ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CHURCH HISTORY 02 May 27, 2005 19 CH2 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 1 800 825 7234 * * * * * This is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * * >> I'm glad that you mentioned Luther's work at the Wartburg. In a Bible study a few years ago, our former pastor said that Luther's translation of the Bible was very important. Could you explain why it was so important? Was Luther the first person to translate the Bible into German? Had the Bible been translated into other languages before German? >> Well, Nick, let me answer your questions briefly and then flesh that answer out a little more. Luther was not the first person to translate the Bible into German. His translation was, however, clearly the best, partly because he made an effort to use a style of German that could be readable by almost everyone who spoke German. The really important thing about this translation, though, is what Luther intended people to do with this Bible. In contrast to what the Medieval church thought, Luther believed that every Christian could and should read the Scriptures. And so they needed to have the Bible in a language that they could understand. Backing up a little bit. Luther wasn't the first person to translate the Bible into German. There had been various translations done throughout the Middle Ages. However, until the invention of movable type printing around 1450 and along with that an increase in vernacular literacy; that is, people who could actually read German, there wasn't much point in making German translations of the Bible. For much of the Middle Ages, anyone who could read read in Latin, and so the vulgate translation was perfectly adequate for those who were able to read. As I said, that began to change in the later Middle Ages, especially in the 15th Century and especially with the printing that was made possible by the invention of movable type. Now, between that date of 1450 and Luther's Bible, there were 18 printed Bibles in German of differing translations. However, they almost all had problems with the language. Many were very stilted German because they followed too closely the Latin word order and syntax. Others were written in dialects that could only be understood by people in certain areas of Germany. And that gets back to my point made earlier that Luther's German was of a kind that could be understood quite widely by people who spoke German. And, in fact, Luther's German Bible has done a lot to shape modern, spoken and written German. So it's really a classic of the German language apart from being a translation of the Bible. I want to spend some more time on this other point about the understanding by Luther that lay people can and should read the Bible. It wasn't simply a matter of translating from Latin to German for the Medieval church. Medieval theologians taught and practiced the idea that the Bible was very difficult to understand, that the plain sense of the text was very often not what the Bible really meant. And so they used what we refer to as the allegorical method to interpret the Scripture. So that very often as you're reading the Bible in the Medieval way, what the text actually says means something different. So, for example, you might be reading about Ruth and Boaz, but this is actually about Christ and the church. And without going into a lot of detail, there were a number of different types of allegorical understanding that Medieval theologians and Bible scholars used to explain what the Bible really meant. So you see, according to the Medieval understanding, even if lay people had access to a Bible they could read, they wouldn't understand what they were reading. They would know only this literal sense and wouldn't be able to do the allegory that was required to get the real sense of the text. Now, without being too simplistic about this, Luther's idea is that the Bible is actually fairly easy to understand. It means what it says. And the primary message of the Bible is about Christ and what he has done for our salvation. And that's clear enough for everybody to understand as they read the Scriptures. So Luther's reform was based on this idea that the Bible should be read by the lay people. It should be taught by them to their children. They should hear it read in their own language and church, and they should be preached sermons based on this literal sense of the text and what the Bible is clearly saying. And if you keep that in mind, a lot of what Luther does in terms of instituting and advancing the reformation begins to make a lot more sense. He's made a very stark contrast between his understanding and that of the Middle Ages in believing that the average Christian is able to understand these matters of the faith and to read the Scripture. * * * * * This is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * *