This is the transcript of my video, Did The Catholic Church Really Ban The Bible? [Lux Veritatis, 11 minutes, 5-6-25]. Luther’s words will be in blue.
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It’s a common Protestant myth that the Catholic Church is and has always been fundamentally hostile to the Bible and has desired to keep it out of the hands
of the people for fear that its doctrines would be exposed as contrary to the Bible. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, repeatedly claimed that the Bible wasn’t available before his time and indeed was deliberately hidden. In his commentary on Peter and Jude from 1523, he stated in his comment on 1 Peter 3:15,
Up to this time, the idea that the ley should read the Scriptures has been treated with derision. For in this the devil has hid 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 lady should read the Scriptures, the priests would have to study them, too, in order that they might not be detected and overcome.
In his Table Talk, Luther is reported to have said on February 22nd, 1538, “Thirty years ago, no one read the Bible and it was unknown to all. And when I was 20 years old, I had never seen a Bible.” This comes from the magisterial Weimar set of German writings of Luther, volume 3 of Table Talk, number 3767, from Anton Lauterbach’s diary. The 55-volume Luther’s Works in English chose — for whatever reason — not to include it. In his 1543 pamphlet, On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther stated that “Under the papacy, the Bible became unrecognizable.” The myth is sadly propagated to this day.
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John Piper, born in 1946, a prominent and influential Reformed Baptist theologian and pastor, stated in 2006 that Luther “spoke against the backdrop of a thousand years of church darkness without the Word.” That was in his book called The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, page 96. Are Luther and Piper correct, or was the Bible available to a significant extent to the populace in German before his time? I contend that it certainly was. Andrew Gow, born in 1962: an expert on the period and professor of history at the University of Alberta, wrote an excellent 37-page article on this very topic in 2009 that I’ll link below. Here are some key statements from his copiously documented piece:
One of the most persistent inaccuracies regarding the European Middle Ages, both among the general public and even among scholars, is the notion that the Roman church forbad or banned the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. . . . Despite the immense literature on medieval German Bibles, many (non-specialist scholars still see Luther’s Bible as a radical novelty and break with the “medieval” past . . . Vernacular Bibles circulated and were read widely . . . all through the later Middle Ages. . . .*In 1927, the prolific Bible scholar Hans Vollmer . . . wrote, . . . “It is quite common in Protestant circles to underestimate the knowledge of biblical texts among late medieval Christians,” . . .
In 2001, Owen Chadwick noted in a book addressed to a larger readership that there were many printed editions of the Bible before Luther. . . . In fact, there were 22 Germanic editions by 1518. . . .*In the later 15th and early 16th centuries, biblical material was widespread, popular, and well known among literate towns people, clerics, and nobles alike, especially in the Empire. . . .*As Hans Rost demonstrated in 1939 in a lengthy and detailed chapter, biblical piety and knowledge of the Bible were central to public, iconic, dramatic, literary, musical, liturgical, and architectural culture in the Middle Ages in general. . . .
In 1939, Rost announced that the research of the previous two centuries had conclusively shown how dependent Luther was on earlier Bible translations.
Gow is citing Dr. Rost’s 428-page book called The Bible in the Middle Ages, published in German in 1939. He discussed how 18th century Lutherans already knew that the “hidden Bible before Luther” was a pure myth. For example, in 1719, Yoachim Ernst Berger stated, “Anyone can see for himself that our saintly Luther was not the first to translate the Bible into German, as many would believe and would have him be.” The great bibliographer George Wolfgang Panzer wrote about the various pre-Lutheran German Bibles in 1777.
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Several striking statements have been made by the Anglican Alistair McGrath, born in 1953, the famous and arguably the best Protestant historian on theology in our time. He stated in 1987 that quote, “No universal or absolute prohibition of the translation of Scriptures into the vernacular was ever issued by a medieval pope or council, nor was any similar prohibition directed against the use of such translations by the laity.” That’s from his book, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, page 124. In a later book, he noted the high irony of how Lutheran Protestants changed their tune about the Bible after 1525:
The magisterial reformation initially seems to have allowed that every individual had the right to interpret Scripture, but the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 appears to have convinced some such as Luther, that individual believers, especially German peasants, were simply not capable of interpreting Scripture. It is one of the ironies of the Lutheran Reformation that a movement which laid such stress upon the importance of Scripture should subsequently deny its less educated members direct access to that same Scripture for fear that they might misinterpret it (in other words, reach a different interpretation from that of the magisterial reformers).
That’s from his book, Reformation Thought: An Introduction, fourth edition from 2012, page 110. I have the second edition from 1993 in my own library where the above excerpt is followed by an equally interesting and even more ironic statement:
For example, the school regulations of the Duchy of Wurttemburg laid down that only the most able school children were to be allowed to study the New Testament in their final years, and even then only if they studied it in Greek or Latin. The remainder — presumably the vast bulk –, were required to read Luther’s Lesser Catechism instead. The direct interpretation of Scripture was thus effectively reserved for a small privileged group of people. The principle of the “clarity of Scripture” appears to have been quietly marginalized in the light of the use made of the Bible by the more radical elements within the Reformation. Similarly, the idea that everyone had the right and ability to interpret Scripture faithfully became the sole possession of the radicals.
Old and hyper-partisan myths die hard. As a Christian apologist since 1981, I try my very best when dealing with historical matters to document as
fairly and accurately as I can, the truth regarding any particular dispute. When it comes to Protestant versus Catholic controversies, it’s necessary to read both sides to get to the whole truth. Thankfully, the best scholars on either side almost always agree on the broad facts regarding historical matters. The task is to find them and see what they have to say. And that takes time and effort. I can save folks some of that labor by taking the time to dig deeper in order to get past the myths and the worthless clatter that often accompany these debates.
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My Related Articles
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Was the Catholic Church Historically an “Enemy” of the Bible? [9-11-15]
Did Luther Rescue the Bible in German from Utter Obscurity? [National Catholic Register, 10-30-17]
Luther’s “Table Talk”: How Historically Accurate Is It? [4-7-25]
Andrew C. Gow, “The Contested History of a Book: The German Bible in the Later Middle Ages and Reformation in Legend, Ideology, and Scholarship” ( The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Vol. 9, Article 13 [2009] )
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Trevor Anderson, “Vernacular Scripture in the Reformation Era: Re-examining the Narrative” (The Regensburg Forum, 6-5-17)
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My Related Book
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Martin Luther: Catholic Critical Analysis and Praise (April 2008, 264 pages)
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My Related Web Pages
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Videos in The Martin Luther Series on Lux Veritatis
Martin Luther Support the DEATH PENALTY for Heretics? [Lux Veritatis, 5-1-25]
13 Reasons Luther Was Excommunicated from the Catholic Church [Lux Veritatis, 5-2-25]
The MYTH of Luther’s “Snow-Covered Dung Hills” [Lux Veritatis, 5-3-25]
Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation: Shocking Divisions Revealed! [Lux Veritatis, 5-4-25]
What Did Martin Luther REALLY BELIEVE About Mary’s Immaculate Conception? [Lux Veritatis, 5-5-25]
Luther’s Mythical Catholic “Ban” of the Bible [Lux Veritatis, 5-6-25]
Was Martin Luther an Extreme “Faith Alone” Antinomian? [Lux Veritatis, 5-8-25]
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Photo Credit: copyright Lux Veritatis, 2025.
Summary: One of the more curious beliefs of Luther (among many) is his insistence that the Bible was essentially “buried” or hidden prior to his revolt. It ain’t true, as I thoroughly prove.
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