The September Testament and Its Predecessors: How Was Luther’s New Testament Translation Different from Previous German Versions?

Abstract

Luther’s first New Testament in German, issued in September 1522, forms a landmark in the history of Bible translation. Yet how precisely did Luther’s work diverge from and build on received biblical scholarship, and on previous translations into German? This article compares John’s Gospel in the September Testament with Anton Koberger’s German Bible of 1483 and Erasmus’s Greek and Latin New Testament of 1519. Luther’s 1522 Testament differed in format from its predecessors: Luther discarded Jerome’s prefaces in favour of his own, and added expository commentaries and paragraph breaks to help the reader. Compared to Koberger, Luther aspired to more fluent and elegant language. He avoided importing Latin terms into German and strove for rhetorically powerful German. He adopted several of Erasmus’s philological interventions, though not uncritically. Luther worked continuously to make his German New Testament embody what he saw as the essential gospel.