Talk:Luther Bible

Luther did not translate to "erode the influence of priests"

Luther did not want priests or higher clerics to lord it over the people's faith. He wanted to get people as close to Christ as he could by putting the Bible into their own words. Luther was a conservative, not a radical reformer. This article has the makings of a good article. I hope that those who initiated it will not see this as a criticism but as an enhancement of what they did.drboisclair 01:35, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Kudos

David, kudos on a very well done page. Might you consider using Schaff's material on the Luther Bible here?

I think that this material can and should be integrated into the article, but I think that after having incorporating the data the text could be transferred to Wikiquote via Transwiki. Schaaf-Herzog sub loco Martin Luther was the material out of which the Martin Luther article was written. I will work on incorporating it here if there is no objection. --Drboisclair 18:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, I got the two sources mixed up! The source of the long quotation is Schaff's history, not Schaaf's encyclopedia.--Drboisclair 20:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Schaff material archived

I thought that since the material was rather lengthy I would put it in the above archive. The material in the main article has been transwikied to Wikiquote. I hope that this meets with everyone's approval. I will be integrating the Schaff material into the main article by quotation and allusion.--Drboisclair 16:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

What from?

What was the OT translated from? Article says nothing on this very basic point. Johnbod 17:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Very good question. AFAIK it was translated from different texts, which were prepared and translated by Luther and his collaborators. In the German Wikipedia article on the Luther Bible, there is an (unsourced) statement ascribed to Johannes Mathesius, one of Luther's pupils. According to this statement, he claims that "Philipp Melanchthon prepared the Septuagint text, and Caspar Creuziger prepared the Rabbinic Bible of Jakob Ben Chajim (probably referring to the Second Bomberg Edition (Bombergiana), a 16th century version of the Masoretic Text edited by Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah and printed by Daniel Bomberg in Venice)".

Mathesius is generally considered as a mostly reliable source concerning Luther, however unsourced statements are always a pain. I've tried to look up the original source of this statement, and it appears that it's Mathesius' Luthers Leben in Predigten (Luthers Life in Sermons). On p. 316 Mathesius actually describes how Luther and other scholars (Creuziger, Melanchton etc.) met, and how they discussed and translated different Bible texts. However, he is not very specific about which texts they used, merely refering to them as "the Hebrew text", "the Greek text" etc., writing that "Herr Philippus contributed the Greek text, Doctor Creuziger contributed the Hebrew text and the Chaldeic Bible. The Professors also brought their Rabbinic Bibles, and Doctor Pommer had a Latin text which he knew very well." The "Chaldaic Bible", which probably refers to the Targum - for the details please see the citation I added to the infobox today, which includes a transcribed version and an attempt at translating this text passage.

Now while IMHO it is not clear from Mathesius' description that the texts he mentioned actually refer to the Septuagint, the Bombergiana etc., this may still very well be true: The Septuagint is a Greek text, and the Bombergiana is a Hebrew text. However, it would be great if someone who knows more about this subject than a humble amateur like me could contribute his opinion on this subject. --Shinryuu (talk) 17:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

In the German Wikipedia, I recently collected material on that topic. Sorry to say, Mathesius was not a witness of the translation work but was invited to Luther´s "table round" ca. 1540 and witnessed corrections of the Bible which were on the way until 1545. It seems rather unlikely that exactly the same persons did exactly the same job ten years earlier.62.154.201.207 (talk) 16:09, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Info Box?

Maybe we should include an info box to the right per other Bible Translation pages. See New American Standard Bible for an example. 68.113.47.82 22:49, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Shinryuu (talk) 16:25, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Separation from Rome

I recall that in the 2003 film Luther, Frederick the Wise said "this will separate us from Rome forever", referring to breaking the monopoly of the Bible being published in Latin, a language the common German folk rarely understood. Can we put something alluding to this in the article? -NordsternMN 19:28, 19 October 2007 (UTC) A film is not a Reliable Source. This applies to fiction generally. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.202.155 (talk) 12:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Besides, there had been translations before, or hadn't there? --91.34.219.151 (talk) 10:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a complex question. Yes there existing Bibles before Luther, but Luther first spoke for the priesterhip of all believers (Ptiestertum aller Gläubigen), for this idea it was clear that people needs a good Bible-translation. The Bibles before Luther, does not have this complex and so on. But on the other hand Luther wanted to reform the church and in this time it was possible that the roman church will give Luther possibly swiftly right. But it is true, it is a time of Luther life, in which the difference were very big. The Church of Rome prefered in this time not a translation into the German language. The Vulgata was the right Bible for them, and so on. --- But I would not say that a film is a source for the wikipedia. --- On the other hand I have not the time etc. to look into books, and so on. --Soenke Rahn (talk) 23:01, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Chronology

"The whole Bible in other languages were considered a watershed in the advance of human intellectual history. Chronologically, we have: The Bible in French: published in 1528 by Jacques Lefevre D’etaples or Faber Stapulensis); The Bible in Spanish: published in Basel in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina ("Biblia del Oso"), The Bible in English: King James version, published in 1611, The Bible in Dutch: the States Bible, which was ready in 1637."

This seems to imply the King James Version of 1611 as the first English translation, which it certainly wasn't, since there was already Tyndale, the Geneva Bible and the Bishop's Bible. Evercat (talk) 21:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention Wycliff Early Version, Wycliff Late Version, the "Paues" 14th Century Middle English new Testament. Nor the paraphrases and metrical renditions of various books. Nor the harmonies, and retellings, and readings in Books of Hours. (Nor, going back further, the Old English Gospels, glosses, psalms, etc. Old_English_Bible_translations) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 00:38, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Also: editors, it seems to me, need to be aware that there may be a bait-and-switch going on: saying that only pandects (complete bibles) are Bibles, and thereby ignoring material packaged in other forms such as Gospel books. I mean, if in 1510 Germans have 18 or so different translations of the Bible in print, and in 1520 they have 19, how is that a watershed? Or if in 1430 they have the Gospels, Epistles and Psalms available in the vernacular, and in 1530 they have the rest of the OT and Revelation, how can that make a gigantic difference to anything that is clear and important? Obviously almost all sources in this before the last 50 years are extraordinarily biased, one way or another, and need to be treated with a clear eye: Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, Anglicans, etc. all tried to interpret each other in the most lurid and straw-mannish way, and this infected material provided the sources for the next 500 years of mythologizing over-statements, such as the idea that Luther's was the first German translation and there were no Catholic (or who-ever) translations. (Now for "peripheral" non-Romance languages, such as Danish, Polish, etc. it certainly would be true that vernacular translations could be a watershed, but that is a different thing.) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 00:38, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

"Many problems"?

In the first paragraph, it states "But many problems have come up regarding him largely and arbitrarily editing the Holy Bible." The article goes into no detail on this, however, and the only problem listed is Luther adding the word "alone" in Romans 3:28 (this incidentally needs a citation). What are these "many problems", then? I'd either like to see examples of these, or to just delete the sentence. Lord Seth (talk) 16:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Sentence deleted. If the sentences is to be added back please provide examples and their citations. Schroederrt (talk) 16:51, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Major bias

The following text: "The whole Bible in other languages were [sic] considered a watershed in the advance of human intellectual history. Chronologically, we have — Bible in French: published in 1528 by Jacques Lefevre d’Étaples (or Faber Stapulensis); Bible in Spanish: published in Basel in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina (Biblia del Oso); Bible in Czech: Bible of Kralice, printed between 1579–1593; Bible in English: King James version, published in 1611; Bible in Dutch: the States Bible, which was ready in 1637" represents significant denominational bias, as it only lists the first Protestant translations.

The first Bible published in French was 1487, the first in Spanish was 1478 - both of which were Catholic translations. Nor is there any mention of the 17 editions of the German Bible published prior to Luther's (the first of which was published in 1466). This is a glarring error, as he drew on the existing translations. 82.110.160.178 (talk) 12:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

The main article also fails to mention translations into Czech from Latin, starting in 1360. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.202.155 (talk) 11:22, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

It struck me as an uncited, biased, non-NPOV and ungrammatical claim as well. And being that it wasn't the first time someone mentioned it, I removed it. oknazevad (talk) 03:37, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Note 3

In note 3, "all" appears. It should be "alone". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.202.155 (talk) 12:15, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Tags of December 2009

I tagged this article, because upon reading it, it read far more like a personal reflection of a Luther fan than a disinterested observation. It also can be quite redundant. And encyclopedia articles don't have essay-like conclusions. That I'll remove, but the rest needs a major trimming and neutralizing. oknazevad (talk) 04:10, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, POV? OK, the "nationalism" theory in the text seems a POV, because the words (nationalism used frequently in the text) are in general without historical dates, events etc. for evedents. Yes this would be a real POV. What would you read? e.g. Luther made a boring and senseless translation? Or he made a translation of the Bible, like a other people made it? ... The article is a normal text about Luthers Bible. It's like 95 percent of special books to the topic and the rest the 5 percent are Literature from sects (Sekten), olden days and so on. Ok, I would write it in another way ... but I suppose that your message on the site is not rigt. The delation of the passages you erased, I don't understand. --- Possible it would be the best, when somebody will use the German wikipedia Article to the topic, to place more facts on the article-site. On the other hand the article needs a better structure, so that it will be better to understand. with friendly greetings Sönke (from Germany) --Soenke Rahn (talk) 01:12, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It reads like it is proselytizing for Lutheran converts through excess praise. It is not neutral.oknazevad (talk) 02:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Revised beginning of "Impact" section / added reference to other German Bible translations

This section began with a sentence referring to the Zürich Bible, stating that it preceded the Luther Bible. While this statement may be accurate, it seems out of place here, and it weakens the discussion in this section. I deleted this sentence and replaced it with a sentence referring to the Wikipedia article on German Bible translations. 24.189.121.114 (talk) 19:11, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

using Greek as a "revolutionary" step by Erasmus and Luther

Hello,
I just wonder why my addition has been removed so bluntly.
I know that my addition is not common knowledge in Netherland (I'm a dutchman), mainstream history is always behind professional history. About sourcing, I don't know if that goes for English literature, but it is most certainly sourced in Dutch (& Belgian Flemish) historical literature. I guess you don't read Dutch, but in the Dutch Luther-Wiki the things I've mentioned are being appreciated, so why shouldn't that be so in the English wiki.
You may call it contentious, but talking about this time means pointing out the strong contrasts there were. Also, Luther didn't come just out of the blue with his ideas about translating the bible into German/folklanguage. The things I've written are relevant context. In what is now all of northern Germany (Saxony in particular) and the Low Countries, the Hanseatic world, the Brethren of the Common LIfe were wide spread. They had more effect on christian opinion and believe than generally is known. By the "small" steps they made/took, f.i. by putting Greek in their curriculum they were a large contribution to the climate which made Erasmus and Luther possible. Luther took things further than Erasmus did and before him the Brethren of the Common Life did. The B.o.t.C.L. functioned within the Catholic church but not wholeheartedly, Erasmus was strongly opposed by fellow Catholic scholars (especially the ones from the university of Leuven (louvain)) but still stayed in the catholic church, and Luther took things so far that he was excommunicated. That's the point!

Vransiscus —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.178.167.72 (talk) 12:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no one "Official" Latin Text

I see the strange sentence has a "citation needed" at the end of it, but in fact it's misleading.

Though the Vulgate was commissioned by a Pope, that does not make it "the" official Latin translation; it is indeed very widely used, but there are earlier Latin translations recognized as authentic, and notably some earlier translations of the Psalms are still used liturgically, e.g. in the 1962 Missale Romanum. 70.52.76.13 (talk) 18:43, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

The text seems to have been resolved. (B.t.w., I think there are two words used by Trent: "authentic" and "approved", which are not the same.) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 10:10, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Brucker and Teller Revision

may have a different name and different article, but should be mentioned here somewhere, since it was based on a project correcting Luther's version. — LlywelynII 01:58, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Amish (and Mennonite) use of the Luther Bible

"In the United States of America, the Luther Bible is still in use by the Amish, who are more fluent in German than English."

This is an unsourced and inaccurate statement.

"still in use by the Amish" -- true, but incomplete. Also used by the Old Order Mennonites, and possibly others.

"Amish... are more fluent in German than English." Not true. Amish and Old Order Mennonites can read, write, and fluently speak English (the language of their schooling). They fluently speak, but rarely if ever write, Pennsylvania Dutch (a/k/a Pennsylvania German) -- or (in the case of the "Swiss Amish", an Allemanic dialect of German) -- which is their mother tongue and home language. They can read, with greater or lesser understanding, the standard German of their Luther Bible, their hymnals, and their prayerbooks -- which is taught in their parochial schools, but not to an advanced level, and with essentially no concern for active use of the language for speaking or writing. Of the three languages, standard (Bible) German is the one of which their command is by far the weakest. In fact, although Bible readings during services are from the Luther Bible, they commonly own bilingual Bibles (Luther and King James) and may consult other English translations as an aid to understanding the German.

See, among many, many other reliable secondary sources, Mark L. Louden, Pennsylvania Dutch: the Story of an American Language (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2016), chapter 6 and passim.

Gambaguru (talk) 22:46, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

There is now a 2017 Edition of the Luther Bible

I'm not good at editing wikipedia, but I thought people should be aware that a new version has been published in German, in line with the 500 anniversary of the protestant reformation. osrevad (talk) 16:21, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Request for amplification: Sources for the full translation (finished 1534)

For the New Testament, the article says

He translated from the Greek text, using Erasmus' second edition (1519) of the Greek New Testament, known as the Textus Receptus.

The article should say more about the rest of the Bible. The full translation, finished in 1534, relied on Hebrew -- specifically, I'm almost sure, it used only the Masoretic text. I would like the article to provide clear and sourced statement of this. Later translators used other sources, eg Septuagint, to varying degrees, in addition to the Masoretic text; but I don't know if the Luther Bible did that. Then there's the Apocrypha, for which I presume that the Greek was available to Luther and his team. Can we be more specific on that? For example, did Luther and his team use the Complutensian Polyglot Bible?

Notes for completeness: 1. The books of the Hebrew Bible include portions in the Aramaic language. 2. The book 2 Esdras is a special case. But I am not saying this article, on the Luther Bible, should go to that level of detail. To the contrary, that level of detail would detract from the article.
Oaklandguy (talk) 22:16, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Unlikely, but not impossible, that they used a Complutensian directly: it was not a commercial product, and up to half of the 600 print run ended up at the bottom of the ocean. However, it was dissected and used for other editions, such as the Aldine BibleRick Jelliffe (talk) 13:10, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

... as far as Scandinavia and the Netherlands

This might be a problem with the source but since I can't find I decided to comment here. The text talks about the influence of this translation in English and "... as far as Scandinavia and the Netherlands". This is a weird interpretation of geography. The Netherlands were much closer to Luther than England. Scandinavia is also quite close by, especially when you remember that Norway was controlled by the Danish kings at the time and Sweden was (at times) also under Danish rule. --Óli Gneisti (talk) 18:26, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Y I have rephrased the "as far as", and put in citations to the versions.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 13:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Influence

This section has major NPOV problems, and some factual ones.

", i.e. translations of a translation rather than a direct translation into German from the originals" - But Luther did not make a direct translation "from the originals", they used all the various sources including the Latin (of the Vulgate, of the different Psalters, and of Erasmus) and weighed them up.

"his was superior to all its predecessors" - this is an opinion not a fact (though I expect it is true, I have not opened my Lutherbibel in almost 50 years) and should be written as such.

"there can be no doubts regarding the Biblical knowledge attained by the German common masses" Go German common masses! But it is not encyclopedic language.

"The common individual would thus be given the right to have a mind, spirit and opinion, to exist not as an economic functionary but as subject to complex and conflicting aspirations and motives. In this sense, Luther's vernacular Bible acted as a force towards the liberation of the German people." Huh?

... several others omitted.

Literacy

Another fail is the emphasis on the vernacular being read: however, the population was 95% illiterate which was not helped by the closure of monastic schools. "More than an urban event, the Reformation was an oral event"[1] So the article would be improved by re-phrasing statements about reading to be more about "being read to": Luther's emphasis on the preaching of the Word is relevant.

Y I have adjusted some text on "read to" and literacy rates.

I have added some subheadings to make it less monolithic.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 11:46, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Mistranslations

I have removed the following:

''According to the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland), Luther relied heavily on the Vulgate and not on the original Greek: "Luther translated according to the Latin text." The consensus of the modern Lutheran church is that Luther overlaid his pre-existing theology onto the text, particularly on the book of Romans.''

It is not really related to the surrounding topic (''allein''), + is not cited. If proper citations are found and added, please revert.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

National Identity

I have removed the following two sentences. Please revert if you think I am wrong.

''The combination of Luther's social teachings and the vernacular Bible undoubtedly had a role in the slow emancipation of western European society from its long phase of clerical domination.'' I looked at the reference source, and it mentions social teaching but not vernacular Bible, which makes the citation inaccurate and off-topic. Apart from that, it needs to be reworded to use encyclopaedic language, such as being recast as a quote.

''Luther gave men a new vision of perhaps the exaltation of the human self.'' Off-topic, strangely expressed, non-NPOV, and arguable given Luther's doctrine of Total Depravity.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 15:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 15:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Inconsistency: Publishing Success & Emergence of Modern German

It seems to me that these two section contradict each other, on their face. Does anyone have any idea on how to re-phrase them?

"Publishing success" says that his bible was successful because it used the language of the common people, the vernacular. But "Emergence of modern german" says there was no common language but mutually unintelligible dialects, and so Luther invented the dialect that would become standard ( (East_Central_German ?)). These both cannot be correct, can they? I tried to reduce the contradiction by adding that these "common people" spoke Upper Saxon dialect, but still the basic contradiction remains. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 01:40, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore, Publishing Success talks about him using the language of the common people, yet in the article on Early New High German he is quoted saying the opposite: ""Ich rede nach der sächsischen Canzley, welcher nachfolgen alle Fürsten und Könige in Deutschland" ("My language is based on that of the Saxon Chancery, which is followed by all the princes and kings in Germany"). Which is it: kings or commoners? I removed some fluffy rhapsodic phrases, but the inconsistency remains. (Presumably it is a bit of both: he used Saxon Chancery dialect but tried to do so in a way that was fairly idiomatic to street Saxon?? Or is it that the "common people" stuff is just well-intentioned mythologizing or retrofitting? ) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 01:59, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

The article on Upper Saxon German says that dialect, because of historical events, had become a "koine German" intelligible to speakers of both High and Low German, which is why it was able to be a basis for a unified German language. Indyguy (talk) 02:04, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I have revised the article to say

Luther sought to translate as closely to the original text as possible, and adopted the officially-promoted bureaucratic dialect Saxon Chancery. Some writers claim his translation was guided by how people spoke (presumably in the Upper Saxon dialect), and that Luther's faithfulness to the language spoken by the common people was to produce a work which they could relate to.

Does this go too far/not far enough? Rick Jelliffe (talk) 02:20, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

References