Luther Translates the Bible into German

In December 1521 Martin Luther, writing from the castle where he was hidden after the events told under Luther Is Excommunicated and Outlawed at Worms, told a friend that he would translate the New Testament into German, “a thing which my friends demand”, and wished that every town had its own interpreter (Luther, Letters, to John Lang, 18 December 1521). By the end of March 1522 he was back in Wittenberg and reported that he had translated the whole New Testament in his “Patmos” and that he and Philip Melanchthon had begun to polish it. He asked for plain words, not those of the court (Luther, Letters, to Georg Spalatin, 30 March 1522).

About 20 September 1522 Luther sent finished copies to the Saxon court, lacking only the preface to Romans (Luther, Letters, to Georg Spalatin, about 20 September 1522). The book, Das Newe Testament Deutzsch, was printed at Wittenberg by Melchior Lotter, with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach in the Revelation (Luther, September Testament (1522) library record of the copy).

Luther’s prefaces told readers how to read. In 1522 he called John’s Gospel, Paul’s letters and 1 Peter the kernel of the New Testament and wrote that beside them the letter of James was an “epistle of straw”, having nothing of the gospel about it; the passage stood only in the edition of 1522 (Luther, Prefaces to the Bible preface to the New Testament, 1522 (Works 6, pp. 443–444)). He set Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation apart from what he called the chief books, and he did not think James the work of an apostle (Luther, Prefaces to the Bible prefaces to Hebrews and to James and Jude (Works 6, pp. 476–478)).

The Old Testament followed in parts. In November 1522 Luther was “only in Leviticus” and planned to publish the books of Moses first, then the histories, then the prophets (Luther, Letters, to Georg Spalatin, 3 November 1522). In December 1523 the second part was finished and he was at work on the third, which he called the hardest and longest (Luther, Letters, to Nicholas Hausmann, 4 December 1523). In January 1530 he was about to return to the prophets (Luther, Letters, to Nicholas Hausmann, 3 January 1530). The complete Bible, Biblia, das ist, die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch, was printed at Wittenberg by Hans Lufft in 1534 (Luther Bible (1534) museum record of the copy).

In 1530 Luther defended his method in an open letter. Critics objected that he had written “by faith alone” in Romans 3, though the word “alone” is not in Paul’s text. He granted that it is in neither the Greek nor the Latin and argued that German idiom and Paul’s meaning both require it. A translator, he wrote, must ask “the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common person in the market” how they speak. He recalled that he, Philip and Aurogallus had sometimes spent four days on three lines of Job (Luther, On Translating on Romans 3).

The Roman church gave its own ruling on these questions at the Council of Trent. In 1546 the council declared that the old Latin Vulgate was to be held as authentic in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, and that no one might, in matters of faith and morals, interpret Scripture against the sense held by the church (Council of Trent Session 4, decree on the edition and use of the sacred books).