956 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D, 1517 To 1530.
tage of the labors of three generations of translators and revisers, and is therefore more accurate, and yet equally idiomatic.
The Original Tezt.
The basis for Luther’s version of the Old Testament was the Massoretic text as published by Gerson Ben Mosheh at Brescia in 1494.1 He used also the Septuagint, the Vulgate of Jerome? (although he disliked him exceedingly on account of his monkery), the Latin translations of the Dominican Sanctes Pagnini of Lucca (1527), and of the Franciscan Sebastian Minster (1534), the “ Glossa ordinaria” (a favorite exegetical vade-mecum of Walafried Strabo from the ninth century), and Nicolaus Lyra (ἃ. 1340), the chief of medieval commentators, who, besides the Fathers, consulted also the Jewish rabbis.
The basis for the New Testament was the second edition of Erasmus, published at Basel in Switzerland in 1519.4 His
1 Luther’s copy of the Hebrew Bible is preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. The editio princeps of the whole Hebrew Bible appeared 1488 (Soncino: Abraham ben Chayin de’ Tintori). A copy in possession of Dr. Ginsburg in England. See Stevens, l.c. p. 60. Portions had been printed before.
2 A copy of the Lyons ed. of 1519, and one of the Basel ed. of 1509, now in possession of the Brandenburg Provincial Museum at Berlin. Grimm, Gesch. d. luther. Bibeliibers., p. 8, note.
3 Lyra acquired by his Postille perpetue in V. et N. Test. (first published in Rome, 1472, in 5 vols, fol., again at Venice, 1540) the title Doctor planus et utilis. His influence on Luther is expressed in the well-known lines: —
“δὲ Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset.”
4 Greek and Latin, 2 vols. folio. The first part contains Preface, Dedication to Pope Leo X., and the Ratio seu Compendium vere Theologie per Erasmum Roterodamum (120 pages); the second part, the Greek Text, with a Latin version in parallel columns, with brief introductions to the several books (565 pages). At the end is a Latin letter of Frobenius, the publisher, dated ‘‘ Nonis Febr. Anno M.D.XIX.’’ A copy in the Union Theol. Seminary, New York. — Some say that Luther made use of Gerbel’s reprint of Erasmus, 1521. But Dr. Reuss of Strassburg, who has the largest collection and best knowledge of Greek Testaments, denies this. Gesch. der h. Schriften des N. T., 5th ed., II. 211, note.
§ 68. CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF LUTHER’S VERSION. 357
first edition of the Greek Testament had appeared in 1516, just one year before the Reformation. He derived the text from a few medieval MSS.! The second edition, though much more correct than the first (“‘ multo diligentius recognitum, emendatum,” etc.), is disfigured by a large number of typographical errors.2 He laid the foundation of the Teztus Receptus, which was brought into its mature shape by R. Stephen, in his “royal edition ” of 1550 (the basis of the English Teztus Receptus), and by the Elzevirs in their editions of 1624 and 1633 (the basis of the Continental Teztus Receptus), and which maintained the supremacy till Lachmann inaugurated the adoption of an older textual basis (1831).
Luther did not slavishly follow the Greek of Erasmus, and in many places conformed to the Latin Vulgate, which is based on an older text. He also omitted, even in his last edition, the famous interpolation of the heavenly witnesses in 1 John 5:7, which Erasmus inserted in his third edition (1522) against his better judgment.®
The German Rendering.
The German language was divided into as many dialects as tribes and states, and none served as a bond of literary union. Saxons and Bavarians, Hanoverians and Swabians, could scarcely understand each other. Each author wrote in the dialect of his district, Zwingli in his Schwyzerdiitsch.
1 See Schaff, Companion to the Greek Testament, etc., New York, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 229 sqq., and the facsimile of the Erasmian ed. on p. 582 sq. Tyndale’s English version was likewise made from Erasmus.
2 0. von Gebhardt, in his Novum Test. Grece et Germanice, Preface, p. xvi., says of the second ed. of Erasmus: ‘‘ Die Zahl der Druckfehler ist so gross, dass ein volistindiges Verzeichniss derselben Seiten fiillen wiirde.”’ Comp. Scrivener, Introd. to the Criticism of the N. T., 3d ed. (1883), p. 482 sq.
8 It first appeared in the Frankfort edition of Luther’s Bible, 1574. The revised Luther-Bible of 1883 strangely retains the passage, but in small type and in brackets, with the note that it was wanting in Luther’s editions. The Probebibel departs only in a few places from the Erasmian text as followed by Luther: viz., Acts 12:25; Heb. 10:34; 1 John 2:23; Rev. 11:2. In this respect the German revision is far behind the Anglo-American revision of 1881, which corrects the Textus Receptus in about five thousand places.