As regards the state of the language in Germany at that time, E. Gutjahr has recently endeavoured to prove that the efforts at colonisation and the movement of the people, more particularly from the 12th to the 14th century, had paved the way in Saxony for the rise and spread of a new, common language (New High German), and that in towns like Halle a new patrician type of language had sprung up which Luther had only to assimilate. In his “Anfänge der neuhochdeutschen Sprache vor Luther” (1910), the author gives us an outline of the conclusions he hasreached and which he hopes to set forth at greater length later. Whether he will succeed in making out his case remains, however, to be seen.The language of the Saxon Chancery was, according to Gutjahr, even in Luther’s day, not merely the “polite language of general intercourse,” but one in which all the German Courts were versed, the Imperial, Austrian one of Maximilian, as much as that of the Saxon Electorate under Frederick the Wise.[1977]From this language, “into which he infused new elements taken from the mouth of the people,” Luther forged a mighty weapon for his work, being all the more readily led to do so seeing that the “reforming movement found its mainstay among the patrician classes of the Saxon Electorate.”[1978]Nevertheless we must not assume the existence in Luther’s day of any common written language in the modern sense. The foundation for such a common language had indeed been laid, but as yet it did not exist. Before our nation could lay claim to a common language of its own—our Modern High German as written—a long time had still to elapse.[1979]The language used by Luther in his Bible was made still more widely known owing to the work being at once reprinted even where other dialects prevailed, though as a rule some alterations were made to bring it into line with the idiom in use; at times the printers did no more than append a short vocabulary explaining such Saxon phrases as might be strange to the reader. In this way the new Bible, the language of which was so admirably suited to become a common one, penetrated everywhere, even into out of the way districts where the most divergent dialects obtained.[1980]Its influence was all the more important now that small principalities were springing up at the expense of the unity of Germany and threatened the language with further disintegration. The Lutherans were the first to perceive and work against this danger, though the Catholics were by no means unmindful of it too. Catholics, too, sought to take advantage of the translation, and, in some cases, even went too far in this. Luther once declares in his usual vein: “Our opponents read it more than do our own people”;[1981]he also mentions that Duke George had said: “Let themonk finish translating the Bible into German and then get himself gone.”[1982]What in the case of Protestants favoured the influence Luther’s Bible exerted on the language, was, on the one hand the profound interest aroused in the reader by his inspiring pen, and, on the other, its appearance at a time when, though the art of printing had been invented, the whole world, and more particularly Germany, judged from a literary, theological standpoint, was still lying to a large extent fallow and was thus more readily dominated by such a work as his, and that not merely as regards the matter but also as regards the style. Men of learning, owing to humanistic influences, wrote almost exclusively in Latin. The use of the German language for theological and religious subjects, save in sermons and popular writings, was something unusual; in fact, such a thing was rather discountenanced owing largely to the publication of German works which had made a wrong use of Scripture.In Lutheranism the New High German of the Bible found its way not only into educated, ecclesiastical circles but also to the common folk, into whose ears the preachers assiduously dinned countless favourite texts in their new form; it also became familiar to the teachers and children in the schools. No more powerful lever for the furtherance of New High German could have been found. A century after, New High German had become the language of the churches and schools in the regions subject to Luther’s influence, whilst the South German and Low German dialects had largely lost their hold.When all is said, however, the secret of such success is not to be entirely understood unless we also take into account the religious position Luther occupied in the eyes of his followers. All who venerated him as having thrown a new light on religion, valued and honoured the language used by a mind so imperious, so strong and versatile, and, when it so pleased, so sympathetic. H. Böhmer says very truly of the old German Protestants: “Luther became for the Germans the authority on speech because he was their supreme authority on faith and personal conduct. Had he not been a religious reformer and had he not bequeathed to Evangelical Germany in his Bible a book, which,on account of its religious importance was bound to be looked upon as a model of language, he would never have exercised so powerful an influence on the written and spoken language.”[1983]Nevertheless, to assert, that, by his German Bible and his other writings Luther was the actual founder of New High German is to go too far, quite apart from the fact that German, as now written, is no longer identical with the German of Luther’s Bible and other writings. We cannot take seriously Grimm’s assertions that “New High German may in point of fact be called the Protestant dialect,” or that “Luther’s language, owing to its noble, almost marvellous purity and its mighty influence, was both the germ and the foundation of the New High German tongue.”[1984]“Protestants,” says Pastor Risch, “have hitherto been disposed to undervalue the literary use made of the German language before Luther’s day, particularly in the religious domain, and to exaggerate Luther’s importance in the history of the tongue. Only in so far as he succeeded in seizing upon and bringing out all the forces and possibilities latent in the language, was it possible for his work to be truly creative and epoch-making. To catch the idiom of the people, not to force a new language upon it with his German Bible, was, on his own admission, Luther’s aim. The German language prepared the way for Luther to a greater extent than at first sight appears.”[1985]Two other considerations will serve still further to curtail the importance of Luther’s services to the German tongue.First of all it must be pointed out that many very coarse elements found their way into his popular works, and thus, unhappily, into the written language, and, secondly, that a large number of words and phrases peculiar to South Germany and which were accordingly unknown to Luther, find, for this reason, no place in works, with the result that the German language suffered.We may speak with less reserve of the merits of the new translation so far as it is based on the original languages of the Bible, and on the Latin Vulgate then in general use. Even before Luther started on his work attention had beencalled to the original text; indeed, as it happens, the scholar who was the primary cause of Luther’s studying the original language was his Catholic opponent, Erasmus, who himself brought out the Greek edition of the New Testament. To Luther, however, belongs the honour of having been the first to tread the new philological paths with a German version.In his somewhat hurried version of the New Testament he used the Greek text as well as the Vulgate. In the same way, in his translation of the Old Testament, he went back to the original so far as his knowledge of Hebrew allowed, and, where this was insufficient, sought the help of others.The principle he followed, viz. to make the Bible plain to the German reader by explaining its meaning, so far as this can be done by a translation, brings us, however, face to face with other questions.Luther had a high opinion of the accuracy and clearness of his work. He says of it: “I can with a good conscience testify that I have shown the utmost fidelity and diligence therein, and have never thought to deceive.”[1986]“No one would believe what labour it has cost except those who worked with us,” so he said in his last years according to Mathesius, when looking back on the success of his undertaking. “This Bible—not that I would praise myself but the work speaks for itself—is so good that it is better than the Greek or Latin translation, and more is to be found in it than in all the commentaries. For we remove the hindrances and stumbling-blocks out of the way so that other people may be able to read without difficulty.”[1987]Reducing this eulogy to its proper proportions we may indeed allow that Luther eliminated the “hindrances and stumbling-blocks” from his German translation, being no literalist, but anxious above all to put into plain German what sounded strange or difficult.Yet such a system of translation can only within certain limits be regarded as the right one. As to whether Luther always kept within these limits, and as to how we are to regard the use he made of this freedom in particular instances, is a point on which even the greatest admirers of the German Bible disagree. Pastor Risch, the expert repeatedly referred to above, remarks pessimistically: “Scarcely any of those who have written on Luther’s method of translating have gone beyond mere generalities. They are satisfied with dishing up again more or less skilfully Luther’s principles as set forth in his ‘Von Dolmetzscheñ.’ Not even my own work on the German Bible (1907) do I exempt from this criticism. Research must bring us by inductive reasoning to the recognition of the root principle which alone can explain the many thousand variant readings we meet with to-day in the [Weimar] German Bible (vols. i. and ii.), and in Bindseil’s critical edition,”[1988]—It is, however, to be feared that in very many instances the “root principle” supposed to underlie Luther’s work will fail in practice. His hasty, precipitate work in the Wartburg (the completion of the New Testament in three months) puts any real scholarly method out of the question. The fact that barely a week was allotted to each Gospel precludes the use of any well-considered principles in the work of translation.Again, Luther often deviates far too much from the original text and takes too many liberties in his efforts to be plain. To this must be added the fact, that, owing to his insufficient linguistic attainments, he fails in many instances to reach the real sense of the original sacred text, to say nothing, of course, of the numerous critical emendations made at a later date in the texts. Hence Protestants have sometimes judged the scholarship of Luther’s Bible rather harshly. Josias Bunsen, for instance, called Luther’s translation “one of the most inaccurate, though showing signs of great genius,” and declared that, in it, there are “three thousand passages which call for revision.”[1989]E. Nestle, the Protestant philologist and Bible expert, referring to the revision which had taken place in Germany, says of the defects of Luther’s Bible: “A comparison with theEnglish or Swiss work of revision shows how much further we might and ought to have gone.”[1990]The most outspoken critic is, however, Paul de Lagarde, the Protestant theologian and Orientalist of Göttingen. In an article likewise dealing with the so-called “Revised Bible” of 1883,[1991]he devotes more than five pages to a list of passages from Isaias, the Book of Proverbs and the Psalms, which Franz Delitzsch had been compelled to retranslate even earlier.[1992]To this list he appends another long one of passages, which he holds to be manifestly mistranslations of the original.Thus, to quote only one important instance, the Messianic prophecy of Jacob in Genesis xlix. 10, should be rendered: “The sceptre shaשll not be taken away from Juda ... till he come that is to be sent,” or “that is prayed for” (ילתש), whereas Luther translates תלש֗ incorrectly by “hero” and thus robs the wonderful text of some of its force. De Lagarde notes, that elsewhere Luther himself renders Malachias iii. 1: “The Lord Whom you seek shall speedily come to His temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire.” Beside such mistakes Luther’s allusion to the hedgehog that builds nests and lays eggs (Isaias xxxiv. 15) can only be regarded as a curiosity and a slip on his part. This hedgehog was among the victims sacrificed in the revised Bible of 1883.The same critic also complains, that, Rom. iii. 23, even in the revised Bible, has: “For they are sinners,” whereas the Aorist demands the translation: “They all have sinned.” He shows how, as early as 1839, Tholuck had drawn attention to the vast dogmatic importance of Luther’s suppression of this Aorist.[1993]With still greater show of reason De Lagarde finds fault with other wilful deviations from the text; he refers to those pointed out by Döllinger in “Die Reformation” and again insisted on by Janssen, and then by Paulsen in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts.” These false renderings have, however, out of a wrong regard for Luther, been retained in the Lutheran Bible even to the present day.Luther’s scant concern for the text where it runs counter to his ideas calls for further discussion.Luther’s German Bible Considered TheologicallyBearing in mind Luther’s character we can well understand how sorely he was tempted during his work to makethe text square with his own doctrine, the more so since the translation was intended as a popular explanation of the Bible. When, moreover, one remembers his arbitrary way of proving his doctrine, and the entire freedom with which he was wont to handle other religious matters connected with antiquity, which, though not in the Word of God, were nevertheless historical facts easy of verification, it will not greatly surprise even those readers who are prejudiced in his favour to find, that, in his treatment of the original text of Holy Scripture—which most people are not able to verify—he did not scruple here and there to introduce ideas of his own. “What does it matter,” so he said later in his blind conviction of being in the right, in reply to those who accused him of having altered the text, “so long as at bottom the thing is clear,” so long as “it evidently is so,” and “is demanded by the state of the case?” “Not only is it right but even highly necessary that it should be set forth in the clearest and fullest manner,” etc.[1994]It is chiefly in the question of justification by faith alone that he twists his text so much that his version ceases in reality to be a translation. He indeed speaks of his additions as “commentaries,” but no one could thus have “commented” on the passages who was not, like Luther, entirely taken up with the new dogma of grace, justification and faith.In his efforts to provide his doctrine with a firm foundation in the eyes of his readers, he added the word “only” in Rom. iv. 15 and Rom. iii. 20, thus making these Pauline texts into a condemnation of the Law: “The law workethonlywrath,” “by the lawonlyis the knowledge of sin.”Again, in Rom. iii. 25 f., the Apostle speaks of Christ “whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to the showing of his justice for the remission of former sins through the forbearance of God for the showing of his justice in this time, that he himself may be just and the justification of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ.” Luther, however, in the interests of his new doctrine, makes him say that God had “set up Christ as a mercy seat through faith in his Blood, in order that he may present the righteousness which is acceptable to him, forgiving the sins which had remained till then under divine forbearance, that he might in his season offer the righteousness which is acceptable to him that he might himself alone be just and the justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus.” The offeringof the righteousness that is acceptable to God—an expression twice repeated—is not found in the original text, but of course is highly favourable to Luther’s doctrine of a merely imputed righteousness.[1995]In the same way he here speaks of God as “alone” being just, an interpolation of which the origin must also be sought in the translator’s theology.[1996]Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith, imputed justice.[1997]Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach” (Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (ib., ii. 25), and Joseph, the husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be pious still.”[1998]From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church” the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests sit in their temples intheir voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,” remarks a Protestant critic.[1999]The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere taught by the Apostle.And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is: “For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is just.”The same is the case with the oft-quoted text Rom. iii. 28, of which Luther’s Bible makes a kind of palladium for the new teaching by the arbitrary addition of the word “alone.” The text has been immortalised in its Lutheran shape even to our own day in inscriptions on Protestant churches and pulpits. There Luther makes the Apostle say: “Thus we hold that a man is justified by faith alone without the works of the law,” whereas the old Latin of the Vulgate rightly rendered it: “Arbitramur enim iustificari hominem per fidem sine operibus.”The word “alone” is not called for either by the text or the context. It is indeed true that the Apostle wishes to emphasise the exclusive action of faith, nevertheless, if we take this faith as he understands it, i.e. as a strong and vivifying faith and no mere dead thing, then it naturally comprises the works wrought by faith and man’s co-operation under the influence of grace. Of this faith to which the Apostle expressly refers, for instance in Romans ii. 6 ff. and in Galatians v. 6, he might quite well have said in the above passage that it justifies without works, i.e. without such as are performed apart from faith and grace. In fact, taken in this sense, Luther’s interpolation of the word “alone” is not reprehensible, though in the sense in which he intended it it is altogether inadmissible; for he would fain make the Apostle say, that faith “alone,” without any works of the law, operates justification, the works being merely an aspect of faith. The addition of the word “alone” amounted to a quite unjustifiable usurpation of the famous Pauline dictum for the uses of his own party. It must also at least be termed a subjective falsification, even though, objectively, it be capable of a better interpretation. If, as we have heard Luther say, he really wishedto show in his translation “the utmost fidelity and industry and had never a thought of deception,” then he should not have made St. Paul say more than he does in the original, viz. that man is justified by faith without works.Contemporary Catholic pens were not slow in assailing in the strongest terms Luther’s translation on account of his surreptitious introduction of the word “alone.” The translator also regarded the protest as of sufficient importance to warrant his devoting his leisure in the Coburg in September, 1530, to composing a reply. The tract in question, entitled “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” he sent to his friend Wenceslaus Link at Nuremberg instructing him to have it printed.[2000]In it he gives two reasons in vindication of his arbitrary action: He had been obliged in this instance to add the word “alone” in order first of all to render the Apostle’s meaning in correct German, for it was the German usage to use the word “alone” or “only,” when, of two things, people wanted to deny one and affirm the other, for instance, if one wished to say that a peasant had brought the wheat asked for but not the money, then he would not say “he has brought the wheat but not the money,” but “he has brought no money but only corn.”[2001]Luther, however, was only able to show that this was in accordance with the spirit of the language in certain instances, not that it was necessary or indispensable in every case, particularly in the instance in question; still less could he prove that there were not circumstances affecting the words and the meaning where such a use of “alone” or “only” must be avoided in order not to change the tenor of the sentence. It might rightly have been urged against him that fidelity was far more important a matter than good phraseology.—The second reason he alleges in support of the interpolation bears directly on his erroneous view of the Apostle’s doctrine: “I have not followed merely linguistic considerations, for the text and the meaning of St. Paul absolutely demand it.” “He deliberately cuts away all works.” “Whoever would speak bluntly and plainly of such a dismissal of works must say: faith alone,” etc. If “this be so obvious,” “why then not say so”?[2002]Thus he makes the word “alone” a sort of hall-mark of his own “public” teaching.He is determined to defy his opponents and to challenge them yet again. “And I repent me,” he cries, “that I did not add thereto the wordall, thus: withoutallworks,alllaw whatsoever, so that it might be spoken out with a full, round sound. Thus therefore it shall remain in my New Testament, and though all Pope-asses should go raving mad they will not alter my decision.”[2003]—In a similar way and with redoubled energy he turns on those who had found fault with his translation of the Hail Marybecause he had discarded “full of grace” in favour of “gracious.” “The Papists are furious with me for having spoilt the Angelical Salutation, but, as a matter of fact, in good German I ought to have said, ‘God greet thee, dear Mary.’ I shall translate, not asthey, but asIplease!”[2004]The remarkable “Sendbrieff,” other portions of which are of the highest psychological interest, must be regarded as in reality a product of the author’s mental overstrain at that time. On the one hand he was on tenterhooks wondering what the fate of the new Evangel would be, threatened as it was by the Diet of Augsburg; on the other hand he was overmastered by the sight of his own achievements, particularly his much-belauded translation of the Bible. He was also profoundly exasperated by the translation of the New Testament published by Emser (see below, p. 519), the “Dresen [Dresden] Scribbler” as Luther called him,[2005]and by the prohibition issued at Leipzig against the sale of his German Bible in the duchy of Saxony.Hence he relieves his feelings in his usual way by an outburst of noisy vituperation: “All the Papists in a lump” are not “clever enough to understand or translate a single chapter of Scripture aright, no, not even the first two words.” Their braying, their “he-haw, he-haw, is too weak to harm my translation. I know full well what art, industry, reason and common sense go to make a good translation, but, as for them, they understand this less even than the miller’s beast.” It is quite true, so he says, that the four letters,sola, do not occur in Romans, “which letters these blockheads stare at as stupidly as a cow does at a new gate”; but, so he goes on, it is not our business to inquire “of the Latin letters how to speak German, as these donkeys do.” “No Pope-ass or mule-ass, who has never even attempted it himself, shall I suffer to be my judge, or to find fault with me in this matter. Whoever does not want my version has simply to let it alone and ... be rewarded with the devil’s thanks.”[2006]“For the future I shall simply despise them and get others to do the same, so long as they remain such people, I beg your pardon, donkeys.”[2007]In his efforts to express his contempt in the strongest words at his command we have the key to what he says in conclusion, which some of his opponents took too seriously. The famous “Sic volo, sic iubeo” with which his tract ends, though of course not meant in earnest, is nevertheless very characteristic of him.“If,” he writes, “your new Papist makes much ado about the wordsola, just say straight out to him: Dr. Martin Lutherwillhave it so and says Papist and donkey are one and the same thing....Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” He too would boast for once and rail against the blockheads as St. Paul [!] had done against his crazy saints. Hence he parodies St. Paul’s words and scoffs at the Papists who wished to make themselves out to be doctors, preachers, theologians anddisputants, reiterating for each category the words “And so am I.” He then goes further: “I am able to interpret the Psalms and the Prophets, which they cannot do. I can translate, which they can’t. I can read Holy Scripture, they cannot. And to come to other matters: I am better acquainted with their dialectics and their philosophy than the whole lot of them together, and know for certain that not one of them understands his Aristotle. And if there is one among them who understands one introduction or chapter of Aristotle, then I am ready to be tossed in a blanket.”[2008]The whole tract is one of the most extravagant examples of this stamp of polemical satire. It is hardly possible to determine where exactly the “great doctor” ceases and the satirical rhetorician begins.In addition to the mistakes and the wilfulness of the translation, the character of the glosses appended by Luther, and still more his attitude towards the Canon of the Bible, laid his work open to objections of the most serious kind.In the glosses on many passages he shows wonderful skill in manipulating the text in favour of his wrong views. This is carried so far that, to the account of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by the Magdalen (Mat. xxvi. 10), he adds the marginal gloss: “Thus one sees that faith alone makes the work good,” because only faith could transform this seeming waste into a good work.[2009]Of Mat. xvi. 18: “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church,” he gives the following explanation, which plainly rests on his own partisan and anti-Papal standpoint: By Peter all Christians together with Peter are meant, and their confession is the rock. “All Christians are Peters on account of the confession which here Peter makes, which also is the rock on which Peter and all the other Peters are built. The confession is common to all; hence also the name.”[2010]It was partly the defects of the translation itself, partly the cleverly calculated and thus all the more dangerous marginal glosses, which called forth objections and warnings from Catholic writers as soon as the work was published.Hier. Emser complains that Luther “made Scripture to turn everywhere on faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of.” Emser speaks of more than 1400 passages which Luther had rendered in a false and heretical sense, though many of the passages he instances are not of any great importance.[2011]Johann Hasenberg, the Leipzig Professor, even went so far as to enumerate three thousand passages badly rendered in the German Bible.[2012]The theological faculty at Leipzig had declared as early as Jan. 6, 1523, that Luther had introduced his erroneous doctrines into the German Bible, a verdict on which Duke George took his stand when issuing his prohibition. Emser now set to work to carry out the Duke’s further instructions, viz. that “he should revise anew the New Testament in accordance with the tenor and arrangement of the old, authentic text, and restore it and set it in order throughout.”[2013]His purpose was mainly to weed out the theological errors. His new edition of Luther’s text was revised according to the Vulgate and provided with notes on the Greek. He also bought from Cranach the blocks for the illustrations (see below, p. 528), rejecting, however, such of the cuts as were too insulting, for instance, those in which the Papal tiara appears. The many excellencies of the language of Luther’s version, and almost all the fruits of his labours, thus passed into Emser’s edition, which appeared at Leipzig in 1527. Absence of copyright laws explains to some extent Emser’s action. Emser’s Bible, which was also made up to resemble Luther’s folio volumes, bore no translator’s name and was simply entitled: “Das Naw Testament nach Lawt der christlichen Kirchen bewertem Text corrigiert un wiederumb zurecht gebracht,” and thus made no claim to being a new or original translation. As, however, Luther, the original translator, had been severely censured in Duke George’s Introduction we can readily understand that he was much vexed at the revision of his work and accused theeditor of plagiarism.[2014]As Kawerau, however, remarks, “had he (Emser) laid claim to being an actual ‘translator,’ then his work would indeed have deserved to be styled a piece of plagiarism, as it has even down to our own day; but this he did not do, and merely wished to be regarded as the corrector of the Lutheran translation; hence this charge may be dismissed as unfair.”[2015]The second edition, however, which appeared after his death, bore Emser’s name as the translator: “Das New Testament, so Emser säliger verdeutscht.” This second edition was brought out by Augustine Alveld, as recent research has proved.[2016]In it certain coarse expressions which Emser had borrowed from Luther’s Bible were supplanted by more “seemly” words “for the sake of the maidens and the pure of heart,” a circumstance which incidentally shows that even Luther’s more moderate style of writing, as we find it in his Bible, was felt to be unusual and not always quite proper.Johann Dietenberger, a Bible expert and contemporary of Luther’s, wrote: Although Luther constantly appeals to Holy Scripture, yet there is no one who takes away from or adds to it more than he. “Of the Bible he rejects and adds what he pleases in order to establish his errors.”[2017]Dietenberger, a Mayence Dominican, published a complete translation of Holy Scripture in 1534, making considerable use for this purpose of Luther’s German Bible. He says in his Preface, in explanation of this, that he had been urgently requested to “go through the recent German translation of the Bible (Luther’s) and remove all that was not in accordance with the faith.”[2018]Johann Eck, who undertook a new translation of the whole Bible (1537), acted more independently; but, however good as a critic of Luther’s Bible, his own work met with but little success. His stilted German translation found but few readers.[2019]Even to the followers of the new faith Luther’s translation gave offence owing to its want of fidelity. Bullinger, writing to Bucer on a certain question, remarks: “Luther admits that he has not been faithful in his translation of the Bible, in fact he isalmost inclined to withdraw it.”[2020]J. L. Holler, who in 1654 wrote a pamphlet about his return from Protestantism to the Catholic Church, says that what moved him to take this step was his discovery of Luther’s dishonest rendering. He gave a long list of passages where Luther’s Bible departs from the true text.[2021]In his treatment of the Canon of the Bible Luther proceeds with his customary licence. Those books of the Bible in which he thought he found his own doctrines most clearly enunciated he speaks of in the Prefaces as “the best,” viz. the Gospel and 1st Epistle of St. John, the Epistles of St. Paul, particularly those to the Romans, the Galatians and the Ephesians, and the 1st Epistle of Peter; the remaining books he arbitrarily ranks below these, and sometimes goes so far in depreciating them that their biblical character is jeopardised (below, p. 522, n. 6).“The standard by which the greater or lesser value of each book is determined,” says Adolf Hausrath, is the degree of clearness with which the doctrine of justification by faith is proclaimed. “Protestant Bible criticism had its originator in Luther, only that his successors shrank from persevering in his footsteps.”[2022]Of 2 Machabees he had said even at the Leipzig Disputation that it did not belong to the Canon, simply because of the difficulty presented by the passage quoted by Eck concerning Purgatory which Luther denied. Of this book and the book of Esther, which also found no favour in his eyes, he said later in the Table-Talk, that “they were too much inclined to judaise and contained much heathen naughtiness.” The so-called deuterocanonical books, though they are found in the Septuagint, were practically denied the status of inspired books by the very way in which he grouped them; in his translation they appear as a mere appendix to the rest of Scripture. According to the Preface, they were “not to be regarded as equal to the Bible, though good and profitable to read.”He denied that the Epistle to the Hebrews emanated from an Apostle; it was “a made-up Epistle,” consisting of fragments amongst which, “mayhap, there is wood, hay and chaff.”[2023]The Apocalypse he regarded as neither “apostolic nor prophetic.”[2024]“Let each one judge of it as he thinks fit; my spiritcannot find its way in the book.”[2025]In the Preface to the Epistle of Jude he is very unfair to this portion of Holy Scripture.[2026]He regards it as merely an excerpt from the 2nd Epistle of Peter and says it was “an unnecessary missive and should be ranked below the main books [of the Bible].”[2027]The words of approval he elsewhere bestows on these books do not avail to undo his criticism in this instance.As regards his animosity to the Epistle of James; Luther questions its authenticity chiefly because, so he says, this Epistle, “in direct contrast to St. Paul and the rest of Scripture, attributes righteousness to works.”[2028]As further grounds for doubting its genuineness, he points out, that, though “it undertakes to teach Christian people, yet throughout its whole length it never once considers the sufferings, the resurrection and the spirit of Christ,” further, it uses the language of the apostolic writings in such a way, “that it is plain that he [the author] lived long after St. Peter and St. Paul.”[2029]—On these grounds, at the close of his preface to the New Testament of 1522, he characterised it as an epistle of straw compared with the other canonical writings: “Hence the Epistle of James is nothing but an epistle of straw in comparison with them, for it has nothing evangelical about it.”[2030]—In 1515 and 1516, when he wrote his unprinted commentary on Romans, he had as yet no objection to raise against the canonical character of the Epistle of James. On the contrary he sought to combine the doctrine of this epistle on good works with that of St. Paul; he wrote: “When James and Paul say a man is justified by works, they are refuting the false views of those who imagine that faith suffices without its works.”[2031]But as early as the Leipzig Disputation in 1519 he expressed himself unfavourably concerning the Epistle of James. He repeats his condemnation in the commentary on Genesis and even goes so far as to remark bitterly, that James was mad (delirat) with his crazy doctrine of works;[2032]in the same way, in the marginal notes to his private copy of the New Testament he says, in 1530for instance, of James ii. 12: “Oh what a chaos!”[2033]That he eventually altered his opinion, as has been asserted, cannot be proved merely from the circumstance that the later editions of his translation of the Bible do not contain the above words concerning the Epistle of straw. Although he occasionally expresses himself more favourably to this Epistle, still, against this, must be set other unfavourable utterances, nor did he ever retract his severe public condemnation.[2034]Even in his own day many who favoured the innovations spoke out against his condemnation of the Epistle of James. Carlstadt in his “De canonicis scripturis” objected in the strongest terms to the attacks on the Epistle, though he refrains from naming Luther. Luther’s opinion at that time, viz. that Jerome might be the author, was characterised quite openly by Carlstadt as “a baseless supposition,” and his proofs as “frivolous arguments by which he sought to discredit the Epistle of James.”[2035]Zwingli, Calvin and H. Bullinger also disclaimed Luther’s views. “In the 17th and 18th centuries James stood in high favour with Protestants,” and they even sought to exonerate Luther as best they could, sometimes on very strange grounds.[2036]The following is the final judgment of a Protestant critic of modern times who had also vainly tried to excuse Luther’s action: “It remains an act of injustice no less natural than regrettable.”[2037]Says Carlstadt’s biographer: “What lent Carlstadt a decided advantage in his polemics (against Luther’s attitude towards the Epistle of James) was the utter inconsistency of Luther’s critical attitude towards Holy Scripture at that time.”[2038]Luther “read his theology into the Bible,” remarks another Protestant critic, “just as his mediæval predecessors had done with theirs.”[2039]“With a wondrous pertinacity he pitted his theology and his Christ against everything that did not accord with it, against Popery, against Tradition, yea, against the Bible itself.”[2040]The halo of learning that had so long surrounded Luther’s German Bible seemed to threaten to fade when, after long preparation, the revised edition was published at Halle in 1883 (and, with new emendations, in 1892). A commission oflearned Protestant theologians “of various shades of opinion” was entrusted by the German-Evangelical Conference of Eisenach with the work. Out of too great respect for Luther the alterations made were, however, all too few; veneration for his memory explains why the translation was not raised to the present standard of learning. The result was that many Protestant congregations, more particularly in North Germany, looked askance at the new edition and it was not generally introduced.[2041]A proposal was made, but to no purpose, that an exact counterpart of the Luther Bible of 1545 should be reproduced as a literary monument which would best serve to honour the author’s memory. The severe objections which scholars have brought against the revised edition cause it to resemble already a ruin, which, having had the misfortune to date from a period when the demands made by learning were less insistent than to-day, now towers lonely and forsaken in our midst.It is true that the revised Bible, with its heavy type showing exactly where it departs from the wording of the old Luther Bible, exhibits a huge number of freshly hewn stones built into the old, crumbling fabric. Nevertheless De Lagarde could say of the scholars who had taken part in the work:
As regards the state of the language in Germany at that time, E. Gutjahr has recently endeavoured to prove that the efforts at colonisation and the movement of the people, more particularly from the 12th to the 14th century, had paved the way in Saxony for the rise and spread of a new, common language (New High German), and that in towns like Halle a new patrician type of language had sprung up which Luther had only to assimilate. In his “Anfänge der neuhochdeutschen Sprache vor Luther” (1910), the author gives us an outline of the conclusions he hasreached and which he hopes to set forth at greater length later. Whether he will succeed in making out his case remains, however, to be seen.The language of the Saxon Chancery was, according to Gutjahr, even in Luther’s day, not merely the “polite language of general intercourse,” but one in which all the German Courts were versed, the Imperial, Austrian one of Maximilian, as much as that of the Saxon Electorate under Frederick the Wise.[1977]From this language, “into which he infused new elements taken from the mouth of the people,” Luther forged a mighty weapon for his work, being all the more readily led to do so seeing that the “reforming movement found its mainstay among the patrician classes of the Saxon Electorate.”[1978]Nevertheless we must not assume the existence in Luther’s day of any common written language in the modern sense. The foundation for such a common language had indeed been laid, but as yet it did not exist. Before our nation could lay claim to a common language of its own—our Modern High German as written—a long time had still to elapse.[1979]The language used by Luther in his Bible was made still more widely known owing to the work being at once reprinted even where other dialects prevailed, though as a rule some alterations were made to bring it into line with the idiom in use; at times the printers did no more than append a short vocabulary explaining such Saxon phrases as might be strange to the reader. In this way the new Bible, the language of which was so admirably suited to become a common one, penetrated everywhere, even into out of the way districts where the most divergent dialects obtained.[1980]Its influence was all the more important now that small principalities were springing up at the expense of the unity of Germany and threatened the language with further disintegration. The Lutherans were the first to perceive and work against this danger, though the Catholics were by no means unmindful of it too. Catholics, too, sought to take advantage of the translation, and, in some cases, even went too far in this. Luther once declares in his usual vein: “Our opponents read it more than do our own people”;[1981]he also mentions that Duke George had said: “Let themonk finish translating the Bible into German and then get himself gone.”[1982]What in the case of Protestants favoured the influence Luther’s Bible exerted on the language, was, on the one hand the profound interest aroused in the reader by his inspiring pen, and, on the other, its appearance at a time when, though the art of printing had been invented, the whole world, and more particularly Germany, judged from a literary, theological standpoint, was still lying to a large extent fallow and was thus more readily dominated by such a work as his, and that not merely as regards the matter but also as regards the style. Men of learning, owing to humanistic influences, wrote almost exclusively in Latin. The use of the German language for theological and religious subjects, save in sermons and popular writings, was something unusual; in fact, such a thing was rather discountenanced owing largely to the publication of German works which had made a wrong use of Scripture.In Lutheranism the New High German of the Bible found its way not only into educated, ecclesiastical circles but also to the common folk, into whose ears the preachers assiduously dinned countless favourite texts in their new form; it also became familiar to the teachers and children in the schools. No more powerful lever for the furtherance of New High German could have been found. A century after, New High German had become the language of the churches and schools in the regions subject to Luther’s influence, whilst the South German and Low German dialects had largely lost their hold.When all is said, however, the secret of such success is not to be entirely understood unless we also take into account the religious position Luther occupied in the eyes of his followers. All who venerated him as having thrown a new light on religion, valued and honoured the language used by a mind so imperious, so strong and versatile, and, when it so pleased, so sympathetic. H. Böhmer says very truly of the old German Protestants: “Luther became for the Germans the authority on speech because he was their supreme authority on faith and personal conduct. Had he not been a religious reformer and had he not bequeathed to Evangelical Germany in his Bible a book, which,on account of its religious importance was bound to be looked upon as a model of language, he would never have exercised so powerful an influence on the written and spoken language.”[1983]Nevertheless, to assert, that, by his German Bible and his other writings Luther was the actual founder of New High German is to go too far, quite apart from the fact that German, as now written, is no longer identical with the German of Luther’s Bible and other writings. We cannot take seriously Grimm’s assertions that “New High German may in point of fact be called the Protestant dialect,” or that “Luther’s language, owing to its noble, almost marvellous purity and its mighty influence, was both the germ and the foundation of the New High German tongue.”[1984]“Protestants,” says Pastor Risch, “have hitherto been disposed to undervalue the literary use made of the German language before Luther’s day, particularly in the religious domain, and to exaggerate Luther’s importance in the history of the tongue. Only in so far as he succeeded in seizing upon and bringing out all the forces and possibilities latent in the language, was it possible for his work to be truly creative and epoch-making. To catch the idiom of the people, not to force a new language upon it with his German Bible, was, on his own admission, Luther’s aim. The German language prepared the way for Luther to a greater extent than at first sight appears.”[1985]Two other considerations will serve still further to curtail the importance of Luther’s services to the German tongue.First of all it must be pointed out that many very coarse elements found their way into his popular works, and thus, unhappily, into the written language, and, secondly, that a large number of words and phrases peculiar to South Germany and which were accordingly unknown to Luther, find, for this reason, no place in works, with the result that the German language suffered.We may speak with less reserve of the merits of the new translation so far as it is based on the original languages of the Bible, and on the Latin Vulgate then in general use. Even before Luther started on his work attention had beencalled to the original text; indeed, as it happens, the scholar who was the primary cause of Luther’s studying the original language was his Catholic opponent, Erasmus, who himself brought out the Greek edition of the New Testament. To Luther, however, belongs the honour of having been the first to tread the new philological paths with a German version.In his somewhat hurried version of the New Testament he used the Greek text as well as the Vulgate. In the same way, in his translation of the Old Testament, he went back to the original so far as his knowledge of Hebrew allowed, and, where this was insufficient, sought the help of others.The principle he followed, viz. to make the Bible plain to the German reader by explaining its meaning, so far as this can be done by a translation, brings us, however, face to face with other questions.Luther had a high opinion of the accuracy and clearness of his work. He says of it: “I can with a good conscience testify that I have shown the utmost fidelity and diligence therein, and have never thought to deceive.”[1986]“No one would believe what labour it has cost except those who worked with us,” so he said in his last years according to Mathesius, when looking back on the success of his undertaking. “This Bible—not that I would praise myself but the work speaks for itself—is so good that it is better than the Greek or Latin translation, and more is to be found in it than in all the commentaries. For we remove the hindrances and stumbling-blocks out of the way so that other people may be able to read without difficulty.”[1987]Reducing this eulogy to its proper proportions we may indeed allow that Luther eliminated the “hindrances and stumbling-blocks” from his German translation, being no literalist, but anxious above all to put into plain German what sounded strange or difficult.Yet such a system of translation can only within certain limits be regarded as the right one. As to whether Luther always kept within these limits, and as to how we are to regard the use he made of this freedom in particular instances, is a point on which even the greatest admirers of the German Bible disagree. Pastor Risch, the expert repeatedly referred to above, remarks pessimistically: “Scarcely any of those who have written on Luther’s method of translating have gone beyond mere generalities. They are satisfied with dishing up again more or less skilfully Luther’s principles as set forth in his ‘Von Dolmetzscheñ.’ Not even my own work on the German Bible (1907) do I exempt from this criticism. Research must bring us by inductive reasoning to the recognition of the root principle which alone can explain the many thousand variant readings we meet with to-day in the [Weimar] German Bible (vols. i. and ii.), and in Bindseil’s critical edition,”[1988]—It is, however, to be feared that in very many instances the “root principle” supposed to underlie Luther’s work will fail in practice. His hasty, precipitate work in the Wartburg (the completion of the New Testament in three months) puts any real scholarly method out of the question. The fact that barely a week was allotted to each Gospel precludes the use of any well-considered principles in the work of translation.Again, Luther often deviates far too much from the original text and takes too many liberties in his efforts to be plain. To this must be added the fact, that, owing to his insufficient linguistic attainments, he fails in many instances to reach the real sense of the original sacred text, to say nothing, of course, of the numerous critical emendations made at a later date in the texts. Hence Protestants have sometimes judged the scholarship of Luther’s Bible rather harshly. Josias Bunsen, for instance, called Luther’s translation “one of the most inaccurate, though showing signs of great genius,” and declared that, in it, there are “three thousand passages which call for revision.”[1989]E. Nestle, the Protestant philologist and Bible expert, referring to the revision which had taken place in Germany, says of the defects of Luther’s Bible: “A comparison with theEnglish or Swiss work of revision shows how much further we might and ought to have gone.”[1990]The most outspoken critic is, however, Paul de Lagarde, the Protestant theologian and Orientalist of Göttingen. In an article likewise dealing with the so-called “Revised Bible” of 1883,[1991]he devotes more than five pages to a list of passages from Isaias, the Book of Proverbs and the Psalms, which Franz Delitzsch had been compelled to retranslate even earlier.[1992]To this list he appends another long one of passages, which he holds to be manifestly mistranslations of the original.Thus, to quote only one important instance, the Messianic prophecy of Jacob in Genesis xlix. 10, should be rendered: “The sceptre shaשll not be taken away from Juda ... till he come that is to be sent,” or “that is prayed for” (ילתש), whereas Luther translates תלש֗ incorrectly by “hero” and thus robs the wonderful text of some of its force. De Lagarde notes, that elsewhere Luther himself renders Malachias iii. 1: “The Lord Whom you seek shall speedily come to His temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire.” Beside such mistakes Luther’s allusion to the hedgehog that builds nests and lays eggs (Isaias xxxiv. 15) can only be regarded as a curiosity and a slip on his part. This hedgehog was among the victims sacrificed in the revised Bible of 1883.The same critic also complains, that, Rom. iii. 23, even in the revised Bible, has: “For they are sinners,” whereas the Aorist demands the translation: “They all have sinned.” He shows how, as early as 1839, Tholuck had drawn attention to the vast dogmatic importance of Luther’s suppression of this Aorist.[1993]With still greater show of reason De Lagarde finds fault with other wilful deviations from the text; he refers to those pointed out by Döllinger in “Die Reformation” and again insisted on by Janssen, and then by Paulsen in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts.” These false renderings have, however, out of a wrong regard for Luther, been retained in the Lutheran Bible even to the present day.Luther’s scant concern for the text where it runs counter to his ideas calls for further discussion.Luther’s German Bible Considered TheologicallyBearing in mind Luther’s character we can well understand how sorely he was tempted during his work to makethe text square with his own doctrine, the more so since the translation was intended as a popular explanation of the Bible. When, moreover, one remembers his arbitrary way of proving his doctrine, and the entire freedom with which he was wont to handle other religious matters connected with antiquity, which, though not in the Word of God, were nevertheless historical facts easy of verification, it will not greatly surprise even those readers who are prejudiced in his favour to find, that, in his treatment of the original text of Holy Scripture—which most people are not able to verify—he did not scruple here and there to introduce ideas of his own. “What does it matter,” so he said later in his blind conviction of being in the right, in reply to those who accused him of having altered the text, “so long as at bottom the thing is clear,” so long as “it evidently is so,” and “is demanded by the state of the case?” “Not only is it right but even highly necessary that it should be set forth in the clearest and fullest manner,” etc.[1994]It is chiefly in the question of justification by faith alone that he twists his text so much that his version ceases in reality to be a translation. He indeed speaks of his additions as “commentaries,” but no one could thus have “commented” on the passages who was not, like Luther, entirely taken up with the new dogma of grace, justification and faith.In his efforts to provide his doctrine with a firm foundation in the eyes of his readers, he added the word “only” in Rom. iv. 15 and Rom. iii. 20, thus making these Pauline texts into a condemnation of the Law: “The law workethonlywrath,” “by the lawonlyis the knowledge of sin.”Again, in Rom. iii. 25 f., the Apostle speaks of Christ “whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to the showing of his justice for the remission of former sins through the forbearance of God for the showing of his justice in this time, that he himself may be just and the justification of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ.” Luther, however, in the interests of his new doctrine, makes him say that God had “set up Christ as a mercy seat through faith in his Blood, in order that he may present the righteousness which is acceptable to him, forgiving the sins which had remained till then under divine forbearance, that he might in his season offer the righteousness which is acceptable to him that he might himself alone be just and the justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus.” The offeringof the righteousness that is acceptable to God—an expression twice repeated—is not found in the original text, but of course is highly favourable to Luther’s doctrine of a merely imputed righteousness.[1995]In the same way he here speaks of God as “alone” being just, an interpolation of which the origin must also be sought in the translator’s theology.[1996]Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith, imputed justice.[1997]Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach” (Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (ib., ii. 25), and Joseph, the husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be pious still.”[1998]From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church” the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests sit in their temples intheir voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,” remarks a Protestant critic.[1999]The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere taught by the Apostle.And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is: “For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is just.”The same is the case with the oft-quoted text Rom. iii. 28, of which Luther’s Bible makes a kind of palladium for the new teaching by the arbitrary addition of the word “alone.” The text has been immortalised in its Lutheran shape even to our own day in inscriptions on Protestant churches and pulpits. There Luther makes the Apostle say: “Thus we hold that a man is justified by faith alone without the works of the law,” whereas the old Latin of the Vulgate rightly rendered it: “Arbitramur enim iustificari hominem per fidem sine operibus.”The word “alone” is not called for either by the text or the context. It is indeed true that the Apostle wishes to emphasise the exclusive action of faith, nevertheless, if we take this faith as he understands it, i.e. as a strong and vivifying faith and no mere dead thing, then it naturally comprises the works wrought by faith and man’s co-operation under the influence of grace. Of this faith to which the Apostle expressly refers, for instance in Romans ii. 6 ff. and in Galatians v. 6, he might quite well have said in the above passage that it justifies without works, i.e. without such as are performed apart from faith and grace. In fact, taken in this sense, Luther’s interpolation of the word “alone” is not reprehensible, though in the sense in which he intended it it is altogether inadmissible; for he would fain make the Apostle say, that faith “alone,” without any works of the law, operates justification, the works being merely an aspect of faith. The addition of the word “alone” amounted to a quite unjustifiable usurpation of the famous Pauline dictum for the uses of his own party. It must also at least be termed a subjective falsification, even though, objectively, it be capable of a better interpretation. If, as we have heard Luther say, he really wishedto show in his translation “the utmost fidelity and industry and had never a thought of deception,” then he should not have made St. Paul say more than he does in the original, viz. that man is justified by faith without works.Contemporary Catholic pens were not slow in assailing in the strongest terms Luther’s translation on account of his surreptitious introduction of the word “alone.” The translator also regarded the protest as of sufficient importance to warrant his devoting his leisure in the Coburg in September, 1530, to composing a reply. The tract in question, entitled “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” he sent to his friend Wenceslaus Link at Nuremberg instructing him to have it printed.[2000]In it he gives two reasons in vindication of his arbitrary action: He had been obliged in this instance to add the word “alone” in order first of all to render the Apostle’s meaning in correct German, for it was the German usage to use the word “alone” or “only,” when, of two things, people wanted to deny one and affirm the other, for instance, if one wished to say that a peasant had brought the wheat asked for but not the money, then he would not say “he has brought the wheat but not the money,” but “he has brought no money but only corn.”[2001]Luther, however, was only able to show that this was in accordance with the spirit of the language in certain instances, not that it was necessary or indispensable in every case, particularly in the instance in question; still less could he prove that there were not circumstances affecting the words and the meaning where such a use of “alone” or “only” must be avoided in order not to change the tenor of the sentence. It might rightly have been urged against him that fidelity was far more important a matter than good phraseology.—The second reason he alleges in support of the interpolation bears directly on his erroneous view of the Apostle’s doctrine: “I have not followed merely linguistic considerations, for the text and the meaning of St. Paul absolutely demand it.” “He deliberately cuts away all works.” “Whoever would speak bluntly and plainly of such a dismissal of works must say: faith alone,” etc. If “this be so obvious,” “why then not say so”?[2002]Thus he makes the word “alone” a sort of hall-mark of his own “public” teaching.He is determined to defy his opponents and to challenge them yet again. “And I repent me,” he cries, “that I did not add thereto the wordall, thus: withoutallworks,alllaw whatsoever, so that it might be spoken out with a full, round sound. Thus therefore it shall remain in my New Testament, and though all Pope-asses should go raving mad they will not alter my decision.”[2003]—In a similar way and with redoubled energy he turns on those who had found fault with his translation of the Hail Marybecause he had discarded “full of grace” in favour of “gracious.” “The Papists are furious with me for having spoilt the Angelical Salutation, but, as a matter of fact, in good German I ought to have said, ‘God greet thee, dear Mary.’ I shall translate, not asthey, but asIplease!”[2004]The remarkable “Sendbrieff,” other portions of which are of the highest psychological interest, must be regarded as in reality a product of the author’s mental overstrain at that time. On the one hand he was on tenterhooks wondering what the fate of the new Evangel would be, threatened as it was by the Diet of Augsburg; on the other hand he was overmastered by the sight of his own achievements, particularly his much-belauded translation of the Bible. He was also profoundly exasperated by the translation of the New Testament published by Emser (see below, p. 519), the “Dresen [Dresden] Scribbler” as Luther called him,[2005]and by the prohibition issued at Leipzig against the sale of his German Bible in the duchy of Saxony.Hence he relieves his feelings in his usual way by an outburst of noisy vituperation: “All the Papists in a lump” are not “clever enough to understand or translate a single chapter of Scripture aright, no, not even the first two words.” Their braying, their “he-haw, he-haw, is too weak to harm my translation. I know full well what art, industry, reason and common sense go to make a good translation, but, as for them, they understand this less even than the miller’s beast.” It is quite true, so he says, that the four letters,sola, do not occur in Romans, “which letters these blockheads stare at as stupidly as a cow does at a new gate”; but, so he goes on, it is not our business to inquire “of the Latin letters how to speak German, as these donkeys do.” “No Pope-ass or mule-ass, who has never even attempted it himself, shall I suffer to be my judge, or to find fault with me in this matter. Whoever does not want my version has simply to let it alone and ... be rewarded with the devil’s thanks.”[2006]“For the future I shall simply despise them and get others to do the same, so long as they remain such people, I beg your pardon, donkeys.”[2007]In his efforts to express his contempt in the strongest words at his command we have the key to what he says in conclusion, which some of his opponents took too seriously. The famous “Sic volo, sic iubeo” with which his tract ends, though of course not meant in earnest, is nevertheless very characteristic of him.“If,” he writes, “your new Papist makes much ado about the wordsola, just say straight out to him: Dr. Martin Lutherwillhave it so and says Papist and donkey are one and the same thing....Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” He too would boast for once and rail against the blockheads as St. Paul [!] had done against his crazy saints. Hence he parodies St. Paul’s words and scoffs at the Papists who wished to make themselves out to be doctors, preachers, theologians anddisputants, reiterating for each category the words “And so am I.” He then goes further: “I am able to interpret the Psalms and the Prophets, which they cannot do. I can translate, which they can’t. I can read Holy Scripture, they cannot. And to come to other matters: I am better acquainted with their dialectics and their philosophy than the whole lot of them together, and know for certain that not one of them understands his Aristotle. And if there is one among them who understands one introduction or chapter of Aristotle, then I am ready to be tossed in a blanket.”[2008]The whole tract is one of the most extravagant examples of this stamp of polemical satire. It is hardly possible to determine where exactly the “great doctor” ceases and the satirical rhetorician begins.In addition to the mistakes and the wilfulness of the translation, the character of the glosses appended by Luther, and still more his attitude towards the Canon of the Bible, laid his work open to objections of the most serious kind.In the glosses on many passages he shows wonderful skill in manipulating the text in favour of his wrong views. This is carried so far that, to the account of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by the Magdalen (Mat. xxvi. 10), he adds the marginal gloss: “Thus one sees that faith alone makes the work good,” because only faith could transform this seeming waste into a good work.[2009]Of Mat. xvi. 18: “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church,” he gives the following explanation, which plainly rests on his own partisan and anti-Papal standpoint: By Peter all Christians together with Peter are meant, and their confession is the rock. “All Christians are Peters on account of the confession which here Peter makes, which also is the rock on which Peter and all the other Peters are built. The confession is common to all; hence also the name.”[2010]It was partly the defects of the translation itself, partly the cleverly calculated and thus all the more dangerous marginal glosses, which called forth objections and warnings from Catholic writers as soon as the work was published.Hier. Emser complains that Luther “made Scripture to turn everywhere on faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of.” Emser speaks of more than 1400 passages which Luther had rendered in a false and heretical sense, though many of the passages he instances are not of any great importance.[2011]Johann Hasenberg, the Leipzig Professor, even went so far as to enumerate three thousand passages badly rendered in the German Bible.[2012]The theological faculty at Leipzig had declared as early as Jan. 6, 1523, that Luther had introduced his erroneous doctrines into the German Bible, a verdict on which Duke George took his stand when issuing his prohibition. Emser now set to work to carry out the Duke’s further instructions, viz. that “he should revise anew the New Testament in accordance with the tenor and arrangement of the old, authentic text, and restore it and set it in order throughout.”[2013]His purpose was mainly to weed out the theological errors. His new edition of Luther’s text was revised according to the Vulgate and provided with notes on the Greek. He also bought from Cranach the blocks for the illustrations (see below, p. 528), rejecting, however, such of the cuts as were too insulting, for instance, those in which the Papal tiara appears. The many excellencies of the language of Luther’s version, and almost all the fruits of his labours, thus passed into Emser’s edition, which appeared at Leipzig in 1527. Absence of copyright laws explains to some extent Emser’s action. Emser’s Bible, which was also made up to resemble Luther’s folio volumes, bore no translator’s name and was simply entitled: “Das Naw Testament nach Lawt der christlichen Kirchen bewertem Text corrigiert un wiederumb zurecht gebracht,” and thus made no claim to being a new or original translation. As, however, Luther, the original translator, had been severely censured in Duke George’s Introduction we can readily understand that he was much vexed at the revision of his work and accused theeditor of plagiarism.[2014]As Kawerau, however, remarks, “had he (Emser) laid claim to being an actual ‘translator,’ then his work would indeed have deserved to be styled a piece of plagiarism, as it has even down to our own day; but this he did not do, and merely wished to be regarded as the corrector of the Lutheran translation; hence this charge may be dismissed as unfair.”[2015]The second edition, however, which appeared after his death, bore Emser’s name as the translator: “Das New Testament, so Emser säliger verdeutscht.” This second edition was brought out by Augustine Alveld, as recent research has proved.[2016]In it certain coarse expressions which Emser had borrowed from Luther’s Bible were supplanted by more “seemly” words “for the sake of the maidens and the pure of heart,” a circumstance which incidentally shows that even Luther’s more moderate style of writing, as we find it in his Bible, was felt to be unusual and not always quite proper.Johann Dietenberger, a Bible expert and contemporary of Luther’s, wrote: Although Luther constantly appeals to Holy Scripture, yet there is no one who takes away from or adds to it more than he. “Of the Bible he rejects and adds what he pleases in order to establish his errors.”[2017]Dietenberger, a Mayence Dominican, published a complete translation of Holy Scripture in 1534, making considerable use for this purpose of Luther’s German Bible. He says in his Preface, in explanation of this, that he had been urgently requested to “go through the recent German translation of the Bible (Luther’s) and remove all that was not in accordance with the faith.”[2018]Johann Eck, who undertook a new translation of the whole Bible (1537), acted more independently; but, however good as a critic of Luther’s Bible, his own work met with but little success. His stilted German translation found but few readers.[2019]Even to the followers of the new faith Luther’s translation gave offence owing to its want of fidelity. Bullinger, writing to Bucer on a certain question, remarks: “Luther admits that he has not been faithful in his translation of the Bible, in fact he isalmost inclined to withdraw it.”[2020]J. L. Holler, who in 1654 wrote a pamphlet about his return from Protestantism to the Catholic Church, says that what moved him to take this step was his discovery of Luther’s dishonest rendering. He gave a long list of passages where Luther’s Bible departs from the true text.[2021]In his treatment of the Canon of the Bible Luther proceeds with his customary licence. Those books of the Bible in which he thought he found his own doctrines most clearly enunciated he speaks of in the Prefaces as “the best,” viz. the Gospel and 1st Epistle of St. John, the Epistles of St. Paul, particularly those to the Romans, the Galatians and the Ephesians, and the 1st Epistle of Peter; the remaining books he arbitrarily ranks below these, and sometimes goes so far in depreciating them that their biblical character is jeopardised (below, p. 522, n. 6).“The standard by which the greater or lesser value of each book is determined,” says Adolf Hausrath, is the degree of clearness with which the doctrine of justification by faith is proclaimed. “Protestant Bible criticism had its originator in Luther, only that his successors shrank from persevering in his footsteps.”[2022]Of 2 Machabees he had said even at the Leipzig Disputation that it did not belong to the Canon, simply because of the difficulty presented by the passage quoted by Eck concerning Purgatory which Luther denied. Of this book and the book of Esther, which also found no favour in his eyes, he said later in the Table-Talk, that “they were too much inclined to judaise and contained much heathen naughtiness.” The so-called deuterocanonical books, though they are found in the Septuagint, were practically denied the status of inspired books by the very way in which he grouped them; in his translation they appear as a mere appendix to the rest of Scripture. According to the Preface, they were “not to be regarded as equal to the Bible, though good and profitable to read.”He denied that the Epistle to the Hebrews emanated from an Apostle; it was “a made-up Epistle,” consisting of fragments amongst which, “mayhap, there is wood, hay and chaff.”[2023]The Apocalypse he regarded as neither “apostolic nor prophetic.”[2024]“Let each one judge of it as he thinks fit; my spiritcannot find its way in the book.”[2025]In the Preface to the Epistle of Jude he is very unfair to this portion of Holy Scripture.[2026]He regards it as merely an excerpt from the 2nd Epistle of Peter and says it was “an unnecessary missive and should be ranked below the main books [of the Bible].”[2027]The words of approval he elsewhere bestows on these books do not avail to undo his criticism in this instance.As regards his animosity to the Epistle of James; Luther questions its authenticity chiefly because, so he says, this Epistle, “in direct contrast to St. Paul and the rest of Scripture, attributes righteousness to works.”[2028]As further grounds for doubting its genuineness, he points out, that, though “it undertakes to teach Christian people, yet throughout its whole length it never once considers the sufferings, the resurrection and the spirit of Christ,” further, it uses the language of the apostolic writings in such a way, “that it is plain that he [the author] lived long after St. Peter and St. Paul.”[2029]—On these grounds, at the close of his preface to the New Testament of 1522, he characterised it as an epistle of straw compared with the other canonical writings: “Hence the Epistle of James is nothing but an epistle of straw in comparison with them, for it has nothing evangelical about it.”[2030]—In 1515 and 1516, when he wrote his unprinted commentary on Romans, he had as yet no objection to raise against the canonical character of the Epistle of James. On the contrary he sought to combine the doctrine of this epistle on good works with that of St. Paul; he wrote: “When James and Paul say a man is justified by works, they are refuting the false views of those who imagine that faith suffices without its works.”[2031]But as early as the Leipzig Disputation in 1519 he expressed himself unfavourably concerning the Epistle of James. He repeats his condemnation in the commentary on Genesis and even goes so far as to remark bitterly, that James was mad (delirat) with his crazy doctrine of works;[2032]in the same way, in the marginal notes to his private copy of the New Testament he says, in 1530for instance, of James ii. 12: “Oh what a chaos!”[2033]That he eventually altered his opinion, as has been asserted, cannot be proved merely from the circumstance that the later editions of his translation of the Bible do not contain the above words concerning the Epistle of straw. Although he occasionally expresses himself more favourably to this Epistle, still, against this, must be set other unfavourable utterances, nor did he ever retract his severe public condemnation.[2034]Even in his own day many who favoured the innovations spoke out against his condemnation of the Epistle of James. Carlstadt in his “De canonicis scripturis” objected in the strongest terms to the attacks on the Epistle, though he refrains from naming Luther. Luther’s opinion at that time, viz. that Jerome might be the author, was characterised quite openly by Carlstadt as “a baseless supposition,” and his proofs as “frivolous arguments by which he sought to discredit the Epistle of James.”[2035]Zwingli, Calvin and H. Bullinger also disclaimed Luther’s views. “In the 17th and 18th centuries James stood in high favour with Protestants,” and they even sought to exonerate Luther as best they could, sometimes on very strange grounds.[2036]The following is the final judgment of a Protestant critic of modern times who had also vainly tried to excuse Luther’s action: “It remains an act of injustice no less natural than regrettable.”[2037]Says Carlstadt’s biographer: “What lent Carlstadt a decided advantage in his polemics (against Luther’s attitude towards the Epistle of James) was the utter inconsistency of Luther’s critical attitude towards Holy Scripture at that time.”[2038]Luther “read his theology into the Bible,” remarks another Protestant critic, “just as his mediæval predecessors had done with theirs.”[2039]“With a wondrous pertinacity he pitted his theology and his Christ against everything that did not accord with it, against Popery, against Tradition, yea, against the Bible itself.”[2040]The halo of learning that had so long surrounded Luther’s German Bible seemed to threaten to fade when, after long preparation, the revised edition was published at Halle in 1883 (and, with new emendations, in 1892). A commission oflearned Protestant theologians “of various shades of opinion” was entrusted by the German-Evangelical Conference of Eisenach with the work. Out of too great respect for Luther the alterations made were, however, all too few; veneration for his memory explains why the translation was not raised to the present standard of learning. The result was that many Protestant congregations, more particularly in North Germany, looked askance at the new edition and it was not generally introduced.[2041]A proposal was made, but to no purpose, that an exact counterpart of the Luther Bible of 1545 should be reproduced as a literary monument which would best serve to honour the author’s memory. The severe objections which scholars have brought against the revised edition cause it to resemble already a ruin, which, having had the misfortune to date from a period when the demands made by learning were less insistent than to-day, now towers lonely and forsaken in our midst.It is true that the revised Bible, with its heavy type showing exactly where it departs from the wording of the old Luther Bible, exhibits a huge number of freshly hewn stones built into the old, crumbling fabric. Nevertheless De Lagarde could say of the scholars who had taken part in the work:
As regards the state of the language in Germany at that time, E. Gutjahr has recently endeavoured to prove that the efforts at colonisation and the movement of the people, more particularly from the 12th to the 14th century, had paved the way in Saxony for the rise and spread of a new, common language (New High German), and that in towns like Halle a new patrician type of language had sprung up which Luther had only to assimilate. In his “Anfänge der neuhochdeutschen Sprache vor Luther” (1910), the author gives us an outline of the conclusions he hasreached and which he hopes to set forth at greater length later. Whether he will succeed in making out his case remains, however, to be seen.The language of the Saxon Chancery was, according to Gutjahr, even in Luther’s day, not merely the “polite language of general intercourse,” but one in which all the German Courts were versed, the Imperial, Austrian one of Maximilian, as much as that of the Saxon Electorate under Frederick the Wise.[1977]From this language, “into which he infused new elements taken from the mouth of the people,” Luther forged a mighty weapon for his work, being all the more readily led to do so seeing that the “reforming movement found its mainstay among the patrician classes of the Saxon Electorate.”[1978]Nevertheless we must not assume the existence in Luther’s day of any common written language in the modern sense. The foundation for such a common language had indeed been laid, but as yet it did not exist. Before our nation could lay claim to a common language of its own—our Modern High German as written—a long time had still to elapse.[1979]
As regards the state of the language in Germany at that time, E. Gutjahr has recently endeavoured to prove that the efforts at colonisation and the movement of the people, more particularly from the 12th to the 14th century, had paved the way in Saxony for the rise and spread of a new, common language (New High German), and that in towns like Halle a new patrician type of language had sprung up which Luther had only to assimilate. In his “Anfänge der neuhochdeutschen Sprache vor Luther” (1910), the author gives us an outline of the conclusions he hasreached and which he hopes to set forth at greater length later. Whether he will succeed in making out his case remains, however, to be seen.
The language of the Saxon Chancery was, according to Gutjahr, even in Luther’s day, not merely the “polite language of general intercourse,” but one in which all the German Courts were versed, the Imperial, Austrian one of Maximilian, as much as that of the Saxon Electorate under Frederick the Wise.[1977]From this language, “into which he infused new elements taken from the mouth of the people,” Luther forged a mighty weapon for his work, being all the more readily led to do so seeing that the “reforming movement found its mainstay among the patrician classes of the Saxon Electorate.”[1978]Nevertheless we must not assume the existence in Luther’s day of any common written language in the modern sense. The foundation for such a common language had indeed been laid, but as yet it did not exist. Before our nation could lay claim to a common language of its own—our Modern High German as written—a long time had still to elapse.[1979]
The language used by Luther in his Bible was made still more widely known owing to the work being at once reprinted even where other dialects prevailed, though as a rule some alterations were made to bring it into line with the idiom in use; at times the printers did no more than append a short vocabulary explaining such Saxon phrases as might be strange to the reader. In this way the new Bible, the language of which was so admirably suited to become a common one, penetrated everywhere, even into out of the way districts where the most divergent dialects obtained.[1980]
Its influence was all the more important now that small principalities were springing up at the expense of the unity of Germany and threatened the language with further disintegration. The Lutherans were the first to perceive and work against this danger, though the Catholics were by no means unmindful of it too. Catholics, too, sought to take advantage of the translation, and, in some cases, even went too far in this. Luther once declares in his usual vein: “Our opponents read it more than do our own people”;[1981]he also mentions that Duke George had said: “Let themonk finish translating the Bible into German and then get himself gone.”[1982]
What in the case of Protestants favoured the influence Luther’s Bible exerted on the language, was, on the one hand the profound interest aroused in the reader by his inspiring pen, and, on the other, its appearance at a time when, though the art of printing had been invented, the whole world, and more particularly Germany, judged from a literary, theological standpoint, was still lying to a large extent fallow and was thus more readily dominated by such a work as his, and that not merely as regards the matter but also as regards the style. Men of learning, owing to humanistic influences, wrote almost exclusively in Latin. The use of the German language for theological and religious subjects, save in sermons and popular writings, was something unusual; in fact, such a thing was rather discountenanced owing largely to the publication of German works which had made a wrong use of Scripture.
In Lutheranism the New High German of the Bible found its way not only into educated, ecclesiastical circles but also to the common folk, into whose ears the preachers assiduously dinned countless favourite texts in their new form; it also became familiar to the teachers and children in the schools. No more powerful lever for the furtherance of New High German could have been found. A century after, New High German had become the language of the churches and schools in the regions subject to Luther’s influence, whilst the South German and Low German dialects had largely lost their hold.
When all is said, however, the secret of such success is not to be entirely understood unless we also take into account the religious position Luther occupied in the eyes of his followers. All who venerated him as having thrown a new light on religion, valued and honoured the language used by a mind so imperious, so strong and versatile, and, when it so pleased, so sympathetic. H. Böhmer says very truly of the old German Protestants: “Luther became for the Germans the authority on speech because he was their supreme authority on faith and personal conduct. Had he not been a religious reformer and had he not bequeathed to Evangelical Germany in his Bible a book, which,on account of its religious importance was bound to be looked upon as a model of language, he would never have exercised so powerful an influence on the written and spoken language.”[1983]
Nevertheless, to assert, that, by his German Bible and his other writings Luther was the actual founder of New High German is to go too far, quite apart from the fact that German, as now written, is no longer identical with the German of Luther’s Bible and other writings. We cannot take seriously Grimm’s assertions that “New High German may in point of fact be called the Protestant dialect,” or that “Luther’s language, owing to its noble, almost marvellous purity and its mighty influence, was both the germ and the foundation of the New High German tongue.”[1984]
“Protestants,” says Pastor Risch, “have hitherto been disposed to undervalue the literary use made of the German language before Luther’s day, particularly in the religious domain, and to exaggerate Luther’s importance in the history of the tongue. Only in so far as he succeeded in seizing upon and bringing out all the forces and possibilities latent in the language, was it possible for his work to be truly creative and epoch-making. To catch the idiom of the people, not to force a new language upon it with his German Bible, was, on his own admission, Luther’s aim. The German language prepared the way for Luther to a greater extent than at first sight appears.”[1985]
Two other considerations will serve still further to curtail the importance of Luther’s services to the German tongue.
First of all it must be pointed out that many very coarse elements found their way into his popular works, and thus, unhappily, into the written language, and, secondly, that a large number of words and phrases peculiar to South Germany and which were accordingly unknown to Luther, find, for this reason, no place in works, with the result that the German language suffered.
We may speak with less reserve of the merits of the new translation so far as it is based on the original languages of the Bible, and on the Latin Vulgate then in general use. Even before Luther started on his work attention had beencalled to the original text; indeed, as it happens, the scholar who was the primary cause of Luther’s studying the original language was his Catholic opponent, Erasmus, who himself brought out the Greek edition of the New Testament. To Luther, however, belongs the honour of having been the first to tread the new philological paths with a German version.
In his somewhat hurried version of the New Testament he used the Greek text as well as the Vulgate. In the same way, in his translation of the Old Testament, he went back to the original so far as his knowledge of Hebrew allowed, and, where this was insufficient, sought the help of others.
The principle he followed, viz. to make the Bible plain to the German reader by explaining its meaning, so far as this can be done by a translation, brings us, however, face to face with other questions.
Luther had a high opinion of the accuracy and clearness of his work. He says of it: “I can with a good conscience testify that I have shown the utmost fidelity and diligence therein, and have never thought to deceive.”[1986]
“No one would believe what labour it has cost except those who worked with us,” so he said in his last years according to Mathesius, when looking back on the success of his undertaking. “This Bible—not that I would praise myself but the work speaks for itself—is so good that it is better than the Greek or Latin translation, and more is to be found in it than in all the commentaries. For we remove the hindrances and stumbling-blocks out of the way so that other people may be able to read without difficulty.”[1987]Reducing this eulogy to its proper proportions we may indeed allow that Luther eliminated the “hindrances and stumbling-blocks” from his German translation, being no literalist, but anxious above all to put into plain German what sounded strange or difficult.
Yet such a system of translation can only within certain limits be regarded as the right one. As to whether Luther always kept within these limits, and as to how we are to regard the use he made of this freedom in particular instances, is a point on which even the greatest admirers of the German Bible disagree. Pastor Risch, the expert repeatedly referred to above, remarks pessimistically: “Scarcely any of those who have written on Luther’s method of translating have gone beyond mere generalities. They are satisfied with dishing up again more or less skilfully Luther’s principles as set forth in his ‘Von Dolmetzscheñ.’ Not even my own work on the German Bible (1907) do I exempt from this criticism. Research must bring us by inductive reasoning to the recognition of the root principle which alone can explain the many thousand variant readings we meet with to-day in the [Weimar] German Bible (vols. i. and ii.), and in Bindseil’s critical edition,”[1988]—It is, however, to be feared that in very many instances the “root principle” supposed to underlie Luther’s work will fail in practice. His hasty, precipitate work in the Wartburg (the completion of the New Testament in three months) puts any real scholarly method out of the question. The fact that barely a week was allotted to each Gospel precludes the use of any well-considered principles in the work of translation.
Again, Luther often deviates far too much from the original text and takes too many liberties in his efforts to be plain. To this must be added the fact, that, owing to his insufficient linguistic attainments, he fails in many instances to reach the real sense of the original sacred text, to say nothing, of course, of the numerous critical emendations made at a later date in the texts. Hence Protestants have sometimes judged the scholarship of Luther’s Bible rather harshly. Josias Bunsen, for instance, called Luther’s translation “one of the most inaccurate, though showing signs of great genius,” and declared that, in it, there are “three thousand passages which call for revision.”[1989]E. Nestle, the Protestant philologist and Bible expert, referring to the revision which had taken place in Germany, says of the defects of Luther’s Bible: “A comparison with theEnglish or Swiss work of revision shows how much further we might and ought to have gone.”[1990]
The most outspoken critic is, however, Paul de Lagarde, the Protestant theologian and Orientalist of Göttingen. In an article likewise dealing with the so-called “Revised Bible” of 1883,[1991]he devotes more than five pages to a list of passages from Isaias, the Book of Proverbs and the Psalms, which Franz Delitzsch had been compelled to retranslate even earlier.[1992]To this list he appends another long one of passages, which he holds to be manifestly mistranslations of the original.Thus, to quote only one important instance, the Messianic prophecy of Jacob in Genesis xlix. 10, should be rendered: “The sceptre shaשll not be taken away from Juda ... till he come that is to be sent,” or “that is prayed for” (ילתש), whereas Luther translates תלש֗ incorrectly by “hero” and thus robs the wonderful text of some of its force. De Lagarde notes, that elsewhere Luther himself renders Malachias iii. 1: “The Lord Whom you seek shall speedily come to His temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire.” Beside such mistakes Luther’s allusion to the hedgehog that builds nests and lays eggs (Isaias xxxiv. 15) can only be regarded as a curiosity and a slip on his part. This hedgehog was among the victims sacrificed in the revised Bible of 1883.The same critic also complains, that, Rom. iii. 23, even in the revised Bible, has: “For they are sinners,” whereas the Aorist demands the translation: “They all have sinned.” He shows how, as early as 1839, Tholuck had drawn attention to the vast dogmatic importance of Luther’s suppression of this Aorist.[1993]
The most outspoken critic is, however, Paul de Lagarde, the Protestant theologian and Orientalist of Göttingen. In an article likewise dealing with the so-called “Revised Bible” of 1883,[1991]he devotes more than five pages to a list of passages from Isaias, the Book of Proverbs and the Psalms, which Franz Delitzsch had been compelled to retranslate even earlier.[1992]To this list he appends another long one of passages, which he holds to be manifestly mistranslations of the original.
Thus, to quote only one important instance, the Messianic prophecy of Jacob in Genesis xlix. 10, should be rendered: “The sceptre shaשll not be taken away from Juda ... till he come that is to be sent,” or “that is prayed for” (ילתש), whereas Luther translates תלש֗ incorrectly by “hero” and thus robs the wonderful text of some of its force. De Lagarde notes, that elsewhere Luther himself renders Malachias iii. 1: “The Lord Whom you seek shall speedily come to His temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire.” Beside such mistakes Luther’s allusion to the hedgehog that builds nests and lays eggs (Isaias xxxiv. 15) can only be regarded as a curiosity and a slip on his part. This hedgehog was among the victims sacrificed in the revised Bible of 1883.
The same critic also complains, that, Rom. iii. 23, even in the revised Bible, has: “For they are sinners,” whereas the Aorist demands the translation: “They all have sinned.” He shows how, as early as 1839, Tholuck had drawn attention to the vast dogmatic importance of Luther’s suppression of this Aorist.[1993]
With still greater show of reason De Lagarde finds fault with other wilful deviations from the text; he refers to those pointed out by Döllinger in “Die Reformation” and again insisted on by Janssen, and then by Paulsen in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts.” These false renderings have, however, out of a wrong regard for Luther, been retained in the Lutheran Bible even to the present day.
Luther’s scant concern for the text where it runs counter to his ideas calls for further discussion.
Bearing in mind Luther’s character we can well understand how sorely he was tempted during his work to makethe text square with his own doctrine, the more so since the translation was intended as a popular explanation of the Bible. When, moreover, one remembers his arbitrary way of proving his doctrine, and the entire freedom with which he was wont to handle other religious matters connected with antiquity, which, though not in the Word of God, were nevertheless historical facts easy of verification, it will not greatly surprise even those readers who are prejudiced in his favour to find, that, in his treatment of the original text of Holy Scripture—which most people are not able to verify—he did not scruple here and there to introduce ideas of his own. “What does it matter,” so he said later in his blind conviction of being in the right, in reply to those who accused him of having altered the text, “so long as at bottom the thing is clear,” so long as “it evidently is so,” and “is demanded by the state of the case?” “Not only is it right but even highly necessary that it should be set forth in the clearest and fullest manner,” etc.[1994]
It is chiefly in the question of justification by faith alone that he twists his text so much that his version ceases in reality to be a translation. He indeed speaks of his additions as “commentaries,” but no one could thus have “commented” on the passages who was not, like Luther, entirely taken up with the new dogma of grace, justification and faith.
In his efforts to provide his doctrine with a firm foundation in the eyes of his readers, he added the word “only” in Rom. iv. 15 and Rom. iii. 20, thus making these Pauline texts into a condemnation of the Law: “The law workethonlywrath,” “by the lawonlyis the knowledge of sin.”Again, in Rom. iii. 25 f., the Apostle speaks of Christ “whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to the showing of his justice for the remission of former sins through the forbearance of God for the showing of his justice in this time, that he himself may be just and the justification of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ.” Luther, however, in the interests of his new doctrine, makes him say that God had “set up Christ as a mercy seat through faith in his Blood, in order that he may present the righteousness which is acceptable to him, forgiving the sins which had remained till then under divine forbearance, that he might in his season offer the righteousness which is acceptable to him that he might himself alone be just and the justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus.” The offeringof the righteousness that is acceptable to God—an expression twice repeated—is not found in the original text, but of course is highly favourable to Luther’s doctrine of a merely imputed righteousness.[1995]In the same way he here speaks of God as “alone” being just, an interpolation of which the origin must also be sought in the translator’s theology.[1996]Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith, imputed justice.[1997]Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach” (Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (ib., ii. 25), and Joseph, the husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be pious still.”[1998]From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church” the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests sit in their temples intheir voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,” remarks a Protestant critic.[1999]The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere taught by the Apostle.And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is: “For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is just.”The same is the case with the oft-quoted text Rom. iii. 28, of which Luther’s Bible makes a kind of palladium for the new teaching by the arbitrary addition of the word “alone.” The text has been immortalised in its Lutheran shape even to our own day in inscriptions on Protestant churches and pulpits. There Luther makes the Apostle say: “Thus we hold that a man is justified by faith alone without the works of the law,” whereas the old Latin of the Vulgate rightly rendered it: “Arbitramur enim iustificari hominem per fidem sine operibus.”The word “alone” is not called for either by the text or the context. It is indeed true that the Apostle wishes to emphasise the exclusive action of faith, nevertheless, if we take this faith as he understands it, i.e. as a strong and vivifying faith and no mere dead thing, then it naturally comprises the works wrought by faith and man’s co-operation under the influence of grace. Of this faith to which the Apostle expressly refers, for instance in Romans ii. 6 ff. and in Galatians v. 6, he might quite well have said in the above passage that it justifies without works, i.e. without such as are performed apart from faith and grace. In fact, taken in this sense, Luther’s interpolation of the word “alone” is not reprehensible, though in the sense in which he intended it it is altogether inadmissible; for he would fain make the Apostle say, that faith “alone,” without any works of the law, operates justification, the works being merely an aspect of faith. The addition of the word “alone” amounted to a quite unjustifiable usurpation of the famous Pauline dictum for the uses of his own party. It must also at least be termed a subjective falsification, even though, objectively, it be capable of a better interpretation. If, as we have heard Luther say, he really wishedto show in his translation “the utmost fidelity and industry and had never a thought of deception,” then he should not have made St. Paul say more than he does in the original, viz. that man is justified by faith without works.Contemporary Catholic pens were not slow in assailing in the strongest terms Luther’s translation on account of his surreptitious introduction of the word “alone.” The translator also regarded the protest as of sufficient importance to warrant his devoting his leisure in the Coburg in September, 1530, to composing a reply. The tract in question, entitled “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” he sent to his friend Wenceslaus Link at Nuremberg instructing him to have it printed.[2000]In it he gives two reasons in vindication of his arbitrary action: He had been obliged in this instance to add the word “alone” in order first of all to render the Apostle’s meaning in correct German, for it was the German usage to use the word “alone” or “only,” when, of two things, people wanted to deny one and affirm the other, for instance, if one wished to say that a peasant had brought the wheat asked for but not the money, then he would not say “he has brought the wheat but not the money,” but “he has brought no money but only corn.”[2001]Luther, however, was only able to show that this was in accordance with the spirit of the language in certain instances, not that it was necessary or indispensable in every case, particularly in the instance in question; still less could he prove that there were not circumstances affecting the words and the meaning where such a use of “alone” or “only” must be avoided in order not to change the tenor of the sentence. It might rightly have been urged against him that fidelity was far more important a matter than good phraseology.—The second reason he alleges in support of the interpolation bears directly on his erroneous view of the Apostle’s doctrine: “I have not followed merely linguistic considerations, for the text and the meaning of St. Paul absolutely demand it.” “He deliberately cuts away all works.” “Whoever would speak bluntly and plainly of such a dismissal of works must say: faith alone,” etc. If “this be so obvious,” “why then not say so”?[2002]Thus he makes the word “alone” a sort of hall-mark of his own “public” teaching.He is determined to defy his opponents and to challenge them yet again. “And I repent me,” he cries, “that I did not add thereto the wordall, thus: withoutallworks,alllaw whatsoever, so that it might be spoken out with a full, round sound. Thus therefore it shall remain in my New Testament, and though all Pope-asses should go raving mad they will not alter my decision.”[2003]—In a similar way and with redoubled energy he turns on those who had found fault with his translation of the Hail Marybecause he had discarded “full of grace” in favour of “gracious.” “The Papists are furious with me for having spoilt the Angelical Salutation, but, as a matter of fact, in good German I ought to have said, ‘God greet thee, dear Mary.’ I shall translate, not asthey, but asIplease!”[2004]The remarkable “Sendbrieff,” other portions of which are of the highest psychological interest, must be regarded as in reality a product of the author’s mental overstrain at that time. On the one hand he was on tenterhooks wondering what the fate of the new Evangel would be, threatened as it was by the Diet of Augsburg; on the other hand he was overmastered by the sight of his own achievements, particularly his much-belauded translation of the Bible. He was also profoundly exasperated by the translation of the New Testament published by Emser (see below, p. 519), the “Dresen [Dresden] Scribbler” as Luther called him,[2005]and by the prohibition issued at Leipzig against the sale of his German Bible in the duchy of Saxony.Hence he relieves his feelings in his usual way by an outburst of noisy vituperation: “All the Papists in a lump” are not “clever enough to understand or translate a single chapter of Scripture aright, no, not even the first two words.” Their braying, their “he-haw, he-haw, is too weak to harm my translation. I know full well what art, industry, reason and common sense go to make a good translation, but, as for them, they understand this less even than the miller’s beast.” It is quite true, so he says, that the four letters,sola, do not occur in Romans, “which letters these blockheads stare at as stupidly as a cow does at a new gate”; but, so he goes on, it is not our business to inquire “of the Latin letters how to speak German, as these donkeys do.” “No Pope-ass or mule-ass, who has never even attempted it himself, shall I suffer to be my judge, or to find fault with me in this matter. Whoever does not want my version has simply to let it alone and ... be rewarded with the devil’s thanks.”[2006]“For the future I shall simply despise them and get others to do the same, so long as they remain such people, I beg your pardon, donkeys.”[2007]In his efforts to express his contempt in the strongest words at his command we have the key to what he says in conclusion, which some of his opponents took too seriously. The famous “Sic volo, sic iubeo” with which his tract ends, though of course not meant in earnest, is nevertheless very characteristic of him.“If,” he writes, “your new Papist makes much ado about the wordsola, just say straight out to him: Dr. Martin Lutherwillhave it so and says Papist and donkey are one and the same thing....Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” He too would boast for once and rail against the blockheads as St. Paul [!] had done against his crazy saints. Hence he parodies St. Paul’s words and scoffs at the Papists who wished to make themselves out to be doctors, preachers, theologians anddisputants, reiterating for each category the words “And so am I.” He then goes further: “I am able to interpret the Psalms and the Prophets, which they cannot do. I can translate, which they can’t. I can read Holy Scripture, they cannot. And to come to other matters: I am better acquainted with their dialectics and their philosophy than the whole lot of them together, and know for certain that not one of them understands his Aristotle. And if there is one among them who understands one introduction or chapter of Aristotle, then I am ready to be tossed in a blanket.”[2008]The whole tract is one of the most extravagant examples of this stamp of polemical satire. It is hardly possible to determine where exactly the “great doctor” ceases and the satirical rhetorician begins.
In his efforts to provide his doctrine with a firm foundation in the eyes of his readers, he added the word “only” in Rom. iv. 15 and Rom. iii. 20, thus making these Pauline texts into a condemnation of the Law: “The law workethonlywrath,” “by the lawonlyis the knowledge of sin.”
Again, in Rom. iii. 25 f., the Apostle speaks of Christ “whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to the showing of his justice for the remission of former sins through the forbearance of God for the showing of his justice in this time, that he himself may be just and the justification of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ.” Luther, however, in the interests of his new doctrine, makes him say that God had “set up Christ as a mercy seat through faith in his Blood, in order that he may present the righteousness which is acceptable to him, forgiving the sins which had remained till then under divine forbearance, that he might in his season offer the righteousness which is acceptable to him that he might himself alone be just and the justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus.” The offeringof the righteousness that is acceptable to God—an expression twice repeated—is not found in the original text, but of course is highly favourable to Luther’s doctrine of a merely imputed righteousness.[1995]In the same way he here speaks of God as “alone” being just, an interpolation of which the origin must also be sought in the translator’s theology.[1996]
Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.
The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith, imputed justice.[1997]Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach” (Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (ib., ii. 25), and Joseph, the husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be pious still.”[1998]
From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church” the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests sit in their temples intheir voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,” remarks a Protestant critic.[1999]
The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere taught by the Apostle.
And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is: “For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is just.”
The same is the case with the oft-quoted text Rom. iii. 28, of which Luther’s Bible makes a kind of palladium for the new teaching by the arbitrary addition of the word “alone.” The text has been immortalised in its Lutheran shape even to our own day in inscriptions on Protestant churches and pulpits. There Luther makes the Apostle say: “Thus we hold that a man is justified by faith alone without the works of the law,” whereas the old Latin of the Vulgate rightly rendered it: “Arbitramur enim iustificari hominem per fidem sine operibus.”
The word “alone” is not called for either by the text or the context. It is indeed true that the Apostle wishes to emphasise the exclusive action of faith, nevertheless, if we take this faith as he understands it, i.e. as a strong and vivifying faith and no mere dead thing, then it naturally comprises the works wrought by faith and man’s co-operation under the influence of grace. Of this faith to which the Apostle expressly refers, for instance in Romans ii. 6 ff. and in Galatians v. 6, he might quite well have said in the above passage that it justifies without works, i.e. without such as are performed apart from faith and grace. In fact, taken in this sense, Luther’s interpolation of the word “alone” is not reprehensible, though in the sense in which he intended it it is altogether inadmissible; for he would fain make the Apostle say, that faith “alone,” without any works of the law, operates justification, the works being merely an aspect of faith. The addition of the word “alone” amounted to a quite unjustifiable usurpation of the famous Pauline dictum for the uses of his own party. It must also at least be termed a subjective falsification, even though, objectively, it be capable of a better interpretation. If, as we have heard Luther say, he really wishedto show in his translation “the utmost fidelity and industry and had never a thought of deception,” then he should not have made St. Paul say more than he does in the original, viz. that man is justified by faith without works.
Contemporary Catholic pens were not slow in assailing in the strongest terms Luther’s translation on account of his surreptitious introduction of the word “alone.” The translator also regarded the protest as of sufficient importance to warrant his devoting his leisure in the Coburg in September, 1530, to composing a reply. The tract in question, entitled “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” he sent to his friend Wenceslaus Link at Nuremberg instructing him to have it printed.[2000]
In it he gives two reasons in vindication of his arbitrary action: He had been obliged in this instance to add the word “alone” in order first of all to render the Apostle’s meaning in correct German, for it was the German usage to use the word “alone” or “only,” when, of two things, people wanted to deny one and affirm the other, for instance, if one wished to say that a peasant had brought the wheat asked for but not the money, then he would not say “he has brought the wheat but not the money,” but “he has brought no money but only corn.”[2001]Luther, however, was only able to show that this was in accordance with the spirit of the language in certain instances, not that it was necessary or indispensable in every case, particularly in the instance in question; still less could he prove that there were not circumstances affecting the words and the meaning where such a use of “alone” or “only” must be avoided in order not to change the tenor of the sentence. It might rightly have been urged against him that fidelity was far more important a matter than good phraseology.—The second reason he alleges in support of the interpolation bears directly on his erroneous view of the Apostle’s doctrine: “I have not followed merely linguistic considerations, for the text and the meaning of St. Paul absolutely demand it.” “He deliberately cuts away all works.” “Whoever would speak bluntly and plainly of such a dismissal of works must say: faith alone,” etc. If “this be so obvious,” “why then not say so”?[2002]Thus he makes the word “alone” a sort of hall-mark of his own “public” teaching.
He is determined to defy his opponents and to challenge them yet again. “And I repent me,” he cries, “that I did not add thereto the wordall, thus: withoutallworks,alllaw whatsoever, so that it might be spoken out with a full, round sound. Thus therefore it shall remain in my New Testament, and though all Pope-asses should go raving mad they will not alter my decision.”[2003]—In a similar way and with redoubled energy he turns on those who had found fault with his translation of the Hail Marybecause he had discarded “full of grace” in favour of “gracious.” “The Papists are furious with me for having spoilt the Angelical Salutation, but, as a matter of fact, in good German I ought to have said, ‘God greet thee, dear Mary.’ I shall translate, not asthey, but asIplease!”[2004]
The remarkable “Sendbrieff,” other portions of which are of the highest psychological interest, must be regarded as in reality a product of the author’s mental overstrain at that time. On the one hand he was on tenterhooks wondering what the fate of the new Evangel would be, threatened as it was by the Diet of Augsburg; on the other hand he was overmastered by the sight of his own achievements, particularly his much-belauded translation of the Bible. He was also profoundly exasperated by the translation of the New Testament published by Emser (see below, p. 519), the “Dresen [Dresden] Scribbler” as Luther called him,[2005]and by the prohibition issued at Leipzig against the sale of his German Bible in the duchy of Saxony.
Hence he relieves his feelings in his usual way by an outburst of noisy vituperation: “All the Papists in a lump” are not “clever enough to understand or translate a single chapter of Scripture aright, no, not even the first two words.” Their braying, their “he-haw, he-haw, is too weak to harm my translation. I know full well what art, industry, reason and common sense go to make a good translation, but, as for them, they understand this less even than the miller’s beast.” It is quite true, so he says, that the four letters,sola, do not occur in Romans, “which letters these blockheads stare at as stupidly as a cow does at a new gate”; but, so he goes on, it is not our business to inquire “of the Latin letters how to speak German, as these donkeys do.” “No Pope-ass or mule-ass, who has never even attempted it himself, shall I suffer to be my judge, or to find fault with me in this matter. Whoever does not want my version has simply to let it alone and ... be rewarded with the devil’s thanks.”[2006]“For the future I shall simply despise them and get others to do the same, so long as they remain such people, I beg your pardon, donkeys.”[2007]
In his efforts to express his contempt in the strongest words at his command we have the key to what he says in conclusion, which some of his opponents took too seriously. The famous “Sic volo, sic iubeo” with which his tract ends, though of course not meant in earnest, is nevertheless very characteristic of him.
“If,” he writes, “your new Papist makes much ado about the wordsola, just say straight out to him: Dr. Martin Lutherwillhave it so and says Papist and donkey are one and the same thing....Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” He too would boast for once and rail against the blockheads as St. Paul [!] had done against his crazy saints. Hence he parodies St. Paul’s words and scoffs at the Papists who wished to make themselves out to be doctors, preachers, theologians anddisputants, reiterating for each category the words “And so am I.” He then goes further: “I am able to interpret the Psalms and the Prophets, which they cannot do. I can translate, which they can’t. I can read Holy Scripture, they cannot. And to come to other matters: I am better acquainted with their dialectics and their philosophy than the whole lot of them together, and know for certain that not one of them understands his Aristotle. And if there is one among them who understands one introduction or chapter of Aristotle, then I am ready to be tossed in a blanket.”[2008]
The whole tract is one of the most extravagant examples of this stamp of polemical satire. It is hardly possible to determine where exactly the “great doctor” ceases and the satirical rhetorician begins.
In addition to the mistakes and the wilfulness of the translation, the character of the glosses appended by Luther, and still more his attitude towards the Canon of the Bible, laid his work open to objections of the most serious kind.
In the glosses on many passages he shows wonderful skill in manipulating the text in favour of his wrong views. This is carried so far that, to the account of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by the Magdalen (Mat. xxvi. 10), he adds the marginal gloss: “Thus one sees that faith alone makes the work good,” because only faith could transform this seeming waste into a good work.[2009]Of Mat. xvi. 18: “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church,” he gives the following explanation, which plainly rests on his own partisan and anti-Papal standpoint: By Peter all Christians together with Peter are meant, and their confession is the rock. “All Christians are Peters on account of the confession which here Peter makes, which also is the rock on which Peter and all the other Peters are built. The confession is common to all; hence also the name.”[2010]
It was partly the defects of the translation itself, partly the cleverly calculated and thus all the more dangerous marginal glosses, which called forth objections and warnings from Catholic writers as soon as the work was published.
Hier. Emser complains that Luther “made Scripture to turn everywhere on faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of.” Emser speaks of more than 1400 passages which Luther had rendered in a false and heretical sense, though many of the passages he instances are not of any great importance.[2011]Johann Hasenberg, the Leipzig Professor, even went so far as to enumerate three thousand passages badly rendered in the German Bible.[2012]The theological faculty at Leipzig had declared as early as Jan. 6, 1523, that Luther had introduced his erroneous doctrines into the German Bible, a verdict on which Duke George took his stand when issuing his prohibition. Emser now set to work to carry out the Duke’s further instructions, viz. that “he should revise anew the New Testament in accordance with the tenor and arrangement of the old, authentic text, and restore it and set it in order throughout.”[2013]His purpose was mainly to weed out the theological errors. His new edition of Luther’s text was revised according to the Vulgate and provided with notes on the Greek. He also bought from Cranach the blocks for the illustrations (see below, p. 528), rejecting, however, such of the cuts as were too insulting, for instance, those in which the Papal tiara appears. The many excellencies of the language of Luther’s version, and almost all the fruits of his labours, thus passed into Emser’s edition, which appeared at Leipzig in 1527. Absence of copyright laws explains to some extent Emser’s action. Emser’s Bible, which was also made up to resemble Luther’s folio volumes, bore no translator’s name and was simply entitled: “Das Naw Testament nach Lawt der christlichen Kirchen bewertem Text corrigiert un wiederumb zurecht gebracht,” and thus made no claim to being a new or original translation. As, however, Luther, the original translator, had been severely censured in Duke George’s Introduction we can readily understand that he was much vexed at the revision of his work and accused theeditor of plagiarism.[2014]As Kawerau, however, remarks, “had he (Emser) laid claim to being an actual ‘translator,’ then his work would indeed have deserved to be styled a piece of plagiarism, as it has even down to our own day; but this he did not do, and merely wished to be regarded as the corrector of the Lutheran translation; hence this charge may be dismissed as unfair.”[2015]The second edition, however, which appeared after his death, bore Emser’s name as the translator: “Das New Testament, so Emser säliger verdeutscht.” This second edition was brought out by Augustine Alveld, as recent research has proved.[2016]In it certain coarse expressions which Emser had borrowed from Luther’s Bible were supplanted by more “seemly” words “for the sake of the maidens and the pure of heart,” a circumstance which incidentally shows that even Luther’s more moderate style of writing, as we find it in his Bible, was felt to be unusual and not always quite proper.Johann Dietenberger, a Bible expert and contemporary of Luther’s, wrote: Although Luther constantly appeals to Holy Scripture, yet there is no one who takes away from or adds to it more than he. “Of the Bible he rejects and adds what he pleases in order to establish his errors.”[2017]Dietenberger, a Mayence Dominican, published a complete translation of Holy Scripture in 1534, making considerable use for this purpose of Luther’s German Bible. He says in his Preface, in explanation of this, that he had been urgently requested to “go through the recent German translation of the Bible (Luther’s) and remove all that was not in accordance with the faith.”[2018]Johann Eck, who undertook a new translation of the whole Bible (1537), acted more independently; but, however good as a critic of Luther’s Bible, his own work met with but little success. His stilted German translation found but few readers.[2019]Even to the followers of the new faith Luther’s translation gave offence owing to its want of fidelity. Bullinger, writing to Bucer on a certain question, remarks: “Luther admits that he has not been faithful in his translation of the Bible, in fact he isalmost inclined to withdraw it.”[2020]J. L. Holler, who in 1654 wrote a pamphlet about his return from Protestantism to the Catholic Church, says that what moved him to take this step was his discovery of Luther’s dishonest rendering. He gave a long list of passages where Luther’s Bible departs from the true text.[2021]
Hier. Emser complains that Luther “made Scripture to turn everywhere on faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of.” Emser speaks of more than 1400 passages which Luther had rendered in a false and heretical sense, though many of the passages he instances are not of any great importance.[2011]
Johann Hasenberg, the Leipzig Professor, even went so far as to enumerate three thousand passages badly rendered in the German Bible.[2012]
The theological faculty at Leipzig had declared as early as Jan. 6, 1523, that Luther had introduced his erroneous doctrines into the German Bible, a verdict on which Duke George took his stand when issuing his prohibition. Emser now set to work to carry out the Duke’s further instructions, viz. that “he should revise anew the New Testament in accordance with the tenor and arrangement of the old, authentic text, and restore it and set it in order throughout.”[2013]His purpose was mainly to weed out the theological errors. His new edition of Luther’s text was revised according to the Vulgate and provided with notes on the Greek. He also bought from Cranach the blocks for the illustrations (see below, p. 528), rejecting, however, such of the cuts as were too insulting, for instance, those in which the Papal tiara appears. The many excellencies of the language of Luther’s version, and almost all the fruits of his labours, thus passed into Emser’s edition, which appeared at Leipzig in 1527. Absence of copyright laws explains to some extent Emser’s action. Emser’s Bible, which was also made up to resemble Luther’s folio volumes, bore no translator’s name and was simply entitled: “Das Naw Testament nach Lawt der christlichen Kirchen bewertem Text corrigiert un wiederumb zurecht gebracht,” and thus made no claim to being a new or original translation. As, however, Luther, the original translator, had been severely censured in Duke George’s Introduction we can readily understand that he was much vexed at the revision of his work and accused theeditor of plagiarism.[2014]As Kawerau, however, remarks, “had he (Emser) laid claim to being an actual ‘translator,’ then his work would indeed have deserved to be styled a piece of plagiarism, as it has even down to our own day; but this he did not do, and merely wished to be regarded as the corrector of the Lutheran translation; hence this charge may be dismissed as unfair.”[2015]The second edition, however, which appeared after his death, bore Emser’s name as the translator: “Das New Testament, so Emser säliger verdeutscht.” This second edition was brought out by Augustine Alveld, as recent research has proved.[2016]In it certain coarse expressions which Emser had borrowed from Luther’s Bible were supplanted by more “seemly” words “for the sake of the maidens and the pure of heart,” a circumstance which incidentally shows that even Luther’s more moderate style of writing, as we find it in his Bible, was felt to be unusual and not always quite proper.
Johann Dietenberger, a Bible expert and contemporary of Luther’s, wrote: Although Luther constantly appeals to Holy Scripture, yet there is no one who takes away from or adds to it more than he. “Of the Bible he rejects and adds what he pleases in order to establish his errors.”[2017]Dietenberger, a Mayence Dominican, published a complete translation of Holy Scripture in 1534, making considerable use for this purpose of Luther’s German Bible. He says in his Preface, in explanation of this, that he had been urgently requested to “go through the recent German translation of the Bible (Luther’s) and remove all that was not in accordance with the faith.”[2018]
Johann Eck, who undertook a new translation of the whole Bible (1537), acted more independently; but, however good as a critic of Luther’s Bible, his own work met with but little success. His stilted German translation found but few readers.[2019]
Even to the followers of the new faith Luther’s translation gave offence owing to its want of fidelity. Bullinger, writing to Bucer on a certain question, remarks: “Luther admits that he has not been faithful in his translation of the Bible, in fact he isalmost inclined to withdraw it.”[2020]J. L. Holler, who in 1654 wrote a pamphlet about his return from Protestantism to the Catholic Church, says that what moved him to take this step was his discovery of Luther’s dishonest rendering. He gave a long list of passages where Luther’s Bible departs from the true text.[2021]
In his treatment of the Canon of the Bible Luther proceeds with his customary licence. Those books of the Bible in which he thought he found his own doctrines most clearly enunciated he speaks of in the Prefaces as “the best,” viz. the Gospel and 1st Epistle of St. John, the Epistles of St. Paul, particularly those to the Romans, the Galatians and the Ephesians, and the 1st Epistle of Peter; the remaining books he arbitrarily ranks below these, and sometimes goes so far in depreciating them that their biblical character is jeopardised (below, p. 522, n. 6).
“The standard by which the greater or lesser value of each book is determined,” says Adolf Hausrath, is the degree of clearness with which the doctrine of justification by faith is proclaimed. “Protestant Bible criticism had its originator in Luther, only that his successors shrank from persevering in his footsteps.”[2022]Of 2 Machabees he had said even at the Leipzig Disputation that it did not belong to the Canon, simply because of the difficulty presented by the passage quoted by Eck concerning Purgatory which Luther denied. Of this book and the book of Esther, which also found no favour in his eyes, he said later in the Table-Talk, that “they were too much inclined to judaise and contained much heathen naughtiness.” The so-called deuterocanonical books, though they are found in the Septuagint, were practically denied the status of inspired books by the very way in which he grouped them; in his translation they appear as a mere appendix to the rest of Scripture. According to the Preface, they were “not to be regarded as equal to the Bible, though good and profitable to read.”He denied that the Epistle to the Hebrews emanated from an Apostle; it was “a made-up Epistle,” consisting of fragments amongst which, “mayhap, there is wood, hay and chaff.”[2023]The Apocalypse he regarded as neither “apostolic nor prophetic.”[2024]“Let each one judge of it as he thinks fit; my spiritcannot find its way in the book.”[2025]In the Preface to the Epistle of Jude he is very unfair to this portion of Holy Scripture.[2026]He regards it as merely an excerpt from the 2nd Epistle of Peter and says it was “an unnecessary missive and should be ranked below the main books [of the Bible].”[2027]The words of approval he elsewhere bestows on these books do not avail to undo his criticism in this instance.As regards his animosity to the Epistle of James; Luther questions its authenticity chiefly because, so he says, this Epistle, “in direct contrast to St. Paul and the rest of Scripture, attributes righteousness to works.”[2028]As further grounds for doubting its genuineness, he points out, that, though “it undertakes to teach Christian people, yet throughout its whole length it never once considers the sufferings, the resurrection and the spirit of Christ,” further, it uses the language of the apostolic writings in such a way, “that it is plain that he [the author] lived long after St. Peter and St. Paul.”[2029]—On these grounds, at the close of his preface to the New Testament of 1522, he characterised it as an epistle of straw compared with the other canonical writings: “Hence the Epistle of James is nothing but an epistle of straw in comparison with them, for it has nothing evangelical about it.”[2030]—In 1515 and 1516, when he wrote his unprinted commentary on Romans, he had as yet no objection to raise against the canonical character of the Epistle of James. On the contrary he sought to combine the doctrine of this epistle on good works with that of St. Paul; he wrote: “When James and Paul say a man is justified by works, they are refuting the false views of those who imagine that faith suffices without its works.”[2031]But as early as the Leipzig Disputation in 1519 he expressed himself unfavourably concerning the Epistle of James. He repeats his condemnation in the commentary on Genesis and even goes so far as to remark bitterly, that James was mad (delirat) with his crazy doctrine of works;[2032]in the same way, in the marginal notes to his private copy of the New Testament he says, in 1530for instance, of James ii. 12: “Oh what a chaos!”[2033]That he eventually altered his opinion, as has been asserted, cannot be proved merely from the circumstance that the later editions of his translation of the Bible do not contain the above words concerning the Epistle of straw. Although he occasionally expresses himself more favourably to this Epistle, still, against this, must be set other unfavourable utterances, nor did he ever retract his severe public condemnation.[2034]Even in his own day many who favoured the innovations spoke out against his condemnation of the Epistle of James. Carlstadt in his “De canonicis scripturis” objected in the strongest terms to the attacks on the Epistle, though he refrains from naming Luther. Luther’s opinion at that time, viz. that Jerome might be the author, was characterised quite openly by Carlstadt as “a baseless supposition,” and his proofs as “frivolous arguments by which he sought to discredit the Epistle of James.”[2035]Zwingli, Calvin and H. Bullinger also disclaimed Luther’s views. “In the 17th and 18th centuries James stood in high favour with Protestants,” and they even sought to exonerate Luther as best they could, sometimes on very strange grounds.[2036]The following is the final judgment of a Protestant critic of modern times who had also vainly tried to excuse Luther’s action: “It remains an act of injustice no less natural than regrettable.”[2037]
“The standard by which the greater or lesser value of each book is determined,” says Adolf Hausrath, is the degree of clearness with which the doctrine of justification by faith is proclaimed. “Protestant Bible criticism had its originator in Luther, only that his successors shrank from persevering in his footsteps.”[2022]
Of 2 Machabees he had said even at the Leipzig Disputation that it did not belong to the Canon, simply because of the difficulty presented by the passage quoted by Eck concerning Purgatory which Luther denied. Of this book and the book of Esther, which also found no favour in his eyes, he said later in the Table-Talk, that “they were too much inclined to judaise and contained much heathen naughtiness.” The so-called deuterocanonical books, though they are found in the Septuagint, were practically denied the status of inspired books by the very way in which he grouped them; in his translation they appear as a mere appendix to the rest of Scripture. According to the Preface, they were “not to be regarded as equal to the Bible, though good and profitable to read.”
He denied that the Epistle to the Hebrews emanated from an Apostle; it was “a made-up Epistle,” consisting of fragments amongst which, “mayhap, there is wood, hay and chaff.”[2023]
The Apocalypse he regarded as neither “apostolic nor prophetic.”[2024]“Let each one judge of it as he thinks fit; my spiritcannot find its way in the book.”[2025]In the Preface to the Epistle of Jude he is very unfair to this portion of Holy Scripture.[2026]He regards it as merely an excerpt from the 2nd Epistle of Peter and says it was “an unnecessary missive and should be ranked below the main books [of the Bible].”[2027]The words of approval he elsewhere bestows on these books do not avail to undo his criticism in this instance.
As regards his animosity to the Epistle of James; Luther questions its authenticity chiefly because, so he says, this Epistle, “in direct contrast to St. Paul and the rest of Scripture, attributes righteousness to works.”[2028]As further grounds for doubting its genuineness, he points out, that, though “it undertakes to teach Christian people, yet throughout its whole length it never once considers the sufferings, the resurrection and the spirit of Christ,” further, it uses the language of the apostolic writings in such a way, “that it is plain that he [the author] lived long after St. Peter and St. Paul.”[2029]—On these grounds, at the close of his preface to the New Testament of 1522, he characterised it as an epistle of straw compared with the other canonical writings: “Hence the Epistle of James is nothing but an epistle of straw in comparison with them, for it has nothing evangelical about it.”[2030]—In 1515 and 1516, when he wrote his unprinted commentary on Romans, he had as yet no objection to raise against the canonical character of the Epistle of James. On the contrary he sought to combine the doctrine of this epistle on good works with that of St. Paul; he wrote: “When James and Paul say a man is justified by works, they are refuting the false views of those who imagine that faith suffices without its works.”[2031]But as early as the Leipzig Disputation in 1519 he expressed himself unfavourably concerning the Epistle of James. He repeats his condemnation in the commentary on Genesis and even goes so far as to remark bitterly, that James was mad (delirat) with his crazy doctrine of works;[2032]in the same way, in the marginal notes to his private copy of the New Testament he says, in 1530for instance, of James ii. 12: “Oh what a chaos!”[2033]That he eventually altered his opinion, as has been asserted, cannot be proved merely from the circumstance that the later editions of his translation of the Bible do not contain the above words concerning the Epistle of straw. Although he occasionally expresses himself more favourably to this Epistle, still, against this, must be set other unfavourable utterances, nor did he ever retract his severe public condemnation.[2034]
Even in his own day many who favoured the innovations spoke out against his condemnation of the Epistle of James. Carlstadt in his “De canonicis scripturis” objected in the strongest terms to the attacks on the Epistle, though he refrains from naming Luther. Luther’s opinion at that time, viz. that Jerome might be the author, was characterised quite openly by Carlstadt as “a baseless supposition,” and his proofs as “frivolous arguments by which he sought to discredit the Epistle of James.”[2035]Zwingli, Calvin and H. Bullinger also disclaimed Luther’s views. “In the 17th and 18th centuries James stood in high favour with Protestants,” and they even sought to exonerate Luther as best they could, sometimes on very strange grounds.[2036]The following is the final judgment of a Protestant critic of modern times who had also vainly tried to excuse Luther’s action: “It remains an act of injustice no less natural than regrettable.”[2037]
Says Carlstadt’s biographer: “What lent Carlstadt a decided advantage in his polemics (against Luther’s attitude towards the Epistle of James) was the utter inconsistency of Luther’s critical attitude towards Holy Scripture at that time.”[2038]Luther “read his theology into the Bible,” remarks another Protestant critic, “just as his mediæval predecessors had done with theirs.”[2039]“With a wondrous pertinacity he pitted his theology and his Christ against everything that did not accord with it, against Popery, against Tradition, yea, against the Bible itself.”[2040]
The halo of learning that had so long surrounded Luther’s German Bible seemed to threaten to fade when, after long preparation, the revised edition was published at Halle in 1883 (and, with new emendations, in 1892). A commission oflearned Protestant theologians “of various shades of opinion” was entrusted by the German-Evangelical Conference of Eisenach with the work. Out of too great respect for Luther the alterations made were, however, all too few; veneration for his memory explains why the translation was not raised to the present standard of learning. The result was that many Protestant congregations, more particularly in North Germany, looked askance at the new edition and it was not generally introduced.[2041]A proposal was made, but to no purpose, that an exact counterpart of the Luther Bible of 1545 should be reproduced as a literary monument which would best serve to honour the author’s memory. The severe objections which scholars have brought against the revised edition cause it to resemble already a ruin, which, having had the misfortune to date from a period when the demands made by learning were less insistent than to-day, now towers lonely and forsaken in our midst.
It is true that the revised Bible, with its heavy type showing exactly where it departs from the wording of the old Luther Bible, exhibits a huge number of freshly hewn stones built into the old, crumbling fabric. Nevertheless De Lagarde could say of the scholars who had taken part in the work: