Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Dutch Research on Luther & the Bible

An anonymous blogger posted a link in a comment to a recent Dutch article about Luther and the Bible.  I was directed to "chew on" it and I was exhorted not to "whine." I was then instructed to voice any concerns by going "directly to Dutch public broadcasting and the responsible researchers at the State University of Groningen."

The blogger appears to think he knows my alleged opinion on the extent that the general population of medieval Western society had access to the Bible (previous to Luther).  To my recollection, I've never spent much time on this, if any. I do recall mentioning from time to time that indeed German translations of the Bible were available previous to Luther, but that most of these were written in high-German. Luther's translation gained immediate popularity due to its readability and the technological breakthrough of the printing press.

That being said, I did take a look at the link. The article suggests that previous to Luther, the elite and commoners did have personal Bibles. They state, "Luther also said that Rome did not allow common people to read the Bible." I then followed the link to the article this statement was based on, which is another on-line news web page. That article roughly says,

The idea that ordinary people only since the Reformation, six hundred years ago, independently of the Protestant Bible is a persistent myth, created by none other than Luther himself. So says research leader Sabrina Corbellini, "Luther himself has said so in one of his famous table discussions. He would throughout his childhood Bible have not seen. The church, as Luther suggested, would keep the book under the cap."
Even though the above is a mechanical imprecise Google translation, I think the gist of it is clear: Luther himself invented the myth that few previous to his work had a Bible. What does research leader Sabrina Corbellini base her conclusions on? Luther's Table Talk. What Ms. Corbellini has uncovered as "myth" though has long been known in Luther research. I'm not sure exactly which Table Talk entry Ms. Corbellini is referring to. There are only three (that I'm aware of) that are usually behind such assertions.

The story has many different variants, but the basic outline is that a very young Martin Luther discovered a Bible while a student at Erfurt in the University Library, before his entering the Augustinian monastery (sometime between May, 1501 and July, 1505). The story has variants about the Bible being chained, or hidden out of sight. Sometimes this Bible is said to be so forgotten it was dust covered. Sometimes the story adds that Luther could not be kept away from the Bible, and that his superiors actively sought to keep him from it. Versions of this story date as far back as the 16th Century, actually found in the introductions of editions of Luther's Bible.

Some place the story in the Augustinian monastery. But there, Bible reading held an important place. When Luther entered the monastery, he was presented with his very own Latin Bible and instructed to read and study it.

The older version of this story places the incident previous to Luther entering the monastery during his earlier university studies. This version comes from one of Luther's earliest biographers (and acquaintances), Johannes Mathesius. In this version, Luther visited the University library. While carefully searching through the books he discovered a copy of the Latin Bible, a book he had never seen previously. He discovers that the Bible had much more in it than the traditional lectionaries of the day. He then hopes that one day God would give him his own Bible. This version finds its genesis in a few Table Talk comments.

No. 116 (Between November 9 and 30, 1531) Once when he was a young man he [Martin Luther] happened upon a Bible. In it he read by chance the story about Samuel’s mother in the Books of the Kings. The book pleased him immensely, and he thought that he would be happy if he could ever possess such a book. Shortly thereafter he bought a postil; it also pleased him greatly, for it contained more Gospels than it was customary to preach on in the course of a year. [LW 54:13]

No. 3767 (1538) "Until I was twenty years old I had not yet seen a Bible. I supposed that there was nothing more in the Gospels and Epistles than the portions which form Sunday lections. Finally I found a Bible in the library and immediately took it to the cloister where I began to read, to reread, and to read once again, to the great amazement of Dr. Staupitz." [WA , TR 3, No. 3767].

No. 5346 (1540) "In my youth I saw a Bible in the University library and I read part of the story of Samuel, but then it was time to attend a lecture. I would have very gladly read the whole book, but at that time I had no opportunity to do so. But when I had forsaken everything to go into the cloister I once asked again for a Bible, since I had lost hope in myself." [WA, TR 5, No. 5346].
One can easily see the differences in these entries. Since different authors wrote these accounts, determining what Luther actually said isn't quite difficult. Perhaps they wrote down what he said incorrectly. Perhaps Luther's memory wasn't always dependable. Perhaps both. The second entry (3767) certainly is inaccurate: Twenty-year old Luther had nothing to do with von Staupitz. As to Luther's Bible discovery in the Erfurt University Library, scholars point out that the rules forbid students to snoop through the books.  Perhaps though one of Luther's teachers took him in. Others think Luther was actually in the Library reading room. Luther scholar Willem Jan Kooiman points out, "It is almost beyond understanding that Luther should not have seen a complete Bible before he entered the University. An estimated twenty to twenty-seven thousand copies of the Vulgate, the official Latin Bible, were printed in Germany before 1520" [Luther and the Bible (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), p. 5].

Kooiman also points out that twelve year-old Martin Luther most certainly would have come across a Bible at the Cathedral School of Magdeburg with his interaction with the Brothers of the Common Life. Some scholars therefore think that perhaps this is the actual origin of the story. Table Talk entry 116 translates the word puer as "young man" when in fact earlier versions of the Table Talk use the word "boy." Kooiman thinks this was done to bring the stories into agreement (pp. 6-7).

It is true that story in question has been a myth for quite some time. However, all this information has been readily available for years, so why the Dutch researchers have only now found it is quite perplexing. The success of Luther's Bible stands as a testament to a number of factors: his popularity, his translation work, and the printing press, to name a few.

Can Luther himself be blamed for the myth? Perhaps indirectly, based on his alleged Table Talk statements. This though requires one to base historical fact on hear-say. One has to assume non-writings of Luther's were intended to be (perhaps) deceptively inaccurate. Rather, I think the culprit wasn't Luther, but rather his zealous followers.

Addendum
If by some chance someone knows of another Table Talk entry that I've overlooked, please let me know. I briefly tried to figure out which Table Talk Sabrina Corbellini was using by searching  "zou het boek onder de pet houden" and similar phrases.

10 comments:

Carrie said...

Great opening paragraph! I'm still giggling to myself.

steelikat said...

I think the Luther Bible was also written in High German.

It looks like High German to me, anyway. Of course no one can deny that "Luther’s Sprache ist saft- und kraftvoll..." ("mehner.info" page on "Lutherdeutsch.")

Actually I think I read somewhere that the Luther Bible established High German as the standard dialect.

James Swan said...

Your memory may prevail, but I recall it being said the German Luther wrote his Bible in was different than that previous.

Schaff:

During the fourteenth century some unknown scholars prepared a new translation of the whole Bible into the Middle High German dialect.

After the invention of the printing-press, and before the Reformation, this mediaeval German Bible was more frequently printed than any other except the Latin Vulgate. (6) No less than seventeen or eighteen editions appeared between 1462 and 1522, at Strassburg, Augsburg, Nürnberg, Cöln, Lübeck, 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 variations of the MSS. of the Vulgate, which was in a very unsettled condition before the Clementine recension (1592). The revisers are as unknown as the translators.

James Swan said...

Forgot the link:

http://www.bible-researcher.com/luther02.html

steelikat said...

I know that the KJV created modern English. I loved the Coen brothers' remake of "True Grit." (Caveat: it's for adults only). One of the things I like about True Grit is the dialog. Is it authentic? Well, I'm sure it's an exaggeration and nobody talks the way actors do in a movie script, but there is some truth to it. In the 19th century, ordinary people were intimately familiar with the KJV. I wonder if abandoning the KJV made us stupid and inarticulate, in comparison to our grandfathers.

PeaceByJesus said...

Too much to list here, but that historically Rome hindered Bible literacy among the laity, and now (via the NAB, etc.) promotes a liberal interpretive school is substantiated
here by the grace of God.

PeaceByJesus said...

I know that the KJV created modern English

A World Without the King James Version

James Swan said...

I know that the KJV created modern English. I loved the Coen brothers' remake of "True Grit." (Caveat: it's for adults only). One of the things I like about True Grit is the dialog. Is it authentic? Well, I'm sure it's an exaggeration and nobody talks the way actors do in a movie script, but there is some truth to it. In the 19th century, ordinary people were intimately familiar with the KJV. I wonder if abandoning the KJV made us stupid and inarticulate, in comparison to our grandfathers.

I've seen all the Coen Brothers' movies. I'm a big fan of "Oh Brother Where Art Thou". I think that was their best.

I've never done any extensive studies into the "type" of German Luther used, or the details of the German language during the Reformation. I've only done cursory readings about his sometimes humorous methods of translation in order to make Paul speak German. I do recall reading in passing that Luther's translation had a significant impact on the German language. Interesting stuff though, thanks for pointing it out.

I've never been good with the KJV. The church I was raised in made the switch from the KJV to the NIV when I was a teenager.

James Swan said...

Too much to list here, but that historically Rome hindered Bible literacy among the laity, and now (via the NAB, etc.) promotes a liberal interpretive school is substantiated
here by the grace of God.


Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. That's a bit of a different subject, though certainly intertwined with this one.

As I pointed out in this entry (and comments), there certainly were Bible available previous to Luther. The emphasis of this entry was on the Table Talk research put together by the links directed at me.

In an older blog entry, I quoted Luther saying, "Thus it is the custom that in the schools and the courts the Gospel lies idle in the dust under the bench, to the end that the pope's harmful laws may rule alone." (http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2008/06/luthers-celebrated-translation-may-have.html). The idea of "under the bench" occurs a number of times in Luther's writings. But as you can see, (at least here) he isn't saying the Roman Church kept the physical Bible out of people's hands by hiding it. Similarly, in other comments he argues that the Romanists basically ignored the Bible in a sense that the Gospel itself was obscured, and ungodly traditions had been hoisted upon the Bible. A great overview of how unprepared Biblically Roman apologists were in handling Luther Biblically can be found in Bagchi's "Luther's Earliest Opponents." They were quoting more councils and Fathers, Luther was quoting more Scripture. It drove them nuts.

I point this out because the thrust of this post has to do with the "myths" about the unavailable chained Bible that Luther supposedly set free for the world. The extent to which Romanism disseminated the content of the Scriptures to her people is a different subject, but indeed worthy of an entire post.

James Swan said...

PeaceByJesus said...I know that the KJV created modern English
A World Without the King James Version


Best KJV movie: The Book of Eli. Now that takes sola scriptura to a whole new level.