Why did Martin Luther write the German Bible?

Answer 1

Martin Luther did not write the German Bible, but he did translate it. For centuries, The Bible was out of reach of most Christians. The only copies that existed were in Latin, which most people could not read or understand, and it was left to the clergy who were educated in the Latin language to mete out their own explanations - a practice which tended to be subjective, rather than objective. A Dutch scholar by the name of Erasmus (or Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus), who was a contemporary of Martin Luther, saw how the Bible was being withheld from the common people. Like Luther, Erasmus was critical of some Roman Catholic beliefs, abuses and practices. A Catholic priest himself (again, like Luther) and a scholar of Latin and Greek, Erasmus carefully studied the original Greek texts and put together the first copy of the Greek translation of the Bible, which was published in 1516. It was this action which gave Luther the foundation, and motivation, to translate the entire New Testament into German. This action made the Bible accessible to all people, which was what Luther wanted. He was not interested in rules and rituals: he was interested in making the Gospel of Salvation available to everyone. Further information: Even in the 18th century Latin was the language of the educated, of art and science and mathematics. In the middle ages illiteracy rates were high. Until around 1440, there was no printing press to print the Bible. There were however many vernacular translations prior to Luther (Italian, French, English etc) for people to read if they could afford to pay a scribe to make them a copy, or were literate so they could read the chained copy (to stop it being stolen) at their local church. In total however, there were at least eighteen complete German Bible editions, ninety editions in the vernacular of the Gospels and the readings of the Sundays and Holy Days, and some fourteen German Psalters by the time Luther first published his own New Testament translation. (Paul Arblaster, Gergely Juhász, Guido Latré (eds.), Tyndale's Testament, Brepols 2002, p. 116). For the text of Erasmus, which Luther used, he was missing part of Revelation and so had to use the Latin Vulgate (Biblia Sacra) and translate it into Greek. Erasmus dedicated the first edition of his work to Pope Leo X.