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 spirit cannot 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 1530 for 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 of learned 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:
“These theologians of acknowledged standing have given us a Bible in a language which is not our own, a Bible in which one seeks in vain for the indispensable emendations with which the revisers were familiar, a Bible the revisers of which have of set purpose ignored the labours of their most painstaking and self-sacrificing colleagues, a Bible which passes over in silence all the essential developments in theology and religion.”[2042]
“A language that is not ours,” is also the main complaint of the Protestant theologian S. Oettli concerning this Bible; he also numbers among its failings its retention of certain old German words and of Luther’s German rendering of the Divine names and the expressions Scheol, Hades, Daemon, etc. The principles which ruled the revision were “anything but unexceptionable,” and the result of the work seemed “unsatisfactory.” Oettli demonstrates the “backwardness” of the church Bible by comparing portions of the Bible taken from the revised text with exact translations of the same passages.[2043]