Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The principle he followed, viz. to make the Bible plain to the German reader by explaining its meaning, so far as this can be done by a translation, brings us, however, face to face with other questions.

  Luther had a high opinion of the accuracy and clearness of his work. He says of it: “I can with a good conscience testify that I have shown the utmost fidelity and diligence therein, and have never thought to deceive.”

  “No one would believe what labour it has cost except those who worked with us,” so he said in his last years according to Mathesius, when looking back on the success of his undertaking. “This Bible — not that I would praise myself but the work speaks for itself — is so good that it is better than the Greek or Latin translation, and more is to be found in it than in all the commentaries. For we remove the hindrances and stumbling-blocks out of the way so that other people may be able to read without difficulty.” Reducing this eulogy to its proper proportions we may indeed allow that Luther eliminated the “hindrances and stumbling-blocks” from his German translation, being no literalist, but anxious above all to put into plain German what sounded strange or difficult.

  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,” — 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.” 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.”

  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, 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. 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.

  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.

  It is chiefly in the question of justification by faith alone that he twists his text so much that his version ceases in reality to be a translation. He indeed speaks of his additions as “commentaries,” but no one could thus have “commented” on the passages who was not, like Luther, entirely taken up with the new dogma of grace, justification and faith.

  In his efforts to provide his doctrine with a firm foundation in the eyes of his readers, he added the word “only” in Rom. iv. 15 and Rom. iii. 20, thus making these Pauline texts into a condemnation of the Law: “The law worketh only wrath,” “by the law only is the knowledge of sin.”

  Again, in Rom. iii. 25 f., the Apostle speaks of Christ “whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to the showing of his justice for the remission of former sins through the forbearance of God for the showing of his justice in this time, that he himself may be just and the justification of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ.” Luther, however, in the interests of his new doctrine, makes him say that God had “set up Christ as a mercy seat through faith in his Blood, in order that he may present the righteousness which is acceptable to him, forgiving the sins which had remained till then under divine forbearance, that he might in his season offer the righteousness which is acceptable to him that he might himself alone be just and the justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus.” The offering of the righteousness that is acceptable to God — an expression twice repeated — is not found in the original text, but of course is highly favourable to Luther’s doctrine of a merely imputed righteousness. In the same way he here speaks of God as “alone�
� being just, an interpolation of which the origin must also be sought in the translator’s theology.

  Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.

  The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith, imputed justice. Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach” (Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (ib., ii. 25), and Joseph, the husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be pious still.”

  From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church” the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests sit in their temples in their voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,” remarks a Protestant critic.

  The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere taught by the Apostle.

  And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is: “For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is just.”

  The same is the case with the oft-quoted text Rom. iii. 28, of which Luther’s Bible makes a kind of palladium for the new teaching by the arbitrary addition of the word “alone.” The text has been immortalised in its Lutheran shape even to our own day in inscriptions on Protestant churches and pulpits. There Luther makes the Apostle say: “Thus we hold that a man is justified by faith alone without the works of the law,” whereas the old Latin of the Vulgate rightly rendered it: “Arbitramur enim iustificari hominem per fidem sine operibus.”

  The word “alone” is not called for either by the text or the context. It is indeed true that the Apostle wishes to emphasise the exclusive action of faith, nevertheless, if we take this faith as he understands it, i.e. as a strong and vivifying faith and no mere dead thing, then it naturally comprises the works wrought by faith and man’s co-operation under the influence of grace. Of this faith to which the Apostle expressly refers, for instance in Romans ii. 6 ff. and in Galatians v. 6, he might quite well have said in the above passage that it justifies without works, i.e. without such as are performed apart from faith and grace. In fact, taken in this sense, Luther’s interpolation of the word “alone” is not reprehensible, though in the sense in which he intended it it is altogether inadmissible; for he would fain make the Apostle say, that faith “alone,” without any works of the law, operates justification, the works being merely an aspect of faith. The addition of the word “alone” amounted to a quite unjustifiable usurpation of the famous Pauline dictum for the uses of his own party. It must also at least be termed a subjective falsification, even though, objectively, it be capable of a better interpretation. If, as we have heard Luther say, he really wished to show in his translation “the utmost fidelity and industry and had never a thought of deception,” then he should not have made St. Paul say more than he does in the original, viz. that man is justified by faith without works.

  Contemporary Catholic pens were not slow in assailing in the strongest terms Luther’s translation on account of his surreptitious introduction of the word “alone.” The translator also regarded the protest as of sufficient importance to warrant his devoting his leisure in the Coburg in September, 1530, to composing a reply. The tract in question, entitled “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” he sent to his friend Wenceslaus Link at Nuremberg instructing him to have it printed.

  In it he gives two reasons in vindication of his arbitrary action: He had been obliged in this instance to add the word “alone” in order first of all to render the Apostle’s meaning in correct German, for it was the German usage to use the word “alone” or “only,” when, of two things, people wanted to deny one and affirm the other, for instance, if one wished to say that a peasant had brought the wheat asked for but not the money, then he would not say “he has brought the wheat but not the money,” but “he has brought no money but only corn.” Luther, however, was only able to show that this was in accordance with the spirit of the language in certain instances, not that it was necessary or indispensable in every case, particularly in the instance in question; still less could he prove that there were not circumstances affecting the words and the meaning where such a use of “alone” or “only” must be avoided in order not to change the tenor of the sentence. It might rightly have been urged against him that fidelity was far more important a matter than good phraseology. — The second reason he alleges in support of the interpolation bears directly on his erroneous view of the Apostle’s doctrine: “I have not followed merely linguistic considerations, for the text and the meaning of St. Paul absolutely demand it.” “He deliberately cuts away all works.” “Whoever would speak bluntly and plainly of such a dismissal of works must say: faith alone,” etc. If “this be so obvious,” “why then not say so”? Thus he makes the word “alone” a sort of hall-mark of his own “public” teaching.

  He is determined to defy his opponents and to challenge them yet again. “And I repent me,” he cries, “that I did not add thereto the word all, thus: without all works, all law whatsoever, so that it might be spoken out with a full, round sound. Thus therefore it shall remain in my New Testament, and though all Pope-asses should go raving mad they will not alter my decision.” — In a similar way and with redoubled energy he turns on those who had found fault with his translation of the Hail Mary because he had discarded “full of grace” in favour of “gracious.” “The Papists are furious with me for having spoilt the Angelical Salutation, but, as a matter of fact, in good German I ought to have said, ‘God greet thee, dear Mary.’ I shall translate, not as they, but as I please!”

  The remarkable “Sendbrieff,” other portions of which are of the highest psychological interest, must be regarded as in reality a product of the author’s mental overstrain at that time. On the one hand he was on tenterhooks wondering what the fate of the new Evangel would be, threatened as it was by the Diet of Augsburg; on the other hand he was overmastered by the sight of his own achievements, particularly his much-belauded translation of the Bible. He was also profoundly exasperated by the translation of the New Testament published by Emser (see below, ), the “Dresen [Dresden] Scribbler” as Luther called him, and by the prohibition issued at Leipzig against the sale of his German Bible in the duchy of Saxony.

  Hence he relieves his feelings in his usual way by an outburst of noisy v
ituperation: “All the Papists in a lump” are not “clever enough to understand or translate a single chapter of Scripture aright, no, not even the first two words.” Their braying, their “he-haw, he-haw, is too weak to harm my translation. I know full well what art, industry, reason and common sense go to make a good translation, but, as for them, they understand this less even than the miller’s beast.” It is quite true, so he says, that the four letters, s o l a, do not occur in Romans, “which letters these blockheads stare at as stupidly as a cow does at a new gate”; but, so he goes on, it is not our business to inquire “of the Latin letters how to speak German, as these donkeys do.” “No Pope-ass or mule-ass, who has never even attempted it himself, shall I suffer to be my judge, or to find fault with me in this matter. Whoever does not want my version has simply to let it alone and ... be rewarded with the devil’s thanks.” “For the future I shall simply despise them and get others to do the same, so long as they remain such people, I beg your pardon, donkeys.”

  In his efforts to express his contempt in the strongest words at his command we have the key to what he says in conclusion, which some of his opponents took too seriously. The famous “Sic volo, sic iubeo” with which his tract ends, though of course not meant in earnest, is nevertheless very characteristic of him.

  “If,” he writes, “your new Papist makes much ado about the word sola, just say straight out to him: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so and says Papist and donkey are one and the same thing.... Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” He too would boast for once and rail against the blockheads as St. Paul [!] had done against his crazy saints. Hence he parodies St. Paul’s words and scoffs at the Papists who wished to make themselves out to be doctors, preachers, theologians and disputants, reiterating for each category the words “And so am I.” He then goes further: “I am able to interpret the Psalms and the Prophets, which they cannot do. I can translate, which they can’t. I can read Holy Scripture, they cannot. And to come to other matters: I am better acquainted with their dialectics and their philosophy than the whole lot of them together, and know for certain that not one of them understands his Aristotle. And if there is one among them who understands one introduction or chapter of Aristotle, then I am ready to be tossed in a blanket.”