Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Discontent and vexation—temptations of another kind—frequently overwhelmed him whilst engaged on his Bible. Even his unprecedented success did not satisfy him; the Bible did not seem to him to be selling quick enough, nor to be made use of to the extent he wished; again, he feared, that in the future, it would lose its interest.

“I fear,” he said in Nov., 1540, “that the Bible will not be much read, for people are very weary of it and no one reprints it now.”[2084] His views regarding the future were even more gloomy: “When I die there will not be a curate, teacher or sacristan who will not set to work to render the Bible on his own. Our version will no longer be valued. All our works will be thrown aside, yea, even the Bible and the Postils, for the world ever yearns for something new.”[2085]—“I am sick of Holy Scripture; see that you make a good use of it after my death. It has cost us enough toil yet is but little regarded by our own people.”[2086] “So profitable is the German Bible that no one knows how to esteem it high enough; no one sees what knowledge it has unlocked to the world. What formerly we sought with much trouble and constant study and even then were unable to find, is now offered to us in the plainest language; though we looked for it in vain in the obscurity of the olden version.”[2087]—He does not tell us whether it is the Vulgate or the mediæval German Bible which he here refers to as so obscure in comparison with his own Bible.

What appears to have afforded him most satisfaction was that he had been able to counteract the false translations and commentaries of the Jews. Often does he mention this as one of the advantages of his Bible, and it is perfectly true that his felicitous and correct exposition particularly of the Messianic predictions based on the Hebrew text is deserving of all praise.

He pointed out incidentally to his friends, that, in his Bible, he had “protested very strongly against the Rabbis,”[2088] and, in his “On the Last Words of David,” he congratulated himself when comparing his own interpretation with that of the Jews: “The Jews, because they do not accept Christ, cannot know or understand what is said by Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.... Scripture must seem to them as an epistle does to a man who cannot read.” “Unless we devote our energies to bringing the Hebrew Bible, wherever this is possible, into touch with the New Testament in a sense contrary to the Rabbinists, then it would be better to keep to the old version [the Vulgate] which, after all, is the best.”[2089]—His statement here, provided of course that the proviso “wherever this is possible,” be rigidly observed, is not altogether devoid of truth.

In spite of this, however, his conscience often told him that his acquaintance with Hebrew was not equal to that of the Jewish commentators. He admitted even in later years that he was no “grammatical or regular Hebraist.”[2090] “His familiarity with the language of the Old Testament was due, for the most part, as he himself says, to his constant reading of it and to his comparing together the different passages in order to arrive at their true meaning.”[2091]

Julius Köstlin, Luther’s best-known biographer, from whom the words just quoted are taken, declares, that, in his translation of the Bible, Luther “bestowed on his German people the greatest possible gift”; Luther wished to make of the Book of Books “an heirloom of the whole German nation.”[2092] Similar enthusiastic allusions to “the gift to the nation” are often met with in Protestant writers. They, however, overlook the fact that it was only to a fraction of the German nation, viz. to his co-religionists, that Luther offered this gift; moreover, they seem forgetful of a remark once made by Luther to a very intimate friend, which is far from enthusiastic and anything but complimentary to his German fellow-countrymen. The remark in question occurs in a letter of Luther’s dated Feb. 4, 1527, and addressed to Johann Lang of Erfurt; evidently he was extremely annoyed at the time. It runs as follows: “I am busy with Zacharias [the translation of which was then in the press] and have begun the translation of the Prophets, a work that is quite in keeping with the gratitude I have hitherto met with from this heathenish, nay, utterly bestial nation.”[2093] Even so severe a stricture must not be lost to sight by the historian desirous of tracing a psychological picture of the author’s feelings at the time he was engaged on the translation.

Finally it is instructive from the psychological standpoint to trace the development in Luther’s mind of the fable—to be dealt with more fully below—that, under Popery, the Bible had been discarded and that he, Luther, had brought it once more to light.[2094]

To begin with, he merely claimed to have discovered the true meaning of Scripture on the controversial points he himself had raised.[2095] It was the more easy for him to attribute to his Catholic contemporaries ignorance of the Bible, seeing that in those years the exegetical side of sacred learning had been to some extent neglected in favour of the discussions of the schoolmen. When afterwards he had been dazed by his great success with his translation of the Bible he was led to fancy that he was the first to open up the domain of Holy Scripture. This impression is closely bound up with the arbitrary pronouncements, even on the weightiest questions of the Canon, which we find scattered throughout his prefaces to the books of the Bible. He frequently repeats that he had forced all his opponents to take up the study of the Bible and that it was he alone who had made them see the need of their devoting themselves to this branch of learning—so as to be able to refute him. Here of course he is exaggerating the facts of the case. Accustomed as he was to hyperbole, we soon find him declaring, first as a paradox and then as actual fact, that the Bible had been buried in oblivion among the Catholics. The Papal Antichrist had destroyed all reverence for the Bible and all understanding of it; only that all men without exception might not run headlong to spiritual destruction had Christ, as it were by “force,” preserved the “simple text of the Gospel on the lecterns” “even under the rule of Antichrist.”[2096]

Luther utterly discarded the principles of antiquity concerning the Bible, but nevertheless he made abundant use in his translation of the literary assistance afforded him by the Catholic past.

In the Old Testament, the Church’s Latin translation, viz. the Vulgate, and the Greek Septuagint were of great service to him, but he also made use of the Latin translation of Santes Pagninus (not to speak of that of the Protestant, Seb. Münster) and likewise of the Commentaries, as, for instance, of the “Glossa ordinaria” and the works of Nicholas of Lyra († 1340).