842 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
Earlier Versions.
Luther was not the first, but by far the greatest translator of the German Bible, and is as inseparably connected with it as Jerome is with the Latin Vulgate. He threw the older translation into the shade and out of use, and has not been surpassed or even equaled by a successor. There are more accurate versions for scholars (as those of De Wette and Weizsicker), but none that can rival Luther’s for popular authority and use. fe
The civilization of the barbarians in the dark ages began with the introduction of Christianity, and the translation of such portions of the Scriptures as were needed in public worship.
The Gothic Bishop Wulfila or Wolflein (G.e., Little Wolf) in the fourth century translated nearly the whole Bible from the Greek into the Gothic dialect. It is the earliest monument of Teutonic literature, and the basis of comparative Teutonic philology.?
During the fourteenth century some unknown scholars prepared a new translation of the whole Bible into the Middle High German dialect. It slavishly follows the Latin Vulgate. It: may be compared to Wiclif’s English Version (1380), which was likewise made from the Vulgate, the original languages being then almost unknown in Europe. A copy of the New Testament of this version has been recently published, from a manuscript in the Premonstratensian convent of Tepl in Bohemia.?- Another copy is preserved in the
1 Hence repeatedly published from the remaining fragmentary MSS. in Upsala (Codex Argenteus, so called from its silver binding), Wolfenbiittel and Milan, by H. C. von Gabelenz and J. Loebe (1836), Massmann (1857), Bernhardt (1875), Stamm (1878), Uppstrom (1854-1868, the most accurate edition), R. Miller and H. Hoeppe (1881), W. W. Skeat (1882). Comp. also Jos. Bosworth, The Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels in Parallel Columns with the Versions of Wycliffe and Tyndale, London, 2d ed., 1874 (with a
fac-simile of the Codex Argenteus). 2 By P. Philipp Klimesch (librarian of the convent), Der Codex Teplen-
§ 62. LUTHER’S TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE. 343
college library at Freiberg in Saxony.! Both are from the fourteenth century, and agree almost word for word with the first printed German Bible, but contain, besides the New Testament, the apocryphal letter of St. Paul to the Laodiceans, which is a worthless compilation of a few sentences from the genuine writings of the apostle.”
After the invention of the printing-press, and before the Reformation, this medieval German Bible was more frequently printed than any other except the Latin Vulgate.3 No less than seventeen or eighteen editions appeared between 1462 and 1522, at Strassburg, Augsburg, Niirnberg, Céln, Liibeck, and Halberstadt (fourteen in the High, three or four in the Low German dialect). Most of them are in large folio, in two volumes, and illustrated by wood-cuts. The editions present one and the same version (or rather two versions, —one High German, the other Low German) with dialectical alterations and accommodations to the textual
sis, enthaltend “‘ Die Schrift des newen Gezeuges.’’ Aelteste deutsche Handschrift, welche den im 15 Jahrh. gedruckten deutschen Bibeln zu Grunde gelegen. Augsburg and Minchen, 1881-1884, in 3 parts. The Codex contains also homilies of St. Augustin and St. Chrysostom, and seven articles of faith. The last especially have induced Keller and Haupt to assign the translation to Waldensian origin. But these Addenda are not uncatholic, and at most would only prove Waldensian or Bohemian proprietorship of this particular copy, but not authorship of the translation. See Norss below, p. 353.
1 See Dr. M. Rachel’s Gymnasial program: Ueber die Freiberger Bibelhandschrift, nebst Beitradgen zur Gesch. der vorlutherischen Bibelibersetzung, Freiberg, 1886 (31 pages).
2 This apocryphal Epistle was also included in the Albigensian (Romance) version of the 13th century, in a Bohemian version, and in the early English Bibles, in two independent translations of the 14th or 15th century, but not in Wiclif’s Bible. See Forshall and Maddan, Wycliffite Versions of the Bible (1850), IV. 488 sq.; Anger, Ueber den Laodicenerbrief (Leipzig, 1848); and Lightfoot, Com. on Ep. to the Colossians (London, 1875), p. 363 sq. On the other hand, the same pseudo-Pauline Epistle appears in many MSS. and early editions of the Vulgate, and in the German versions of Eck and Dietenberger. It can therefore not be used as an argument for or against the Waldensian hypothesis of Keller.
8 Ninety-seven editions of the Vulgate were printed between 1450 and 1500, — 28 in Italy (nearly all in Venice), 16 in Germany, 10 in Basel, 9 in France. See Fritzsche in Herzogii, vol. VIII. 450.