Luther & the Previously Obscure [?] Bible (vs. James Swan)

The big myth under consideration is the commonly heard legend among Protestants (especially of an anti-Catholic bent) of Catholic hostility to the Bible and desire to keep it out of the hands of the people, for fear that its doctrines will be exposed as contrary to the Bible. I have written about the falsity of this charge:

[summarizing a view he disagrees with] 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. . . . 

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.

Swan also gets his facts wrong in another statement:

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 . . . [related combox comment] I recall it being said the German Luther wrote his Bible in was different than that previous.

In other words, Swan seems to think that High German was largely inexplicable (like saying “Shakespearean English” or something), so that Luther came along (again, according to his factually false view) and wrote in Low German, making the Bible readable for most of the common men of Germany. He seems to think High German means “more difficult German” whereas “Low German” is more of the common tongue. This is completely erroneous (such errors occur very often in Swan analyses: believe me, I know, from nine years of observing his fallacious arguments). The wiseGEEK web page, “What is High German?” clarifies:

High German is the variety of German spoken in central and south Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It is also spoken in areas of other European countries, including Poland, Italy, France and Belgium. “High” refers not to any perceived superiority, although many people assume it does, but rather to the ground elevation of the areas in Germany where it is spoken. High German contrasts with the Low German or Low Saxon variety of Standard German spoken in the northern part of the country and the Netherlands.

High German is not a dialect, but rather a variety with many different dialects of its own. The standardized form of German used in literature and formal situations throughout Germany and Austria, called Hochdeutsch – literally “High German” – is one dialect of High German. [see also: Wikipedia, “Low German”]

The fact of the matter is that Luther’s Bible was written in High German, and had a profound effect on the subsequent development of High German (this can be documented in a hundred places, so I need not bother). Most of the 15th and early 16th century Catholic Bibles were also in High German, as I noted as far back as 20 years ago in my research. For example:

The number of translations . . . of the complete Bible, was indeed very great . . . Between this period [1466] and the separation of the Churches at least fourteen complete editions of the Bible were published in High German, and five in the low German dialect. The first High German edition was brought out in 1466 by Johann Mendel, of Strasburg . . .

[Other editions in High German: Strasburg: 1470, 1485 / Basel, Switzerland: 1474 / Augsburg: 1473 (2),1477 (2), 1480, 1487, 1490, 1507, 1518 / Nuremburg: 1483]. Bible Translations in Low German: Cologne: 1480 (2) / Lubeck: 1494 / Halberstadt: 1522 / Delf: before 1522] (Johannes Janssen, History of the German People From the Close of the Middle Ages, 16 volumes, translated by A. M. Christie, St. Louis: B. Herder, 1910 [orig. 1891],  Vol. 1, 56-57; vol. 14, 388)

I knew this in 1991, but Swan is just now getting up to speed on this elementary fact, in a recent footnote, citing Philip Schaff. He had made the same dumb mistake in a combox comment on his site, dated 15 March 2010:

Luther’s translation though [sic] far surpassed earlier German Bibles for two main reasons (the later [sic] being the more important): The printing press made Luther’s Bible readily available to a society that was already purchasing his writings (that is, he was popular), secondly, his translation was not written in high German, but in [sic] written in a way that could be easily understood by the common man.

Probably because of this very paper, Swan (on 7-2-11) admitted his ignorance of the subject (the closest we will get to a retraction from him): “I’ve never done any extensive studies into the ‘type’ of German Luther used . . .”

It may seem petty for me to point out an error of this sort, but it is within the background context of constant insinuations from Swan through the years that my Luther research is utterly untrustworthy and all-around pathetic, whereas his {{{{{choke!!!}}}}} is uniformly excellent and always facts- and primary sources-based. It’s not the case. The present two errors are among dozens and dozens in Swan’s “research” that I have personally documented. Many papers refuting Swan have since been removed from the Internet, because his mistakes were so basic or embarrassing that I didn’t want to be uncharitable to my esteemed Protestant friends by making out that Swan’s low standard is the norm in Protestant apologetics.

But enough of writing generally about Swan’s silliness. It’s another question, whether Luther’s German translation was superior to the previous ones. Most argue (including most Catholics) that it was indeed far superior. But the controversy at hand was whether the Bible was available to the populace in (mostly High) German to any significant extent before Luther. It certainly was. But Luther lied and polemicized in his usual juvenile fashion, and claimed that it wasn’t.

Swan now comes along and says that Luther didn’t perpetrate any such lie (only zealous followers of his did). He is wrong. Oddly, he refutes himself in an earlier article about the same general subject matter, by citing Luther in a June 2008 post:

My friends the theologians have spared themselves pains and labor; they leave the Bible in peace and read the Sentences. I should think that the Sentences ought to be the first study of young students in theology and the Bible ought to be the study for the doctors. But now it is turned around; the Bible come first, and is put aside when the bachelor’s degree is reached, and the Sentences come last. They are attached forever to the doctorate, and that with such a solemn obligation that a man who is not a priest may indeed read may indeed the Bible, but the Sentences a priest must read. A married man, I observe, could be a Doctor of the Bible, but under no circumstances a Doctor of the Sentences. What good fortune can we expect if we act so perversely and in this way put the Bible, the holy Word of God, so far to the rear? Moreover the pope commands, with many severe words, that his laws are to be read and used in the schools and the courts, but little is said of the Gospel. 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. [An Open Letter to The Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, 1520]

Swan again refutes his present insinuation in a post dated 22 October 2005. He cites Luther’s Preface to the First Part of his German Works (edition of 1539) — I provide relevant highlights of his longer complete quote:

Not only has good time been wasted, and the study of the Scriptures neglected; but the pure understanding of the divine Word is lost, until at last the Bible has come to lie forgotten in the dust under the bench. [another English version adds here, “as happened to the book of Deuteronomy, in the time of the kings of Judah”]

[. . .]

For when the Bible can be left lying under the bench, and when it is true of the Fathers and Councils that the better they were, the more completely they have been forgotten; there is good hope that, when the curiosity of this age has been satisfied, my books too will not long remain; . . .

I do not treat the Fathers and the Councils very differently. In this I follow the example of St. Augustine, who is one of the first, and almost the only one of them to subject himself to the Holy Scriptures alone, uninfluenced by the books of all the Fathers and the Saints. This brought him into a hard fray with St. Jerome, who cast up to him the writings of his predecessors; but he did not care for that. If this example of St. Augustine had been followed, the pope would not have become Antichrist, the countless vermin, the swarming, parasitic mass of books would not have come into the Church, and the Bible would have kept its place in the pulpit. 

Luther stated similarly in another place:

How much more did we invite this fate when we threw the Scriptures and Saint Paul’s epistles under the bench, and, like swine in husks, wallowed in man’s nonsense! (Sermons of Martin Luther, “The Twofold Use of the Law and Gospel: ‘Letter’ and ‘Spirit'”, section 18; see also a second source for this portion)

And again he repeats the false mantra:

No false doctrine or heresy ever arose, which did not carry with it that mark which Christ here gives:—that is, which did not command, ordain, and teach, those works as necessary to be done, which God never commanded. And the reason why the world is seduced as it is, is none other, than because it suffers itself to be led by maddened reason, and permit the Word of God to fall into disuse, as if hidden under a bench, or laid up in rust; not at all regarding what that Word saith, but following the deluded sight of its own eyes, wherever it perceives any thing new or uncommon. (Select Works, translated by Henry Cole, 1826, “Professors and Prophets Known by Their Fruits”, p. 544)

As early as 1518 he had proclaimed the self-serving myth:

[T]he Holy Word of God has not only been laid under the bench but has almost been destroyed by dust and filth. (Preface to the complete edition of A German Theology, Luther’s Works [LW], vol. 31, 75-76; WA 1, 378 f.)

In his Commentary on Peter and Jude (1523), Luther in his infinite wisdom opines:

But up to this time, the idea that the laity should read the Scriptures has been treated with derision. For in this the devil has hit on a fine trick to tear the Bible out of the hands of the laity; and he has thought thus: If I can keep the laity from reading the Scriptures, I will then turn the priests from the Bible to Aristotle, and so let them gossip as they will, the laity must hear just what they preach; while if the laity should read the Scriptures, the priests would have to study them, too, in order that they might not be detected and overcome. (translated by John Nichols Lenker [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 2005]; comment for 1 Peter 3:15; p. 158)

An even more outrageous and sweeping, lying instance of this sloganistic phraseology of “under the bench” occurs in Luther’s Large Catechism (April 1529):

43] For where He does not cause it to be preached and made alive in the heart, so that it is understood, it is lost, as was the case under the Papacy, where faith was entirely put under the bench, and no one recognized Christ as his Lord or the Holy Ghost as his Sanctifier, that is, no one believed that Christ is our Lord in the sense that He has acquired this treasure for us, without our works and merit, and made us acceptable to the Father. What, then, was lacking? 44] This, that the Holy Ghost was not there to reveal it and cause it to be preached; but men and evil spirits were there, who taught us to obtain grace and be saved by our works. 45] Therefore it is not a Christian Church either; for where Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Ghost who creates, calls, and gathers the Christian Church, without which no one can come to Christ the Lord. (“The Apostles’ Creed”; Article III)

Further support for the notion that Luther perpetuated the ludicrous myth of almost total ignorance of and inaccessibility of the Bible before he brought it to light (much like his similarly absurd views of having “rediscovered the gospel” (as if Catholics didn’t have a clue about it before he arrived on the scene), comes from Hartmann Grisar’s six-volume biography, Luther (the following from Vol. 5 from 1916):

[I]t is instructive from the psychological standpoint to trace the development in Luther’s mind of the fable to be dealt with more fully below that, under Popery, the Bible had been discarded and that he, Luther, had brought it once more to light. . . .

When afterwards he had been dazed by his great success with his translation of the Bible he was led to fancy that he was the first to open up the domain of Holy Scripture. This impression is closely bound up with the arbitrary pronouncements, even on the weightiest questions of the Canon, which we find scattered throughout his prefaces to the books of the Bible. He frequently repeats that he had forced all his opponents to take up the study of the Bible and that it was he alone who had made them see the need of their devoting themselves to this branch of learning so as to be able to refute him. Here of course he is exaggerating the facts of the case. Accustomed as he was to hyperbole, we soon find him declaring, first as a paradox and then as actual fact, that the Bible had been buried in oblivion among the Catholics. The Papal Antichrist had destroyed all reverence for the Bible and all understanding of it; only that all men without exception might not run headlong to spiritual destruction had Christ, as it were by “force,” preserved the “simple text of the Gospel on the lecterns” “even under the rule of Antichrist.”

[Footnote: “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 645 ; Erl. ed., 65, p. 122, “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzschefi.”] (pp. 534-535)

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The Bible in the Ages before Luther

It would be to perpetuate a prejudice all too long current among Protestants, founded on Luther’s often false or at least exaggerated statements, were one to fail to recognise how widely the Bible was known even before Luther’s day and to what an extent it was studied among educated people. Modern research, not seldom carried out by open-minded Protestants, has furnished some surprising results in this respect, so that one of the most recent and diligent of the Protestant workers in this field could write: “If everything be taken into account it will no longer be possible to say as the old polemics did, that the Bible was a sealed book to both theologians and laity. The more we study the Middle Ages, the more does this fable tend to dissolve into thin air.” “The Middle Ages concerned themselves with Bible translation much more than was formerly supposed.”

[Footnote: Kropatscheck, “Das Schriftprinzip der lutherischen Kirche,” 1, 1904, p. 163. On the German translations see below, p. 542 ff.]

*

According to a careful summary recently published by Franz Falk no less than 156 different Latin editions of the Bible were printed in the period between the discovery of the art of printing and the year of Luther’s excommunication, i.e. from 1450 to 1520. To this must also be added at that time many translations of the whole Bible, many of them emanating from what was to be the home of the innovations, viz. 17 German, 11 Italian, 10 French, 2 Bohemian, 1 Belgian, 1 Limousine and 1 Russian edition, making in all, with the 6 Hebrew editions also known, 199 editions of the complete Bible. Of the German editions 14 are in the dialect of Upper Germany.

[Footnote: F. Falk, “Die Bibel am Ausgange des MA. ihre Kenntnis und ihre Verbreitung,” Cologne, 1905, pp. 24, 91 ff.]

*

Besides this the common people also possessed extracts of the Sacred Book, the purchase of the entire Bible being beyond their slender means. The Psalter and the Postils were widely known and both played a great part in the religious life of the Middle Ages. The Psalter, or German translation of the 150 Psalms, was used as a manual of instruction and a prayer-book for both clergy and laity. Twenty-two translations dating from the Middle Ages are extant, and the latter editions extend from the ‘seventies of the 15th to the ‘twenties of the 16th century. The Postils was the collection of lessons from both Old and New Testaments, prescribed to be read on the Sundays. This collection sufficed for the people and provided them with useful reading matter, with which, moreover, they were rendered even more familiar owing to the homilies on these very excerpts usually given on the Sundays. The early printers soon helped to spread this form of literature. We still have no fewer than 103 printed German editions of the Postils (often known as Plenaries) dating from the above period.

[Footnote: Falk, ib., p. 27 ff.]

*

. . . Even a superficial glance at the Middle Ages,” says Risch, “cannot fail to show us the gradual upgrowth of a fixed German Biblical vocabulary. Luther here could dip into a rich treasure-house and select the best. … In laying such stress on Luther’s indebtedness to the past we have no wish to call into question the real originality of his translation.”

[Footnote: “N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 1911, p. 141.]

*

“That, during the Middle Ages,” says another Protestant scholar, “more particularly in the years which immediately preceded Luther’s appearance, the Bible was a well-spring completely choked up, and the entrance to which was jealously guarded, used to be, and probably still is, the prevailing opinion. The question is, however, whether this opinion is correct.” “We have before us to-day so complete a history of the Bible in the various modern languages that it can no longer be said that the Vulgate alone was in use and that the laity consequently were ignorant of Scripture. It greatly redounds to the credit of Protestant theologians, that they, more than any others, took so large a part in collecting this enormous store of material.” “We must admit that the Middle Ages possessed a quite surprising and extremely praiseworthy knowledge of the Bible, such as might in many respects put our own age to shame.” “We have to acknowledge that the Bible at the present day no longer forms the foundation of our knowledge and civilisation to the same extent as it did in the Middle Ages.”

[Footnote: E. v. Dobschiitz, ” Deutsche Rundschau,” 101, 1900, p. 61 ff. Falk, ib., p. 86.]

*

Who, however, was responsible for the prevalent belief that the Middle Ages knew nothing of the Bible? Who was it who so repeatedly asserted this, that he misled the people into believing that nobody before him had studied Holy Scripture, and that it was only through him that the “Word of God had been drawn forth from under the bench”? A Protestant quite rightly reproves the “bad habit” of accepting the estimate of ecclesiastical conditions, particularly of divine worship, current “with Luther and in his circle” -, 1 it is, however, to fall short of the mark, to describe merely as a “bad habit” Luther’s flagrant and insulting falsehoods against the ecclesiastical conditions at the close of the Middle Ages, falsehoods for which his own polemical interests were solely responsible.

. . . As some Protestants have sought to clear him of the authorship of so glaring a fable and to insinuate that the expression belongs rather to his pupil Mathesius, we must here look a little more closely into the words.

Luther himself uses the saying, for instance, when claiming credit in his Commentary on the Prophet Zacharias (chap, viii.) with having rendered the greatest possible service to Scripture. He says: “They [the Papists] are still angry and refuse to listen when people say, that, with them, Scripture lay under the bench, and that their mad delusions alone prevailed.” In this connection the Weimar editor of the Commentary refers to a work of the former Dominican, Petrus Sylvius, aimed at Luther and entitled “Von den vier Evangelein, so eine lange Zeit unter der Bank sein gelegen.”

[Footnote: “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 606 ; Erl. ed., 42, p. 280. Cp. N. Paulus, “Die deutschen Dominikaner im Kampf gegen Luther,” p. 61.]

*

Popery, Luther says in another passage, “kicked Scripture under the bench.”

[Footnote: “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25, p. 444.]

*

. . . Elsewhere he describes in detail the trouble he had in pulling the Bible from “under the bench,” particularly owing to his theological rivals and the sectarians within the camp; on this occasion his black outlook as to the future of the Bible he had thus set free scarcely redounds to the credit of his achievement. He says in his tract against Zwingli (“That the words of Christ, ‘This is My Body,’ still stand fast,” 1527): “When in our own day we saw how Scripture lay under the bench, and how the devil was deluding us and taking us captive with the hay and straw of men-made prayers, we tried, by the Grace of God, to mend matters, and have indeed with great and bitter pains brought Scripture back to light once more, and, sending human ordinances to the winds, set ourselves free and escaped from the devil.”

[Footnote: ” Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 69 ; Erl. ed., 30, p. 19. For similar predictions see above, p. 169 ff. On the famous “bench” cp. also Weim. ed., 6, p. 460 ; Erl. ed., 21, p. 348 ; also below, p. 541 and vol. iv., p. 159.] (pp. 536-539)

*

It is plain that they “abuse and revile Scripture, thrust it under the bench, pretend that it is shrouded in thick fog, that the interpretation of the Fathers is needed and that light must be sought in the darkness.” Thus did he write against Emser in 1521.

[Footnote: ” Auff das ubirchristlich Buch,” etc., 1521, ” Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 641 ; Erl. ed., 27, p. 247.] (p. 541)

*

Modern Protestant writers in this field are also somewhat sceptical about the theory of Luther’s complete ignorance of the older translation of the Bible, and the assertion that he made no use whatever of it. O. Reichert, for instance, in his new work “Luthers deutsche Bibel” makes the following remarks on Luther’s work in the Wartburg, with which we may fittingly conclude this section: “Although he probably was able to make use of Lang’s translation of 1521 in his rendering of Matthew, and as a matter of fact did have recourse to it, and though he most likely also had the old German translation at his elbow, as is apparent from many coincidences, nevertheless, what Luther accomplished is an achievement worthy of all admiration.”

[Footnote: “Luthers deutsche Bibel,” p. 23.] (p. 546)

*

Now, Swan wouldn’t be Swan if he didn’t: 1) refuse to admit when he has gotten facts wrong, 2) fight ferociously against admitting it especially where a Catholic is involved, 3) never admit it when I am involved; and 4) dig himself deeper into the embarrassing hole he is already in, by the time-honored anti-Catholic techniques of spin and sophistry, obfuscation and obscurantism. Now he is trying to spin Luther’s words, to exclude certain meanings:

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. (7-2-11)

Swan saves himself from total embarrassment only by his qualifying parenthetical remark. It’s true that Luther does mean his words in the latter sense at times (Catholic biographer Grisar acknowledges this), but this doesn’t rule out that he also often intends the first sense of physical removal of the Bible from the laity (by either prohibition or absence of vernacular translations, or lack of availability of same): according to the timeworn, imbecilic Protestant Myth that has been heard countless times ever since. It was begun by Luther. Swan has offered us a half-truth. That Luther intends the first sense is already observed in the excerpts I have provided above. For example:

[T]he Bible lies forgotten in the dust under the bench (as happened to the book of Deuteronomy, in the time of the kings of Judah). (1539)

The editors of this collection of Luther writings, gives the biblical reference alluded to by Luther: 2 Kings 22:8. Here it is (RSV):

And Hilki’ah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.” And Hilki’ah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.

Most Bible scholars consider this lost work, the book of Deuteronomy. Note that it was literally, physically lost, in the temple. Once it was found, it was read to the people. This is not merely loss of proper interpretation, but loss of the book itself. Luther proves that this is his meaning by citing this analogy. It couldn’t be any clearer than it is.

Again above, Luther refers to a state of affairs where (Catholic) men “permit the Word of God to fall into disuse . . .” It’s not used at all; this is again, non-use of the Bible altogether, not false or corrupted use of it. If I permit my bicycle to fall into disuse, quite obviously I am not using it at all. The chain would get rusty in due course. Luther uses the same analogy in the same work: [the Bible] “laid up in rust”.

Luther’s Commentary on Peter and Jude from 1523 (cited at length above), explicitly states that Catholics supposedly desired to keep the Bible out of the laity’s hands: directly in opposition to Swan’s baseless opinion that Luther wouldn’t have said such a thing. Luther lied. And it is virtually certain that he couldn’t have been so ignorant of history and Catholicism (being quite a sharp guy) to not have deliberately lied. He was indeed deliberately lying; i.e., propagandizing. So why not lie today, too, if your goal is to defend Luther at all costs, every time he is critiqued, and cherished anti-Catholic Myths and Whoppers? This is what Swan habitually does. He defends historical lies and untruths by lying about them and engaging in sophistry. Facts and truth be damned!

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[original combox comments]

It’s not one stupid mistake that is the problem. We all make dumb mistakes. It’s the fact that Swan poses as some kind of expert, and maintains the pretense that his research is head and shoulders above everyone else’s (above all, mine, of course).

Those of us who have followed his shenanigans know this, and this is why it was important to show readers how exceedingly often Swan makes such errors, and quite silly ones at that.

This is a guy, remember, who has chided me on many occasions, because I cited a German Luther primary source (usually from a German speaker such as Grisar or Althaus) and hadn’t read it myself (as if he reads German primary materials).

I had written an additional reply to I had written an additional reply to Swan’s latest bilge yesterday but the text was lost and I didn’t wanna spend time on belaboring the obvious, to rewrite it. Mostly I just cited at some length portions of the Gow article, which amply refuted his contentions. Swan had picked one portion of it, that cited Cochlaeus, to bash Catholics, missing the point (as almost always, with him).

The article, on the other hand, repeatedly stressed that the Bible (in the vernacular, including in German) was widely available to the masses prior to Luther.

I also noted how Luther suppressed by the force of law, Bible translations other than his own (e.g., Emser’s of 1527).

Luther also didn’t care much at all for opinions that diverged from his own. He was harder on the Zwinglians and Anabaptists than he was on Catholics, and their works (along with Calvinist ones a little later) were suppressed by law in Lutheran territories.

All sides, in other words, blocked access to materials deemed to be heterodox and thus harmful to souls. Yet Catholics are always blamed for this, and the pretense is maintained that the Lutherans were far different and champions of free speech and of the Bible. Both sides suppressed what they regarded as bad translations of the Bible. Yet Catholics are accused of being “anti-Bible.”

Always a double standard . . .

Always revisionist history, favoring Protestantism, by ignoring or distorting Catholic opinions on any given issue.

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(originally posted on 6-15-11)

Photo credit: Luther Bible, 1534; photo by Torsten Schleese, from Luther’s house in Wittenberg (1999) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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