Die Bibel Martin Luthers: Ein Buch und seine Geschichte ed. by Margot Käßmann and Martin Rösel (review)

This collection of thirteen essays in German spans the history of the Luther Bible from its predecessors in fourteenth-century Germany to its revised 2017 “Jubilee Edition.” The articles are well-illustrated and aimed at a general audience. Although its purpose is to introduce and defend the latest revision of a German classic, it devotes only three essays to the process and rationale behind the revision. The majority of essays focus on Luther’s own century.

Luther never was completely satisfied with his Bible translations. When he returned from the Wartburg after spending only eleven weeks translating the New Testament, he convened a group of his Wittenberg colleagues to help him perfect the draft. The project took nearly six months. Translating the Old Testament and Apocrypha required twelve years more. Through the rest of his life Luther repeated the revision process before each new edition of the whole Bible appeared. A contemporary account depicts Luther with his “Sanhedrin”—Melanchthon, Jonas, Cruciger and others—consulting various editions of the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew sources. As the group worked through a book his colleagues would make suggestions and Luther would decide with “yes” or “I don’t like it” (125–127). The need for repeated revisions stemmed from Luther’s ceaseless quest to bring the text to life so that it would literally “speak” to his readers. He wrote for the ear and not the eye. Essays on his principles of translation, “Dem Volk aufs Maul Schauen” (76–93) and his shaping the German language, “Luther und die Deutsche Sprache” (170–192) are particularly helpful. Literate readers were few and they spoke a Babel of dialects, so he wanted to make the message as plain as possible—“pure and clear German”—avoiding idioms and dialect. When he could not find words to express the meaning of the original text he created new ones: “scapegoat” (Sündenbock), “stand-in” (Lückenbüßer), and “decoy” (Lockvogel).

The last edition of the Bible from Luther’s own hand was published in 1545, one year before his death. Although efforts to revise the Luther Bible did not appear for almost three hundred years, once the process began it stimulated repeated activity. The problem was to find a balance between being faithful to Luther and sounding as contemporary as his translation had been in the first place (“Luthergetreu oder Zeitgemäss? Die Revisionen der Lutherbibel,” 193–213).

The latest iteration of that process, the Jubilee Edition, was begun in 2008 as an effort to incorporate new archaeological discoveries, to correct accretions from earlier revisions, and to address a changed social context—secularism, Jewish-Christian dialogue, and the new recognition of women. It arrives at a time when at least forty translations in German are available, including the internet-based Basis-Bible and the starkly contemporary Vox Bible. The Jubilee Edition finds its niche in bringing back the classic “voice” of Luther and in its usefulness for public worship.

This book and the Jubilee Bible itself are joint projects between the German Bible Society and Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). The majority of the authors are members of the EKD’s steering committee for the Bible revision project and are also experts in their own fields. They provide short bibliographies at the end of each essay. The writing is on a non-technical level and would be a good resource for students learning about German language and culture. Even persons familiar with the Reformation era will find interesting insights in almost every article. A survey of the Apocrypha’s varied fortunes since the sixteenth century (136–50) is a good example.