose. Those who could read, read to others, and when there were literate persons in the audience they sometimes duplicated the publication by hand for distribution. The availability of printed works and manuscript copies in the vernacular motivated some of the illiterate to learn how to read.

You proved my point, and contradicted yourself. You said this earlier:

Pretty hard to obey God’s word without reading it.

Now which is it? Is it only hard for the illiterate to obey God’s word when it is Catholics hearing His word read to them, as I am sure it was done in Germany before the Reformation, as it has been done all throughout history for thousands of years? Or would it be hard for Lutherans also who were illiterate, having it read to them, as it was post-Reformation? This is how Christianity spread, the literate reading to the illiterate. This has been going on for thousands of years, the literate reading to the illiterate.

The availability of printed works and manuscript copies in the vernacular motivated some of the illiterate to learn how to read.

If you had read the link I posted you would have seen that prior to 1500, in Germany, there were plenty of manuscripts, bibles available for the literate, and bible passages available, in the vernacular.

Recent researches however have shown that the elements of Luther’s style are already present in a large measure in the manuscript literature of the fourteenth and especially the fifteenth centuries.11…

…As the Catholic polemicist and Bishop of Bruges Jean Baptiste Malou argued in 1846,14 the Lutheran Professors of Theology Wilhelm Krafft (1821–1897) at Bonn in 188315 and Friedrich Kropatschek (1875–1917) at Breslau in 1904,16 the Catholic polemicist Franz Falk (1840–1909) in 1905,17 and Erich Zimmermann (1938) and Hans Rost (1939) demonstrated before the middle of the twentieth century, vernacular Bibles circulated and were read widely, especially in the Empire and with the exception of fifteenth-century England, all through the later Middle Ages…

14 of those bibles that were in circulation were in Early New High German, Luther’s bible is also in, you got it, Early New High German.

Again from aforementioned article:

If the Bible was, as Luther asserted, kept ‘under the bench’ in Eisleben and Erfurt in the fifteenth century, it was not because of a shortage of the physical object. It is possible that provincial schoolboys and monastic novices did not, in the 1490s and early 1500s, have good access to German Bibles. Luther began lecturing on Scripture in 1513. From 1505 on, a full Latin Bible was certainly available to him in his monastery.82 More importantly, precisely those people whose early enthusiasm for ‘evangelical preaching’ and reform placed them at the forefront of the nascent Reformation, burghers, magistrates, priests, monks, nuns, nobles and especially urban patricians,** had quite easy access to German Bibles**…

…The learned Lutheran pastor of St. Michael’s in Hamburg, Johannes Geffcken (1803–1864), wrote in 1855 … that the language of the pre-Reformation translations was nowhere near as bad or as lacking in influence on Luther’s translation as some have argued:
…** In any case the works of the fifteenth century provide unambiguous proof that a quite thorough acquaintance with Scripture was no rarity. …] It is admittedly the easiest thing in the world to put together, and in short order, a long list of the errors in both the High and Low German editions and which are mostly the result of a word-by-word rendering of the Latin. But it would be a great error to imagine that these translations were utterly clumsy, had no influence on the people, and passed nothing on to Luther’s translations. We find that a sort of German Vulgate had developed over the fifteenth century, which Luther often adopted without having to change much.**86

In 1883, Wilhelm Krafft questioned the reigning orthodoxy concerning Luther’s unique genius, arguing that vernacular Bibles circulated widely before Luther’s time, and echoing Geffcken’s point by arguing Luther was able to translate the New Testament so quickly because so much of the Bible—especially the Sunday Gospels and Epistles—was already widely known and read, thus providing a “large storehouse of usable Biblical linguistic material on which he could draw.” Krafft compared in parallel columns a large number of passages from the “ninth” printed German Bible (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1483) with Luther’s September Testament, then with passages from the Hebrew Scriptures in Luther’s 1541 German Bible. Krafft concluded, on good evidence, that these passages are too similar for Luther not to have drawn on the older German tradition.

to be continued…

 

[Duane1966]

Conclusion.

Another preliminary aspect to consider is the size of the printing industry in Germany. Luther and the other German reformers needed sufficient printing equipment for the fullest distribution of their publications. The years between Guttenberg’s first press and Luther’s use of the technology in the 1520s brought a significant increase in the number of printing businesses. Richard Cole has analyzed the industry’s publication of works by Martin Luther and other Protestants, concluding that Germany dominated the industry with almost fifty identifiable printers of Luther’s works in the 1520s printing in twelve separate locations…There are another seventy printers in various locations printing mostly Reformation tracts. Overall for the sixteenth-century, there are three hundred and ninety-one printers, eight hundred and ninety-four authors and one hundred and twenty-five cities…Eighty-two of the smaller locations where printers lived and worked have not been the subject of specific print research. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the contention that if a German printer published pamphlets especially in the 1520s, he published Protestant materials. What is often thought of as a war of pamphlets between the followers of Luther and the pope in Rome may be seen as a lopsided one.

Correct, Lutheranism was the new thing. People wanted to read what the latest thing that Luther would say was. You did not know what he would say next. You did with the pope. And if you were a Lutheran at that time, why would you buy a pamphlet from the pope, when your leader said he is the anti-Christ?

Since Germany was the homeland of Guttenberg’s technology, it would follow that the printing industry might see its greatest growth in the land of its invention. In all regions of Germany, a given …

The above link shows the prices for those earlier vernacular bibles were about the same as Luther’s.

With presses available and secondary ways of presenting his writings to the illiterate, Luther fed Germany with text after text. Richard Crofts has tabulated and charted the number of publications produced in Germany during the period beginning with 1521 and ending in 1545 with particular emphasis on Luther. The source of his information on German publications for his study was the Short Title …

This is as it should be. It was new.

Crofts’s Table IV analyzes the period 1521 to 1545 on a year-by-year basis, with the publications distributed in three categories: Luther’s percentage of the reformers’ works, Luther’s percentage of the total published works, and the percentage of Luther’s works published in German. What is staggering about the analysis is that in the twenty-five year period covered by the study, Luther’s publications averaged 51.3 percent of the total reformers’ works listed in the Short Title Catalog. The highest year was 1522 with 71%, and the lowest was 1540 with 22.2%. Luther’s concern to publish in German is clearly seen because he averaged 88.6% of his works in German; the lowest level was 66.7% in 1538, and the highest was 100% in 1528, 1529, and 1542. Publishing in the vernacular was important to Luther and the other reformers because they appealed to the non-clerics and common people.

Nothing to dispute here. Nor does it change the fact that there were many pre-Reformation publications, printed in the vernacular, as demonstrated in my post above.

Two of Luther’s greatest contributions to the Reformation were his German New Testament, which was published in 1522, and then the German Bible, which was completed in 1534. Luther thought it was important to get the Word of God into the common language of the people, but widespread acceptance of his German translation was complicated by Germany’s lacking a common tongue. At the time Luther translated the Bible, there were several dialects of the German language. Remarkably, Luther’s translation of the New Testament not only provided a vernacular version of the Bible (his chief aim), but was also used to teach reading to the illiterate, thus promoting a unified German language. As with many other publications by Luther, the New Testament and then the German Bible were well received. One prominent printer in Wittenberg was Hans Lufft, who produced thousands of Luther’s Bibles between 1534 and 1574. Lufft even claimed to own the rights to Luther’s German Bible when the reformer died in 1546, but Luther had not granted the rights to anyone.

Obviously the chief aim of the translators of those pre-Reformation bibles thought it was important to get the bible into the common language of the people also. Why else would they print them in the vernacular? Those bibles were also used to teach reading to the illiterate, as have all written materials, since the beginning of writing.

In 1475, the literacy rate in Germany, is about 9%. In 1500, it is about 11%. In 1550, it is about 16%. In 1575, about 20%. In 1600, about 25%. And finally, in 1650, about 31%. Over one hundred years after the Reformation, almost 3 in 4 people still cannot read. There is no great jump in literacy in the years following the Reformation in Germany. The growth is constant from 1475 thru 1550, with a slight upward swing from 1550 thru 1650. I contend you would see that exact same growth in literacy without Luther’s bible. Nothing you have posted changes that, because the statistical data backs me up. Can you show me with statistics, the answer to the following question?

Since there were other translations of the bible in the vernacular before Luther’s, and the demand for these were growing pre-Reformation, did his translation really change the trajectory of what would have happened?

 

[Peter_J]

In my experience with people online, they do. One major problem is that the date says it all: 1914.

I don’t usually get into discussions about the aforementioned encyclopedia, but now that I have I feel I need to at least add one more thing: I would not say that it is bad *because *it is from that time period, any more than I would say that Call to Action (or whatever other examples might be added there) is bad *because *it is from this time period. Any period you look at will have good and bad.

 

[FollowChrist34]

In some ways the 1914 Encyclopedia is less outdated now than the 1960s “New” version, which seems bland, glosses over things, tends to be kinda politically correct and diplomatic, and reflects its decade more than the earlier version. Nobody quotes from it or disagrees much, because it doesn’t say much.

Yes, we do need to take later (name removed by moderator)ut into account. But I find the incompleteness of most contemporary sources a much bigger problem that the incompleteness of that encyclopedia.

I take it the “incompleteness” and “politically correct and diplomatic” characterization of the new version is an opinion - not the official position of the Church - .

1914 Catholic Encyclopedia
The encyclopedia was designed to serve the Roman Catholic Church, concentrating on information related to the Church and explaining matters from the Catholic point of view. It records the accomplishments of Catholics and others in nearly all intellectual and professional pursuits, including artists, educators, poets and scientists. While more limited in focus than other general encyclopedias, it was far broader in scope than previous efforts at comprehensive Catholic encyclopedias, which had studied only internal Church affairs.

It offers in-depth portrayals of historical and philosophical ideas, persons and events, from a Catholic perspective, including issues that divide Catholicism from Protestantism and other faith communities. Since the encyclopedia was first published starting in 1907 and has never been updated (versus the New Catholic Encyclopedia), many of its entries may be out of date either with respect to the wider culture or to the Catholic ecclesiastical world. In particular, it predates the creation of the Vatican City State (1929) and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which introduced many significant changes in Catholic practice: For example, the online version of the entries on Judaism and Islam at newadvent.org states in an editorial note: “To complement this article, which was taken from the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent recommends a prayerful reading of ‘Nostra Aetate’ from the Second Vatican Council.”[6]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia

 

[commenter]

I take it the “incompleteness” and “politically correct and diplomatic” characterization of the new version is an opinion - not the official position of the Church - .

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia

I have always characterized my opinions as not merely reflecting the official position of the Church, but the unofficial position of God.

You mean other people view my opinions differently?

Us solipsists get no respect.

(end of Quaint-Loveable-Old-Guy-Humorous-Interlude)

Ok:
You referenced Wikipedia. That has its limitations - liberal spin on ideological questions - but still, it is a handy source of info, available but not easily gathered from other sources.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia reflects the bias of its era, but it’s a different bias, a different blind spot, that the bias and blind spots of today. I find that looking at life through a bias different from my 2015 blinders is helpful. Read what C. S. Lewis wrote about “chronological snobbery”.

So yes, consult the old source, but then cross check with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and VII, which have priority now.

 

[FollowChrist34]

So yes, consult the old source, but then cross check with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and VII, which have priority now.

 

[GKC]

I have always characterized my opinions as not merely reflecting the official position of the Church, but the unofficial position of God.

You mean other people view my opinions differently?

Us solipsists get no respect.

(end of Quaint-Loveable-Old-Guy-Humorous-Interlude)

Ok:
You referenced Wikipedia. That has its limitations - liberal spin on ideological questions - but still, it is a handy source of info, available but not easily gathered from other sources.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia reflects the bias of its era, but it’s a different bias, a different blind spot, that the bias and blind spots of today. I find that looking at life through a bias different from my 2015 blinders is helpful. Read what C. S. Lewis wrote about “chronological snobbery”.

So yes, consult the old source, but then cross check with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and VII, which have priority now.

Say, in SURPRISED BY JOY, pp. 207-208, nod to Owen Barfield

 

[steido01]

The old Catholic Encyclopedia reflects the bias of its era, but it’s a different bias, a different blind spot, that the bias and blind spots of today. I find that looking at life through a bias different from my 2015 blinders is helpful. Read what C. S. Lewis wrote about “chronological snobbery”.

So yes, consult the old source, but then cross check with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and VII, which have priority now.

You know, I have always appreciated Lewis’s thoughts on the dangers of “chronological snobbery.” Chesterton, too, on the advantages (and necessity?) of “the democracy of the dead.”

But I think it’s entirely irrational to afford a higher authority to a text for the sole reason that it is older. The sources should be tested and weighed against the sources that are, by general consensus, considered authoritative. Think about what was happening in 1914. The world was undergoing the single greatest realignment of nations and ideologies it had ever seen – it was literally at war. I’m not at all discrediting it; I’m only suggesting that these facts ought to be taken into consideration when contrasting it with sources from other time periods.

 

[GKC]

You know, I have always appreciated Lewis’s thoughts on the dangers of “chronological snobbery.” Chesterton, too, on the advantages (and necessity?) of “the democracy of the dead.”

But I think it’s entirely irrational to afford a higher authority to a text for the sole reason that it is older. The sources should be tested and weighed against the sources that are, by general consensus, considered authoritative. Think about what was happening in 1914. The world was undergoing the single greatest realignment of nations and ideologies it had ever seen – it was literally at war. I’m not at all discrediting it; I’m only suggesting that these facts ought to be taken into consideration when contrasting it with sources from other time periods.

But I don’t think that is precisely what is meant.

ORTHODOXY, Chap. IV, p. 83, “The Ethics of Elfland.” “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils."

Lewis, SURPRISED BY JOY, loc.cit. “Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed forever two elements in my own thought. In the first place he made short work of what I have called my “chronological snobbery,” the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also ‘a period,’ and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them”.

 

[Peter_J]

I have always characterized my opinions as not merely reflecting the official position of the Church, but the unofficial position of God.

You mean other people view my opinions differently?

Us solipsists get no respect.

(end of Quaint-Loveable-Old-Guy-Humorous-Interlude)

Ok:
You referenced Wikipedia. That has its limitations - liberal spin on ideological questions - but still, it is a handy source of info, available but not easily gathered from other sources.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia reflects the bias of its era, but it’s a different bias, a different blind spot, that the bias and blind spots of today. I find that looking at life through a bias different from my 2015 blinders is helpful. Read what C. S. Lewis wrote about “chronological snobbery”.

So yes, consult the old source, but then cross check with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and VII, which have priority now.

This illustrates why I added that last comment to Tertiumquid.

I’m not, by any means, opposed to “democracy of the dead”, but when people characterize the difference between the Catholic Encyclopedia and the CCC or VII in terms of the latter “having priority now” (and many other similar statements about the CE that I have read on forums over the years, often made quite nonchalantly) … well I think that’s just disturbing.

But anyhow, I also feel I should apologize to the thread for talking about the CE. The question of whether it has good or bad articles, or how much of each, is really irrelevant.

 

[FollowChrist34]

This illustrates why I added that last comment to Tertiumquid.

I’m not, by any means, opposed to “democracy of the dead”, but when people characterize the difference between the Catholic Encyclopedia and the CCC or VII in terms of the latter “having priority now” (and many other similar statements about the CE that I have read on forums over the years, often made quite nonchalantly) … well I think that’s just disturbing.

But anyhow, I also feel I should apologize to the thread for talking about the CE. The question of whether it has good or bad articles, or how much of each, is really irrelevant.

Well I for one am at least as elucidated as I am disturbed. This explains a lot. So I am happy about that.

I didn’t know the CE existed until a week ago, or that it was from 1914, or that it was “preferred” over Vatican II et al. from time to time as convenient. I am post Vatican II you might say.

 

[Peter_J]

Well I for one am at least as elucidated as I am disturbed. This explains a lot. So I am happy about that.

I didn’t know the CE existed until a week ago, or that it was from 1914, or that it was “preferred” over Vatican II et al. from time to time as convenient. I am post Vatican II you might say.

Well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone go so far as to claim the CE to be “preferred” over VII or the CCC, but I have many times read comments on the internet that hint that it was somehow on the same level as the CCC or VII.

 

[steido01]

But I don’t think that is precisely what is meant.

Right, right. I should have said, “But I think it’s entirely irrational to afford a higher authority to a text for the sole reason that it is older, and those two would, I think, agree.]”

 

[GKC]

Right, right. I should have said, “But I think it’s entirely irrational to afford a higher authority to a text for the sole reason that it is older, and those two would, I think, agree.]”

True. Though Lewis would also make a point for the essential requirement to read originals, as opposed to commentators, as a baseline. (“On The Reading Of Old Books”, intro to a translation, by someone else, of St. Athanasius’ DE INCARNATIONE VERBI DEI).

 

[steido01]

True. Though Lewis would also make a point for the essential requirement to read originals, as opposed to commentators, as a baseline. (“On The Reading Of Old Books”, intro to a translation, by someone else, of St. Athanasius’ DE INCARNATIONE VERBI DEI).

Are you suggesting that we actually have to read books?