Correction Bible

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As a correction Bibles or counter Bibles refers to those Catholic Bible translations that shortly after the publication of the King James (New Testament in 1522, complete Bible in 1534) were printed. These include the translation of the New Testament by Hieronymus Emser (1527) as well as the complete translations of the New and Old Testaments by Johann Dietenberger (1534) and Johannes Eck (1537). The term Correction Bible is misleading because less theologically controversial passages have been changed than Luther's East Central German language has been adapted to Upper German writing habits or, in one case, also translated into Low German.

The German-language translations of the Anabaptists and the Reformed Church , which were also created independently of Luther, do not count among the Catholic correction Bibles .

Schedule

The naw testament of Hieronymus Emser, 1527
Biblia of both Allt and Newen wills by Johann Dietenberger, 1534
Bible - Old and New Testament by Johannes Eck, 1537

Even before the Luther Bible was published, there was a violent dispute between Martin Luther and theologians loyal to Rome in 1518 , with the Ingolstadt theologian Johannes Eck emerging as the opponent's spokesman. After it had come to a final break with Rome and Martin Luther excommunicated by the Pope on January 3, 1521 and on May 26 of that year by the Diet of Worms , the imperial ban was imposed on him had made him this in his hiding place on the Wartburg from the Translate the New Testament into German. He used the basic Greek text as a template, published in 1516 by Erasmus of Rotterdam in Novum Instrumentum omne with Latin annotation by the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla .

In September 1522 the first edition of Luther's translation of the New Testament was published by Melchior Lother in Wittenberg, which is why it is also called the September Testament . The dissemination of this work was forbidden shortly afterwards, a measure which Hieronymus Emser defended in 1523 in his writing Out of what reason vnnd vor Luther's interpretation of the nawe testament / to which the common one had been banned .

It was the theologian from Swabia who worked in Dresden who, on behalf of the Saxon Duke and determined opponent of Luther, George the Bearded , prepared his own translation, which in 1527 text / corrected under the title The naw testament according to lawt of the Christian churches / and was printed in Dresden and was published in a second edition as early as 1528. In 1530 a Low German translation of the New Testament based on Hieronymus Emser was published on the initiative of the Catholic lay order of the Michaelis Brothers in Rostock .

The “corrected” Catholic version of the New Testament by Hieronymus Emser differed only slightly from Luther's translation. Emser had only replaced some of Luther's word creations with Upper German words, changed the order of the sentences to reflect Upper German speaking habits and in some cases corrected text passages based on the Latin Vulgate . The rest was partially literally identical to Luther's version, which also earned him a plagiarism charge. In 1530 Luther wrote in a letter about Emser:

"... and name my New Testament for yourself / almost word to word / as I did it ... / wrote his name ... in addition / sells my will under his name /"

In the meantime, Luther had translated parts of the Old Testament that were published in separate editions. In 1523 the Pentateuch was written , in 1524 the books Joshua bis Ester (the other part of the old testament) , in 1526 the prophets Jonah and Habakkuk , in 1527 the prophets Zechariah and Isaiah (New deudsch Psalter) and in 1529 the wisdom of Solomon .

Martin Luther's works, which he had written in his East Central German Saxon , were soon translated into Low German. A translation into Low German based on Luther was printed in Augsburg in 1522 and in the same year a version was published based on both Luther and the Halberstadt Bible by Lorenz Stuchs. These works were published under the following titles:

  • Dat nyge Testament tho dude , Hambourgh (anonymous) 1522
  • Dat ollde Testament Düdesch , by Caspar Ammann, Augsburg 1522

In addition, the following Alemannic translations of Luther's previous publications were made in Switzerland:

  • The gantz Nüw Testament with a green treat , Zurich, 1524
  • The Old Testament German , Zurich, 1525
  • The other part of the Old Testament , Zurich, 1525
  • The third teyl of the Old Testament , Zurich, 1525
  • The Vierde teyl of the Old Testament , Zurich, 1527
  • Diss are the books that are not listed by the old vnder Biblical writings , Zurich, 1529

The first complete Alemannic translation of the Old and New Testaments appeared in Switzerland as early as 1530, based on Martin Luther and, for the parts of the Old Testament that were still missing at that time, based on the Zurich predicants:

  • The whole Bible ... on the most faithful verteütschet , Zurich 1530 and 1531.

A short time later, Martin Luther had completed his translation work and in 1534 the first complete Luther Bible with all parts of the New and Old Testament was published by the printer Hans Lufft in Wittenberg . Luther translated the Old Testament from Hebrew with a team from the University of Wittenberg, using the Vulgate, the Septuagint and other translations ( Worms prophets ) for comparison.

In the same year, Johann Dietenberger's Mainz Bible of 1534 was the first full Catholic Bible. As early as 1529 he had published a revised version of Hieronymus Emser's Das naw testament and subsequently worked on the translation of the Old Testament. In doing so, he oriented himself in part to Luther, but also took the Worms prophets of 1527 as a basis, as well as the work of Leo Jud on the Zurich Bible and other pre-Lutheran German translations.

In 1537 a second full Catholic Bible by Johannes Eck (" Eck-Bibel ") appeared with an even stronger Upper German language character than the Dietenberger version. The theologian Eck, who comes from the Allgäu and is a professor at the University of Ingolstadt, prepared his Bible translation on behalf of the Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV and dedicated it to the Salzburg Archbishop Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg . He replaced numerous East Central German words from the Luther Bible and Swiss words from the Zurich Bible with Bavarian ones, such as the word “hügel” with “bühel”, “burst” with “break” and “bag” with “seckel”. However, even today's speakers of Bavarian dialects no longer understand many of Eck's Upper German words , as these have been superseded by High German expressions in the course of time. This led to the fact that later German research assessed Johannes Eck's Bible very negatively and even wrote the Biographical-Bibliographical Church Lexicon about his work:

“On behalf of his dukes, E. translated the Bible into the Bavarian-Swabian dialect. His linguistically inedible translation of the Bible appeared in 1537. "

But at that time even the imperial chancelleries wrote a very similar Upper German in the Maximilian chancellery language , which sounds like dialect today, but was then written.

Both complete Correction Bibles were used in the Catholic regions for a long time and retained their theological and linguistic effects well into the 18th century. The Bible by Johann Dietenberger, kept in a moderate Upper German writing style, was the more successful and more widespread and was only called the Catholic Bibell in the Cologne new edition of 1571 . The last edition appeared in Augsburg in 1776. The clearly Bavarian Bible by Johannes Eck was also in use for a long time, especially in the Electorate of Bavaria, the Archdiocese of Salzburg and Austria, and a second edition appeared in 1550, the third in 1558, the fourth in 1602, the fifth in 1611, the sixth in 1619 and in 1630 the seventh and last.

Linguistic consequences

The Luther Bible was not the first translation of the Bible into a German language (see Pre-Lutheran German Bibles ), but within a very short time it achieved wider circulation than all previous prints. At the same time, however, there were other Bible translators, some of whom were also Reformation inclined and others openly opposed to Luther.

According to church tradition, Luther's opponents based their translations on the Vulgate Bible, i.e. the Latin translation of Jerome , who also used the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek original text. Luther and other humanists based their translations on the original texts themselves, following the motto: Ad fontes ! In fact, the Vulgate has a bridging function in Luther's translation of the New Testament .

Modern theological and linguistic research has shown that the various German-language translations of the 16th century actually differed less in their theological interpretations than in their different linguistic and geographical focuses. Luther translated into his East Central German Saxon , while the correction Bibles were more characterized by an Upper German form of writing, which was based on the printer language of Augsburg, Nuremberg and Ingolstadt. In addition, translations into Low German were made in the north and Alemannic translations in Switzerland. In 1526 Jacob van Liesvelt also published the first complete Bible in Dutch , which was based partly on Luther, but also partly on the Vulgate and the translations of Erasmus of Rotterdam and the Swiss Oecolampadius .

Within a short time, separate translations were created in all continental West Germanic writing regions (East Central German, Low German, Upper German, Swiss German and Dutch) and there was thus anything but a uniform written language. Only in the long term was Luther's Saxon version able to establish itself and thus help East Central German to break through as the standard language of New High German . In Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland, however, this process lasted until the late 18th century, while the Dutch regions did not go along with this process and developed their own language into a modern standard language.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ z. B. Ludwig Hätzer and Hans Denck
  2. ↑ see Zurich Bible
  3. ↑ Frech, Stephan Veit: Magnificat and Benedictus Deutsch Book (synopsis) ( Memento of the original from September 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.peterlang.com
  4. ↑ Stefan Sonderegger: History of German Bible Translations in Basics , p. 270
  5. ^ Stefan Sonderegger: History of German Bible Translations in Fundamentals ; Table on p. 270
  6. ^ Stefan Sonderegger: History of German Bible Translations in Fundamentals ; Table on p. 263
  7. ^ Material collection on the history of Ingolstadt: Dr. Johannes Eck and the Holy Scriptures
  8. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz:  ECK (actually Maier), Johann. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 1452-1454.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )