Luther Bible
German-language translation of the Bible by Martin Luther / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Luther Bible (German: Lutherbibel) is a German language Bible translation by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. A New Testament translation by Luther was first published in September 1522, and the completed Bible, containing a translation of the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha, in 1534. Luther continued to make improvements to the text until 1545. It was the one of first full translations of the Bible into German that used not only the Latin Vulgate but also the Greek.[5]
Luther Bible | |
---|---|
Full name | Biblia / das ist / die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch |
Abbreviation | LUT |
OT published | 1534 |
NT published | 1522 |
Complete Bible published | 1534[1] |
Apocrypha | |
Authorship | |
Textual basis |
|
Version revision | 1984 (last official revision) |
Publisher | Hans Lufft |
Copyright | Public domain due to age |
Religious affiliation | |
Am anfang schuff Gott Himel vnd Erden. Vnd die Erde war wüst und leer / und es war finster auff der Tieffe / Vnd der Geist Gottes schwebet auff dem Wasser. Und Gott sprach / Es werde Liecht / Und es ward Liecht. (1545 revised 5th edition)[3] |
Luther did not translate the entire Bible by himself; he relied on a team of translators and helpers that included Philip Melanchthon, a scholar of Koine Greek who motivated and assisted Luther's New Testament translation from Greek, and Matthäus Aurogallus, a linguist and scholar of Hebrew. One of the textual bases of the New Testament translation was the Latin and Greek versions, and its philological annotations, recently published by the Dutch Catholic humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam and called the Novum Testamentum omne (1519).
The project absorbed Luther's later years.[6] The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany,[1] promoting the development of non-local forms of language and exposing all speakers to forms of German from outside their own areas.[7] Thanks to the then recently invented printing press,[8] the result was widely disseminated and contributed significantly to the development of today's modern High German language.[1]