Ad fontes
Ad fontes ( lat. ) Means "To the sources" and was a motto of the humanists in the early modern period , who called for a return to the original texts, especially those of the Greek philosophers . This guiding principle became particularly important in 1511 through Erasmus of Rotterdam in his programmatic text De ratione studii ac legendi interpretandique auctores, in which it says: “Sed in primis ad fontes ipsos properandum, id est graecos et antiquos.” - “Above all, one must hurry to the sources themselves, that is to say to the Greeks and the ancients in general. "
Also Philipp Melanchthon demanded in 1518 in his inaugural address at the University of Wittenberg ( De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis - "On the reorganization of university studies") by the students: "Learn Greek to Latin, so that when their philosophers, theologians, historians, the speaker, the poet reads, gets down to the point itself, not embracing its shadow ... "
Martin Luther was impressed by this speech and also adhered to this principle in his translation of the Bible into German by basing it on Hebrew and Greek texts instead of the Latin translation, which was much more familiar to the scholars of his time. Behind this is a different hermeneutical understanding of Protestants and Catholics. Luther says the Bible interprets itself. That is why he is looking for the most original, unadulterated tradition possible. On the other hand, the Catholic Church postulates that a doctrinal structure, dogmatics, is necessary to understand the Bible .
This hermeneutical understanding, namely that a source explains itself and does not need a tradition of interpretation, is also contained in ad fontes .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erasmus of Rotterdam: De ratione studii ac legendi interpretandique auctores , Paris 1511, in: Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera omnia , ed. JH Waszink et al., Amsterdam 1971, Vol. I 2, 79-151.
- ↑ CORPUS REFORMATORUM (CR). MELANCHTHON OPERA. Edidit Carolus Bretschneider, Halle 1834 ff., Volume XI, p. 22.