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 the English 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 Theologically
Bearing in mind Luther’s character we can well understand how sorely he was tempted during his work to make the 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]