The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

the dialects of our race. Many of these translations, as for example the
Septuagint, the Vulgate, and our own authorized version, have great
historical significance; but in its historical connections and significance,
Luther's is incomparably most important of all. Had it been his sole labor,
the race could never forget his name.
Never were a greater need and the fittest agent to meet it, so brought
together as in the production of this translation. One of the earliest
convictions of Luther was, the people must have the Bible, and to this end
it must be translated. It is true, that beginning with the Gothic translation of
Ulphilas, in the fourth century, there had been various translations of the
Scriptures into the Germanic tongues. About 1466, appeared the first
Bible, printed in German. It came from the press of Eggesteyn, in
Strasburg, (not as has been frequently maintained, from the press of Faust
and Schöffer, in 1462.) Between the appearance of this Bible and that of
Luther, there were issued in the dialect of Upper Germany some fourteen
editions of the Word of God, beside several in the dialect of Lower
Germany. These were, without exception, translations of a translation; they
were made from the Vulgate, and, however they may have differed, they
had a common character which may be expressed in a word--they were
abominable. In a copy of one of them, in the library of the writer of this
article, there is a picture of the Deluge, in which mermaids are floating
around the ark, arranging their tresses with the aid of small lookingglasses,
with a most amphibious nonchalance. The rendering is about as
true to the idea, as the picture is to nature. There is another of these
editions, remarkable for typographical errors, which represents Eve, not as
a house-wife, but as a "kiss-wife," and its typography is the best part of it.
How Luther raised what seemed a barbarous jargon into a language,
which, in flexible beauty, and power of internal combination, has no
parallel but in the Greek, and in massive vigor no superior but the English,
writers of every school, Protestant and Romish alike, have loved to tell. The
language of Germany has grown since Luther, but it has had no new
creation. He who takes up Luther’s