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

III. Luther was a devoted student of the Hebrew and Greek. In 1505,
after his entrance into the cloister, Luther devoted himself, with that
earnestness which marked all he did, to the study of Hebrew and Greek.
He had skilful teachers in both languages. As professor and preacher in
Wittenberg, he continued both studies with great ardor. In Hebrew, Luther
regarded the illustrious Reuchlin, the Gesenius of that day, as his teacher,
compensating for the want of his oral instruction by a thorough use of his
writings. But Luther was not of the race of sciolists who think that,
because books can do much, they can do everything. He knew the value
of the living teacher. To obtain a more thorough mastery of Hebrew, he
availed himself of the instruction of his learned colleague, Aurogallus, the
Professor of the Oriental languages at Wittenberg. When he was at Rome,
in 1510, he took lessons in Hebrew from the erudite Rabbin Elias Levita.
Luther was master of the Hebrew according to the standard of his time, as
his contemporaries, and learned men of a later date, among them Scaliger,
have acknowledged. "If Luther," says Fritzsche, 80 "was not the greatest
philologist of his time, he was yet sufficiently learned to see for himself,
and to be able to form an independent judgment. What he lacked in
philological profundity was compensated for, in part, by his eminent
exegetical feeling, and by the fact that he had lived himself completely into
the spirit of the Bible." Luther's first master in Greek was Erasmus,
through his writings; his preceptor, both by the book and the lip, was
Melanchthon. These were the greatest Greek scholars of the age. Luther
happily styles Melanchthon, "most Grecian."
IV. With genius, the internal mental requisite, and learning, the
means by which that genius could alone be brought to bear on the work of
translation, Luther united piety. His soul was in affinity with the spirit of
the Bible. He was a regenerate man. A De Wette may produce a
translation which the man of taste admires, but he cannot translate for the
people. We would not give a poem to a mathematician for translation,
whatever might be his genius; still less would
80 Herzog's Real Encyc., iii. 340.