138 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
Although a doctor of divinity, he relied for several years almost exclusively on the Latin version of the Scriptures. Very few professors knew Greek, and still less, Hebrew. Luther had acquired a superficial idea of Hebrew at Erfurt from Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica.* 'The Greek he learned at Wittenberg, we do not know exactly when, mostly from books and from his colleagues, Johann Lange and Melanchthon. As late as Feb. 18th, 1518, he asked Lange, “the Greek,” a question about the difference between ἀνάθημα and ἀνάθεμα, and confessed that he could not draw the Greek letters.2 His herculean labor in translating the Bible forced him into a closer familiarity with the original languages, though he never attained to mastery. As a scholar he remained inferior to Reuchlin or Erasmus or Melanchthon, but as a genius he was their superior, and as a master of his native German he had no equal in all Germany. Moreover, he turned his knowledge to the best advantage, and always seized the strong point in controversy. He studied with all his might and often neglected eating and sleeping.
Luther opened his theological teaching with David and Paul, who became the pillars of his theology. The Psalms and the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians remained his favorite books. His academic labors as a commentator extended over thirty-three years, from 1513 to 1546, his labors as a reformer embraced only twenty-nine years, from 1517 to 1546. Beginning with the Psalms, 1513, he ended with Genesis, November 17th, 1545, three months before his death.
His first lectures on the Psalms are still extant and have
1This book, published at Pforzheim, 1506, at the author’s expense, is the first Hebrew grammar written by a Christian, and broke the path for Hebrew learning in Germany. So far Reuchlin was right in calling it a monwmentum cere perennius.
2 DeWette, I. 34: “ Petimus a te, Greece, ut controversiam nostram dissolvas, que sit distantia inter anathema per epsilon, et anathema pern .... -Nescio figuras literarum pingere.”” In his Table Talk he says: “Ich kann weder griechisch noch hebriiisch ; ich will aber dennoch einem Griechen und Hebrier ziemlich begegnen.” Comp. on his linguistic studies and accomplishments, Jiirgens, I. 470 sqq.; 11. 428 sqq.
§ 27. LUTHER AS PROFESSOR TILL 1517. 139
recently been published from the manuscript in Wolfenbiittel.' They are exegetically worthless, but theologically important as his first attempt to extract a deeper spiritual meaning from the Psalms. He took Jerome’s Psalter as the textual basis; the few Hebrew etymologies are all derived from Jerome, Augustin (who knew no Hebrew), and Reuchlin’s Lexicon. He followed closely the medizval method of interpretation which distinguished four different senses, and neglected the grammatical and historical interpretation. Thus Jerusalem means literally or historically the city in Palestine, allegorically the good, tropologically virtue, anagogically reward; Babylon means literally the city or empire of Babylon, allegorically the evil, tropologically vice, anagogically punishment. ‘Then again one word may have four bad and four good senses, according as it is understood literally or figuratively. Sometimes he distinguished six senses. He emphasized the prophetic character of the Psalms, and found Christ and his work everywhere.* He had no sympathy with the method of
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1 He had the Latin text of the Psalms printed, and wrote between the lines and on the margin his notes in very small and almost illegible letters, Késtlin gives a fac-simile page in Luther’s Leben, p.72 (Engl. ed. p. 64). The whole was published with painstaking accuracy by Kawerau in the third volume of the Weimar ed. (1885).
* The innumerable references to the Hebreus are never intended for the original, but for Jerome’s Psalterium juata Hebreos. Paul de Lagarde has published an edition, Lips., 1874.
* Luther illustrates this double four-fold scheme of exegesis by the following table (Weimar ed. ITI, 11):
LITERA OCCIDENS SPIRITUS VIVIFICANS de corpore hystorice terra Canaan hystorice populus in Zion existens Babylonico Ecclesiastico Allegorice Synagoga vel Allegorice Ecclesia Pate Mons j persona eminens in eadem Mons vel quilibit pea oes ZIon : ae Ξ ΖΙΟΝ : PP Nes ae tropologice Justitia phari- Tropologice Justitia fidet saica et legalis vel alia excellen . anagogice Gloria futura Anagogice gloria secundum carnem eterna in celis,
Econtra V ALLIS CEDRON per oppositum. ‘This fanciful allegorizing and spiritualizing method of interpreting the Psalms by which they are made to teach almost anything that is pious and edifying, is still popular even in some Protestant churches, especially the