Erasmus and the Search for the Original Text of the New Testament Erasmus’s Greek New Testament was a monumental achievement, but left room for later scholars to improve it. Martin HeideThe Greek New Testament published in Basel (Switzerland) in 1516 was the greatest achievement of the magnificent Dutch philosopher, philologist, and Catholic theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam (ca. 1466–1536). At that time in Western Europe, the Latin Bible was the “Gold standard” of Holy Writ; it was often seen as the inspired text. Philologists and theologians such as Erasmus, however, knew that the Latin Bible of his time, also known as the “Vulgate,” was actually a translation, and that it had been translated by Jerome from the Greek in the 4th century AD. While revising Jerome’s Latin translation and preparing to publish a new Latin edition, Erasmus often consulted Greek manuscripts to ensure his decisions. During that process, he felt encouraged to print the (revised) Latin and the Greek New Testament on facing pages and publish it under the title Novum Instrumentum omne (Complete New Testament), thus allowing qualified readers to verify his revision. Erasmus used the only Greek New Testament manuscripts available in Basel at his time. The publication of the Novum Instrumentum omne was a great success. However, because the printing process was done in a hurry, the first edition had many editing errors and typos, which were partly dealt with in the ensuing edition(s). For printing the Greek part of his Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus used the only Greek New Testament manuscripts available in Basel at his time. These eight manuscripts were written between the 10th and 15th centuries. They once belonged to Cardinal John of Ragusa (ca. 1393–1443), who, before the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, had brought about 60 Greek manuscripts, covering all fields of learning, from Constantinople to Basel. John of Ragusa bequeathed these manuscripts to the convent of the Dominicans in Basel. Except for two manuscripts that were already in the hands of Johann Reuchlin (ca. 1455–1522) at Erasmus’s time and that he had to borrow from this great scholar, the Dominican library loaned six manuscripts directly to Erasmus. Today, six of the eight are housed in the University library of Basel, while manuscript 2814, the only manuscript with the book of Revelation, is owned by the University Library of Augsburg. Manuscript 2105, which Erasmus used mainly for his separately published textual commentary, the Annotationes (Annotations), was discovered in the Bodleian Library of Oxford in 1966. The eight manuscripts are listed in the table below, with the respective Gregory-Aland (GA) numbers that are in use today: GAContentsDateShelf Number1Acts, epistles, four gospels12th c.Basel A.N. IV. 22Four Gospels12thBasel A.N. IV. 12815Acts, epistles12thBasel A.N. IV. 42816Acts, epistles15thBasel A.N. IV. 52817Pauline Epistles10–11thBasel A.N. III.11817Four Gospels with Theophylact’s commentary15thBasel A.N. III. 152814Apocalypse with Andrew’s commentary12thAugsburg I.1.4° 12105Pauline Epistles with Theophylact’s commentary12thOxford E. 1. 6Manuscripts used by Erasmus Understandably, Erasmus was used to the text of the Latin Bible from his childhood and indebted to the general scholarly opinion of his time that favored this text. Thus, from the first edition in 1516 onward, Erasmus introduced, knowingly or unknowingly, some Latin readings into the Greek text. For example, in Acts 9:5–6, he added the following phrase: “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks, and he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him” (KJV). In his Annotationes, Erasmus admitted that, “in most Greek manuscripts this addition is not found.” However, this phrase, being not known from any of the Greek manuscripts at Erasmus’s disposal, is actually found in some later Latin manuscripts and in the printed Latin editions of Erasmus’s time (such as the Gutenberg Bible, and many more). Since the same text is known from Acts 22:10, it might be argued that Erasmus thought the introduction of the Latin phrase would neither change the meaning nor the inspiration of the text. Moreover, high opinions of the Latin Vulgate and negative views of the Greek text moved Erasmus to write extended apologies for readings which departed from the Latin in his Annotationes. In addition, unfavorable reviews of his first edition forced him to include a late reading based on the Latin in his third edition, the so-called Comma Johanneum, which is added here in brackets: “For there are three that bear record [in heaven, Father, Word, and Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], Spirit, and water, and blood, and the three agree in one” (1 John 5:7–8 according to Erasmus’ third edition). As Greek manuscript support was lacking for this reading, it was not included in the first (1516) and second (1519) editions. Erasmus seems to have yielded to pressure to include the passage when he learned that a Greek manuscript in England, the so-called Codex Britannicus, known today as Codex Montfortianus (GA 61), contained the text (fig. 1). Fig. 1. Codex Britannicus or Montfortianus (GA 61), fol. 439r, with the text of 1 John 5:7–9 including the Comma Johanneum. Source This codex was actually written around 1520 by a monk named Roy, most likely to provide Erasmus with the missing “evidence.” Erasmus claimed in his Annotationes that he did not believe the reading to be genuine and that it looked very similar to the Vulgate reading. Erasmus wondered why this codex lacked the phrase “and these three agree in one” in verse 8, in accordance with the Latin Vulgate, while it is found in nearly all Greek copies. Moreover, Erasmus saw evidence for a Latin origin of the Greek text in the missing articles before important nouns such as “father” (πατὴρ), “word” (λόγος), and “spirit” (πνεῦμα). Ultimately, however, Erasmus chose to include the Comma Johanneum from his third edition onward, gaining wider acceptance of his Latin and Greek texts, so that, in his own words, no one would have a basis to criticize him. A comparison of the Codex Montfortianus and Erasmus’ third edition reveals that he added “and” (καί) between “spirit” and “water,” and supplemented the phrase “and these three agree in one.” In the 4th and 5th editions, he polished the Greek, inserting the missing articles. After Erasmus’ death, the text received further improvement, so that the Comma Johanneum reads today: “For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (1 John 5:7–8 according to the KJV). Get new articles and updates in your inbox. Leave this field empty if you're human: The Comma Johanneum is not found in Luther’s German New Testament of 1522, which was translated from a reprint of Erasmus’ first edition. Martin Luther stated in his “Lecture on the First Epistle of John” that the Comma Johanneum had been “clumsily inserted by the zeal of the old theologians against the Arians … I could easily make fun of the fact that there is no more unsuitable place of proof for the Trinity.” In a similar way as Erasmus, Luther did not really buy the text. In the margin of 1 John 5 in his own Bible, he added the remark that, “there is no testimony in heaven” (in coelo non est testimonium). The German Bible did not include the Comma Johanneum before 1581. The Text of Revelation For the text of Revelation, Erasmus had but one Greek manuscript, no. 2814, which actually was a commentary of archbishop Andrew of Caesarea (ca. 563–614). There are many places where Erasmus (or his associate, or his printer) had problems to read the text or to distinguish between the commentary and the biblical text, so that Erasmus’s Greek text of Revelation has not a few unique readings. Most of these faulty readings have never been corrected by Erasmus or those responsible for reprinting the Received Text. For instance, fig. 2 shows leaf no. 64 (folio 64r) of manuscript 2814. Most of the text consists of Andrew’s commentary, but the red marks in the left margin indicate the next Bible verse (Rev. 17:8b) to be commented upon: “they shall wonder … when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and is” (θαυμασθήσονται … βλεπόντων τὸ θηρίον ὅτι ἦν καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν καὶ παρέσται). However, the last two words cited here appear, due to misreading, in Erasmus’s text not as “and is” (καὶ παρέσται), but as “and yet is” (καὶπερ ἔστιν). Fig. 2. The last two words of the biblical text (in orange) were misread in Manuscript 2814, University Library of Augsburg (12th c.), f. 64r. Source In Revelation 21:23–24, Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum introduced a unique reading due to a confusion of Bible text and commentary. As can be seen in fig. 3, the first visible line begins with Revelation 21:23c: “for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (γὰρ δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐφώτισεν αὐτήν καὶ ὁ λύχνος αὐτῆς τὸ ἀρνίον). Immediately after that, Andrew’s commentary resumes, before line four is again marked as biblical text in the margin. However, the scribe of the manuscript mispositioned the marginal signs! The text of line four simply continues Andrew’s commentary with the words translated in the KJV as “and the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it” (καὶ τὰ ἔθνη τῶν σωζομένων τῷ φωτί αὐτῆς περιπατήσουσιν). This commentary text naturally deviates from the usual Bible text attested in Revelation 21:23–24 which should read “by its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (καὶ περιπατήσουσιν τὰ ἔθνη διὰ τοῦ φωτὸς αὐτῆς). Thus, a few words of Andrew’s commentary crept into the Received Text as Holy Writ and, from there, into the early translations such as Luther’s German Bible and the KJV. Fig. 3. Because of a miswritten marginal sign, the commentary text (in orange) was read as the biblical text in Manuscript 2814, University Library of Augsburg (12th c.), f. 88v. Source Moreover, as is well-known, a leaf is missing toward the end of manuscript 2814, so that the biblical text quoted ends abruptly with Revelation 22:16 (fol. 92v), while the next leaf (fol. 93r) continues with Andrew’s commentary until its last page (fol. 94r). To fill the gap in his Greek text, Erasmus had to retranslate it from the Latin, which he freely admits in the defense of his text against the critique of Edward Lee: “At the end of my copy of Revelation, a few lines were missing. I added them in accordance with Latin copies,” which means that he retranslated them from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. Similarly, he writes in his Annotationes to the Apocalypse: “Although at the end of this book I have found some words in our text [i.e., the Latin] that were missing in the Greek copies, we have nevertheless added them from the Latin.” Fig. 4. Rev. 22:19 in a 1512 Latin Bible with the word “book” (libro) in the text and the usual reading “tree” (ligno) in the margin. Source Up to today, the textus receptus or “Received Text,” as Erasmus’s Greek text was called from the 17th century onwards, has some Greek readings that hail from Erasmus’s retranslation procedure and that have no manuscript support whatsoever. Although most of these readings are trivial, some are visible in the translations, such as the “book of life” (KJV) instead of “the tree of life” (NASB) (Rev. 22:19). This reading is based on late Latin manuscripts, which confused ligno “tree” with libro “book,” as can be seen in fig. 4. Further Research after the Reformation Period After the Reformation, scholars such as the Lutheran pietist clergyman J. A. Bengel (1687–1752) realized that the textus receptus or Received Text was largely based on late medieval Greek manuscripts and that its revision was overdue, in face of many more and much older Greek manuscripts that had become known in Europe. Back in 1516, Erasmus had no choice; he had to use what was available at his time. Bengel, on the other hand, in the spirit and zeal of Erasmus, seized the opportunity and compared the manuscripts newly known in his time to the Received Text. For instance, with the help of the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century) and medieval manuscripts, Bengel was able to correct the most obvious faults of the Book of Revelation (fig. 5) and made text-critical observations that are still valid today. Fig. 5. Bengel’s Testamentum Novum (1734) has the reading τοῦ ξύλου (tou xylou) “of the tree” in the text of Rev. 22:19, while Erasmus’s reading βίβλου (biblou) “of [the] book” is merely cited as a variant. It is marked by the Greek letter ε to signal a reading “to be rejected, though approved by some.” Source Erasmus’s Legacy The Novum Instrumentum was the only printed and published Greek text available at the onset of the Reformation and it has done the church a great service. The success and deep impact of the Reformation and its aftermath would be unthinkable without this new spiritual and intellectual basis of the New Testament text. Moreover, no cardinal doctrine is jeopardized by its obvious shortcomings. However, the Greek of the Novum Instrumentum, or the “Received Text,” as it was later called, “soon became, as it were, stereotyped in men’s minds; so that the readings originally edited on most insufficient manuscript authority, were supposed to possess some prescriptive right, just as if … an apostle had been the compositor.”1Samuel. P. Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (London: Bagster, 1854), 29. The work of the ingenious and industrious Erasmus marks the beginning of modern New Testament textual criticism, of the science that compares Greek New Testament manuscripts to reconstruct and print the earliest and original text. As it would be foolish today to think that the knowledge, of, e.g., Roman history during the 16th century was superior to our knowledge of the past and to ignore all the progress that has been made in reconstructing ancient history, so it would be foolish to claim that we should see the Novum Instrumentum as the only valid Bible text, arguing that God in some mysterious way restored the original text through the error-prone work of Erasmus. We do not need to bend our brains to explain away the errors of the Received Text. Thanks to Erasmus, we do not believe anymore that the Vulgate is the only truly inspired text of the church. And thanks to such men as John Mill (1645–1707), Johann A. Bengel (1687–1752), Samuel P. Tregelles (1813–1875), Constantin v. Tischendorf (1815–1874) and many others who followed in their footsteps and worked hard to restore as close as possible the original Greek text of the New Testament, we do not need to bend our brains to explain away the errors of the Received Text, seeing the text and its ramifications today as it is.Notes1Samuel. P. Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (London: Bagster, 1854), 29.
The Day the Bible Became a Bestseller Martin Luther didn’t set out to produce a bestseller. But 500 years ago that’s exactly what he did. Jeffrey KlohaWe know exactly when the Bible first became the “best-selling book of all time.” It was September 21, 1522. This date was the opening of the annual book fair in Leipzig, Germany. The previous April, Martin Luther refused to recant his writings before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at an assembly convened to examine his works known as the Diet of Worms. From there he was secreted to the Wartburg Castle for his own protection. In eleven weeks, he completed a translation of the New Testament from Greek into German. From there, his colleague at Wittenberg University, Philip Melanchthon, edited the translation. Two businessmen in Wittenberg, Lucas Cranach the Elder and his partner Christian Doering, then employed the printer Melchior Lotter the Younger to rush to completion this New Testament in German in time for the book fair—even setting up temporary presses on their property to ensure completion. Between 3,000 and 5,000 copies were made, bundled up, and rushed to Leipzig for the book fair. Luther translating the Bible in 1521 as depicted by Eugène Siberdt. Wikimedia Commons An Immediate Bestseller The book was a hit. All the copies of this German New Testament sold out before the fair ended a week later. From there, Luther’s German New Testament spread around Europe. A second printing was started immediately and released in December. A pirated version was printed in Basel before the end of 1522. In the next year a total of twelve authorized and sixty-six unauthorized reprints appeared throughout Germany and Europe—hundreds of thousands of copies sold in just over twelve months. Suddenly, the Bible was a bestseller. Luther’s Bible. The German New Testament. Now, all this might be left as a footnote in history, except that this little Bible by Luther still influences the way that we read Bibles today. From format to contents to readability to explanatory notes—all have been shaped by the Septembertestament. How did this instant success happen? Luther was not the first to market. In fact, the first printed German Bible had appeared in 1466, fifty-five years before Luther’s work. Seventeen total versions appeared before 1522. So, there was not simply a pent-up demand for the Bible in German into which Luther tapped. Rather, it was Luther’s theology and notoriety, combined with a readable translation style and a physical and visual format designed to help the reader understand the text—at least the text as Luther wanted the reader to understand it—that made this Bible become a bestseller. Wartburg Castle, where Luther finished his German New Testament in 1522. Photo by Ashley Van Haeften The Context of Luther’s Achievement For the first 1500 years of the church, the Bible, or rather, the various books and stories in the Bible, were accessed by almost all people not by reading, but by hearing. People heard the Bible in worship, they sung it in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. They were taught it in sermons and catechetical teaching, they saw its contents portrayed in icons and eventually stained glass, watched it performed in mystery plays and passion plays (some of which are still performed today). But possessing a Bible, holding a Bible, whether on papyrus or parchment or paper was not at all common. Almost all physical copies of the Bible down to the 1500s were produced for use in churches, in monasteries, and for clergy. A few wealthy people had beautifully decorated devotional books, which often contained the Psalms, but the Bible as we know it was simply not accessible—nor indeed seen to need to be accessible—to the vast, vast majority of people. Even Gutenberg did not produce a bestseller because what he produced looked and felt and, to some extent, even cost what a Latin manuscript of the Bible cost in the 1450s. Gutenberg could produce sixty copies in the time it took a copyist to produce one manuscript. The first edition of 1454 was produced in about 160 to 180 copies: ¾ of them on paper and ¼ on vellum. Paper copies cost thirty florins at a time when the salary of a clerk in the Medici bank earned between fourteen and fifty florins per year. So, if you have a great job in 1450, a Gutenberg Bible would cost roughly one year’s wages—and you still had to be able to read Latin. Most copies were purchased by religious orders or wealthy individuals for donation to churches and ecclesial institutions. While a pivotal moment in western history (Time magazine named it the most significant event of the past 1000 years) Gutenberg did not immediately change the way that people accessed the Bible. But in the early 16th century, people began to want to read the Scriptures for themselves. And reform-minded scholars throughout Europe worked to make it accessible to all people, in their own languages. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of the greatest classical scholars of all time. He produced numerous first editions of texts from antiquity, including the first published Greek New Testament in 1516. But he did not call it a “New Testament.” He called it a “Novum Instrumentum,” a new tool. The edition has Greek in one column and Latin in the other, but not the Vulgate, the commonly used Latin text, but a fresh translation that Erasmus argued was more accurate to the Greek. He wanted to make the Greek text more accessible to scholars and theologians in the west who did not really know Greek. And what was this tool to be used for? He lays this out in his preface, what he called the paraclesis or “exhortation” at the beginning of his new tool: The sun belongs to everyone; the science of Christ is just the same. I am totally opposed to the fact that divine scripture should not be translated into one’s native language, to be read by the non-clergy; it is as if Christ’s teaching was so mysterious that only a handful of theologians could understand it, or as if the fortress of religion was built with the ignorance which the Church has forced on the common man. I wish that even the lowliest women read the gospels and the Pauline Epistles. And I would that they were translated into all languages so that they could be read and understood not only by Scots and Irish, but also by Turks and Saracens… Would that, as a result, the farmer sing some portion of them at the plow, the weaver hum some parts of them to the movement of his shuttle, the traveler lighten the weariness of the journey with stories from this source. Luther used the second edition (printed in 1519) of Erasmus’s “new tool” to create a New Testament for German farmers and weavers, and in so doing created a runaway success. The audience for this German New Testament was the German people themselves. Where the Gutenberg Bible was out of the reach of almost all people, both for the cost and the fact that it was in Latin, a bound copy of Luther’s New Testament cost a single guilder: schoolteacher’s two month’s wages, or the price of a calf. A Book to Point to Christ It seems self-evident to us today that the Bible should be translated. But for Luther, the translation of the Bible was not an end in itself. It was not simply, “let’s get the Bible out there and see what happens.” Nor was he interested in a text for academic study since Greek, Hebrew, and Latin editions were available for that if one wanted. Rather, Luther wanted a New Testament through which individuals could hear the Word of God directly, without the mediation of the church or a priest. Said another way: Luther’s goal was that individuals hear “God’s message about Christ.” Luther’s goal was that individuals hear “God’s message about Christ.” In the language of Romans 10: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Luther expresses this in his introduction to the Old Testament published later in 1534: “If, then, you would interpret well and surely, set Christ before you; for He is the man to whom it all applies.” But even the New Testament, which Luther acknowledged should be clear enough, also can be misinterpreted and therefore the reader needs assistance to hear the Gospel clearly. Luther produced this book, quite simply, to point to Christ. To give people access, for themselves—with Luther’s guidance—to the promises of God. We see this on the title page of a 1524 Wittenberg Bible with its simple description, and Christ on the cross. The title page to the Old Testament in Luther’s 1524 Bible with Christ on the cross. Museum of the Bible BIB.003838. Luther’s entire purpose in translating the New Testament, then, and every feature of the translation and the contents of the volume is designed to preach Christ and the Gospel message. This accounts for the new features of the Septembertestament. It was a text like no other before it. It translated a Greek text into the vernacular for the first time in Western Europe since the Vulgate. It included prefaces and notes to ensure that the readers heard the Gospel. And even the sequence of the New Testament books was altered to suit Luther’s goal of leading people to trust the promises of Christ. This might be surprising. A Reformation motto is sola Scriptura! By Scripture alone! without tradition or interpretation. But sola Scriptura itself is actually in service to the central Reformation tenet: “Christ Alone!” (solus Christus). Luther put Scripture into the language of the people so that by Scripture alone they could hear Christ and his gospel, and so receive salvation. Helps to Guide the Reader to Christ The physical format and additional features that Luther and his collaborators added to this Septembertestament helped accomplish this goal. These were not without precedent, and certainly not without controversy, as we will see. And there is an important juxtaposition between Luther’s desire for the Word to be heard clearly and directly by people on its own terms and, at the same time, the addition of several “helps” to make sure that the reader gets the right interpretation. Here I will focus on four “helps,” many of which are still used on our Bibles today. 1. Text and Translation As noted, Luther used the second edition (1519) of Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum as his base text. The parallel Greek-Latin diglot gave Luther access not only to the Greek but also to Erasmus’s Latin rendering. In addition, Erasmus published a remarkable scholarly and historical word-by-word analysis of the Greek New Testament in 1516 called Annotations. He significantly enlarged this resource in 1519, and we know that Luther used both tools, because there are places where the translations follow exactly Erasmus’s explanations. Luther, therefore, would be the first to use these “new tools” to bring a Greek text of the New Testament into a vernacular language. Get new articles and updates in your inbox. Leave this field empty if you're human: Given the manuscripts available to him, Erasmus’s Greek text was quite similar to the text used for centuries in the Greek-speaking church. Later editions of his basic text came to be called the Textus Receptus, most commonly available after the mid-16th century in the editions edited by Reformed theologian Theodore Beza. That text was the basis of the Geneva Bible (1557, 1560) and the 1611 Authorized Version of King James. Erasmus’s 1519 edition repaired many of the typos and errors of the 1516 edition. Famously, though, neither edition included the comma Johnanneum at 1 John 5:7–8: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (KJV). This passage was added by Erasmus in his 1522 edition, and Luther was aware of the reading. But Luther never included the reading in his German Bible, including the 1534 complete Bible and the 1545 edition, the last printed during Luther’s lifetime. In fact, Luther elsewhere comments on this reading, noting that it was added by the orthodox theologians to counter Arian theology. The Greek text was Luther’s foundation, but his deepest concern was that the text be readable and understandable by all people. Matching the Greek or Latin style and idiom would not have communicated the message of the New Testament clearly. His defense of his translation work against Catholic critics, written in 1530, underscores this goal. We do not have to ask the literal Latin [text] how we are to speak German, as these donkeys [Papists] do. Rather we must ask the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common man in the marketplace. We must be guided by their language, by the way they speak, and do our translating accordingly. Then they will understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to them. In this treatise, Luther provided several examples of how the idiomatic German of his translation is more effective than a translation held captive to other languages: For instance, Christ says: Ex abundatia cordis os loquitur [Matt. 12:34]. If I am to follow these donkeys, they will lay the original before me literally and translate it thus: “Aus dem uberfluss des hertzen redet der mund” [of the excessiveness of the heart his mouth speaks]. Tell me, is that speaking German? What German could understand something like that? What is “the excessiveness of the heart”? No German can say that; unless, perhaps, he was trying to say that someone was altogether too generous, or too courageous, though even that would not yet be correct. “Excessiveness of the heart” is no more German than “excessiveness of the house,” “excessiveness of the stove” or “excessiveness of the bench.” But the mother in the home and the common man say this: “Wes das hertz vol ist, des gehet der mund über” [What fills the heart overflows the mouth]. That is speaking good German of the kind I have tried for, although unfortunately not always successfully. The literal Latin is a great obstacle to speaking good German.1Ein sendbrief D. M. Luthers. Von Dolmetzschen und Fürbit der heiligenn (1530) The most radical—some might say, egregious—example is his rendering of Romans 3:28 where his text has added the word “alone.” So halten wir nun dafür, daß der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werke, allein durch den GlaubenSo now we hold that a person is justified without the works of the law, by faith alone. The Greek text does not read an equivalent to “alone” in this passage. As the KJV reads: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Luther defends his translation, again in the 1530 Sendbriefe: Here in Romans 3, I knew very well that the word solum [alone] is not in the Greek or Latin text; the papists did not have to teach me that. It is a fact that these four letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate. At the same time they do not see that it conveys the sense of the text; it belongs there if the translation is to be clear and vigorous… It is the nature of the German language to add the word allein in order that the word nicht or kein may be clearer and more complete… Actually, the text itself and the meaning of St. Paul urgently require and demand it. For in that very passage he is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the law. For Luther, the sense of the text, undeniably influenced by the importance placed on this passage for the teaching of justification by faith, was more important than the Greek or Latin vocables in the base texts. Luther’s goal is to create a New Testament that preaches Christ, understandable directly by the people in language that they can understand. This is not a translation that seeks to capture the feel of an ancient text. It does not seek to sound “authentic” to the speech of, say, a Roman official in the book of Acts. Rather, the translation seeks to speak directly to ordinary people on their own terms. It is direct speech, as if God were speaking German. As if God were preaching Christ directly to them, into their hearts, with no priests, no tradition, no one else needed for the person to hear God and gain Christ. Luther’s goal is to create a New Testament that preaches Christ, understandable directly by the people in language that they can understand. 2. Prefaces A second device Luther used in his Septembertestament was to affix prefaces to the four Gospels and then individually for each subsequent book. He was not the first to add prefaces; prologues are found in Latin and Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that provide historical and chronological information and occasionally argue against heretical theological views. But Luther takes this in a different direction. He added prefaces to each book, not modeled on his predecessors, but designed instead to give the reader a basic understanding of the contents and what they will find in the book—or, more accurately, what Luther wants them to find in the book. In the initial preface to the Gospels and the New Testament, he directly explains his purpose for this device. It would be right and proper that this book should appear without preface and without any other name than that of its authors and convey only its own name and its own language. But many wild interpretations and prefaces have driven the thought of Christians to a point where no one any longer knows what is Gospel or Law, Old Testament or New. Necessity demands, therefore, that it should have an announcement, or preface, by which the simple man can be brought back from the old notions to the right road and taught what he is to expect in this book, so that he may not seek laws and commandments where he ought to be seeking the Gospel and God’s promises. Luther’s evangelistic purpose is clear here: He wants the reader to seek the Gospel and God’s promises, and to not read the New Testament as a book of rules to be obeyed. This becomes clearest in his preface to Romans. While most prefaces are quite brief, three individual books have extended prefaces: Romans, James, and Revelation. Romans is an outlier, but for that reason it is instructive: It shows how much emphasis Luther put on the contents and teaching of that book. Its preface is far longer than any other: ten full pages of introduction, and this to a book that, in translation, is only nineteen pages long. The preface to Galatians, which has perhaps even clearer explicit teaching of faith over and against law has an introduction of less than half of a page, with a text that is seven pages long. Ephesians has an even shorter preface: less than fourteen lines of type for six pages of text, and this in the letter that says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” That seems clear. And yet Luther relies on Romans to carry the weight of explaining the entire Bible and the Gospel: “This Epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul.” Not only was this approach novel, it was effective. John Wesley, the famous 18th century English evangelist, preacher, and theologian, claims that his “heart was strangely warmed” and that he was converted to the Gospel by reading Luther’s preface to Romans—not, mind you, by reading Romans itself, but reading Luther’s preface to Romans. The other two lengthy prefaces, for James and Revelation, have a decidedly different tone, as we will see below. 3. Notes Luther also included notes and explanations in the margins of his edition. Again, this is not a new practice. Medieval manuscripts frequently contain quotations from theologians or glosses, i.e., brief explanatory and interpretive notes throughout the text. But Luther’s goal is not to repeat the best teaching and instruction of the past. His notes also reflect his goal of helping the reader trust in Christ and the Gospel. For example, this is an image of Romans 3. Notice how the margins are completely fullwidth with about 75 percent Bible and 25 percent Luther. Luther’s marginal notes took almost almost a quarter of the page. Photo You can almost hear Luther pleading with the reader in the margin: Note well that he says you are all sinful, etc. This is the chief thing and the central place of the epistle and the whole of the Scriptures. Namely, that all are sinful who are not redeemed by the blood of Christ and justified by faith. So grasp this text, because according to it all work, merit, and deeds remains God’s pure gift and honor (Ps. 84:11). 4. Luther’s New Testament Canon Perhaps most controversially, Luther arranged the sequence of the New Testament writings to reflect his views of the clarity with which those books taught the Gospel. The table of contents for this New Testament reflects this clearly. The list of books for Luther’s New Testament. Photo All twenty-seven books of the New Testament are present. But only twenty-three books are numbered. Four books are shifted to the end, unnumbered, as a kind of appendix: Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. Luther placed these books last and added prefaces warning readers about certain sections and passages. To Luther, Hebrews seemed to disallow repentance if one sins after baptism; Jude seemed to be an epitome of 2 Peter (with the addition of non-canonical stories); the Apocalypse is “a concealed and mute prophecy and has not yet come to the profit and fruit which it is to give to Christians.” James, however, receives the harshest criticism. It is “flatly opposed to St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture, it ascribes righteousness to works.” Luther concludes that “This fault leads to the conclusion that it is not the work of any apostle” and it is, therefore, an “epistle of straw.” This arrangement of the New Testament writings is unique to Luther, apart from his influence on William Tyndale’s New Testament translation of 1525, which in turn is followed in English by Coverdale (1535) and Matthew (1537). From the Great Bible of 1539, however, all English translations use the sequence of books commonly known today. Luther, though, retained this format through the last edition of the Lutherbibel published during his lifetime in 1545. A Bible for the People Luther sought to create a Bible not to be a bestseller, but one through which individuals would hear God speaking directly to them in their world, in their time, in their place. A Bible that was God’s Word—more accurately, God speaking. Not a passive tool that sits on a shelf or a table or even altar. But an active, speaking, seeking, hearable, and impactful speaking of God. Everything Luther does, from the style of translation to the title page to the sequence of the books to notes is designed to bring people to Christ. This is a Bible designed to not only make the words of the Bible clear, but to make the message of the Bible clear, the message of the Bible that Luther and the Wittenberg School had come to be convinced of: that Christ alone, and his work, received by faith alone, was what God was speaking in his word.Notes1Ein sendbrief D. M. Luthers. Von Dolmetzschen und Fürbit der heiligenn (1530)