Christmas story (Luther Bible)

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Luther family under the fir tree (copper engraving, 19th century).

The Christmas story is a section from the Gospel of Luke (2.1–14 LUT or 2.1–20 LUT ), which has a special meaning in the evangelical tradition both in the service on Christmas Eve and in the organization of Christmas Eve at home. It is a text that many people know by heart and for which a certain wording is expected.

Christmas and Luther

Pictures from the 19th century anachronistically depict the Luther family at a domestic Christmas party, including a Christmas tree and house music. It is correct, however, that the birth of Christ is of great importance in Martin Luther's theology. That's why he wrote Christmas carols himself (best known: From heaven high, that's where I come from ). On the other hand, the oldest elements of today's Christmas tradition go back to the 16th century, i.e. to the time of Luther.

The birth of Christ
( Cranach workshop , Wittenberg around 1520 ?, private property)

Luther's translation of the Christmas story

On Luther's creative language work: see Luther Bible .

Since the birth of Christ was very important to him, Luther took special care when translating the Christmas story. That is why Germanists prefer to demonstrate the peculiarities of Luther's German Bible prose using verses from the Christmas story.

Sacral language formulations

As everywhere in his translation of the Bible, Luther uses extra-everyday, sacred language formulations in the rendering of Luke 2.

  • “But it came to pass…” as an introduction to the story;
  • Sequence of sentences that begin with "and";
  • Affixed "but": "But since they had seen it ..." (v. 17), "Mary kept all these words ..." (v. 18)

alliteration

  • "And there were H irten in the same area of the field in the H ürden that h üteten by night over their H earth." (V 8)
  • "Behold, I v erkündige you great F change, joy, especially the V will befall olk, because you is h of oday H born islet, which is Christ the H err, in the city of David." (Vs. 10-11)
  • "Let us now g deal g s Bethlehem and the G see istory that since g is esch go ..." (v 15)

Play with the sound of vowels

  • "Then Joseph also arose from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth ..." (v. 4);
  • "You will find the child wrapped in diapers and lying in a manger." (V. 12)

Revised text 2017

The revision of the Luther Bible showed that the wording from 1984 had not quite reached the congregations; the text from 1912 was still present in the background as a text known by heart. The 2017 revision therefore tried to win back some Luther archaisms. The Christmas story became the touchstone to show that there was “more Luther” in the revised text. Because actually the rule was that the more familiar a text was, the less should be changed. As a result, nothing changed about Psalm 23. In Luke 2, 1–20, however, a lot changed: 20 verses, 15 suggested changes, of which 12 were accepted, back to the version of the Luther Bible 1912: 11.

Preserving Luther's use of the particles and pronouns where possible was a concern of the revision. The more modern “because” did not become Luther's “about that”, likewise: “everyone” instead of Luther's “every one.” But in both cases there is an exception: the Christmas story. "The task here was to restore the rhythmic prose of Luther's original version, which was severely disturbed by modernizations from 1975/1984."

"Tradition-conscious churchgoers will welcome it when they hear again in the Christmas Gospel:" Then Joseph also set out ... because (instead of: because) he was from the house and lineage of David "(Lk 2, 4). Great attention has been paid to the particles and pronouns. With Luther one reads again ... "on that" instead of "with it" and often "there" instead of "as". "The phenomenon corresponds to the development of a sacred language that can be observed in all religions .

A desired side effect was the agreement with Bach's setting in the Christmas Oratorio .

The Christmas story as a domestic ritual

A classic: "Christmas at the Buddenbrooks" ( Buddenbrookhaus Lübeck)

Evangelical Christianity is comparatively poor in rituals that are practiced in the private sphere. Many are associated with Christmas.

The bourgeoisie of the 19th century had an exemplary effect on other milieus; Thomas Mann offers a classic design in the novel Buddenbrooks (it was de facto the usual way of celebrating Christmas in the Lübeck family). Here is the Christmas story before entering the Christmas room, so to speak in front of the still closed heaven door:

“The consul, however, walked slowly to the table and sat in the midst of her relatives on the sofa, which was no longer independent and separated from the table as it was in the old days. She adjusted the lamp and pulled out the large Bible, the age-pale gold-edged surface of which was incredibly broad. Then she pushed her glasses up on her nose, opened the two leather clips with which the colossal book was closed, opened the place where the sign was that the thick, rough, yellowish paper with the oversized print appeared, took one Sip sugar water and started reading the Christmas chapter. She read the familiar words slowly and with simple, heartfelt intonation, in a voice that was clear, moving, and serene against the reverent silence. "And a pleasure to the people!" She said. But no sooner was she silent than the " Silent Night, Holy Night " rang out in three voices in the portico , which the family joined in the landscape room. They went to work a little cautiously, because most of those present were unmusical ... "

According to the survey by Baumann and Hauri for Switzerland, the Christmas story is currently read aloud in 29% of families, and wherever this happens, the custom is rated as very important by the parents in question, along with the Christmas tree and the crib.

See also

literature

  • Christoph Kähler: The revision of the Luther Bible for the anniversary year 2017 - 500 years of the Reformation , in: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Hrsg., "... and would not have love." The revision and redesign of the Luther Bible for the anniversary year 2017: 500 years of the Reformation, Stuttgart 2016, p. 7-20. ISBN 978-3-438-06620-6 . (Revised version of the final report that the chairman of the steering committee held on May 2, 2015 before the EKD Synod in Würzburg.)
  • Emanuel Hirsch : The translation of the Christmas story , in: Lutherstudien vol. 2, 1957, pp. 227–237.
  • Birgit Stolt : Martin Luther's Rhetorik des Herzens , Tübingen, 2000
  • Maurice Baumann, Roland Hauri: Christmas: Family ritual between tradition and creativity, Stuttgart 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matthias Gretzschel: Heavenly told by Lukas and Luther. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. December 24, 2004, accessed December 25, 2017 .
  2. ^ Paul-Josef Raue: Luther's German: Der Lutherklang. In: New Osnabrück Newspaper. December 19, 2016. Retrieved December 25, 2017 .
  3. ^ Rudolf Walter Leonhardt: The word they should let stahn. About well-intentioned attempts to make the Bible understandable to modern man. In: Zeit Online. December 21, 1984. Retrieved December 25, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Peter von Polenz: German language history from the Middle Ages to the present. Introduction · Basic Concepts · 14th to 16th centuries . Walter de Gruyter, 2013, p. 233 .
  5. ^ Barbara Sandig: Text stylistics of German . Berlin 2006, p. 279 .
  6. ↑ Dieter Gutzen: "Everything depends on the word" - reflections on Luther's rhetoric . In: Gert Ueding (Ed.): Rhetoric between the sciences . Tübingen 1991, p. 231 .
  7. ↑ Christoph Kähler (Interview): How the sound of the Bible is adapted. December 14, 2014, accessed December 24, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Christoph Kähler: On the revision of the Luther Bible 2017. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 14, 2017 ; accessed on December 24, 2017 . 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.bibelwerk.de
  9. ↑ Christoph Kähler: The revision of the Luther Bible . S. 13-14 .
  10. ↑ Christoph Kähler: The revision of the Luther Bible . S. 14-15 .
  11. ↑ Thomas Söding: The Testament of the Reformation. Retrieved December 22, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Philipp Holstein: The civil festival. Retrieved December 22, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks. Retrieved December 22, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Maurice Baumann, Roland Hauri: Christmas . S. 77 .