The reason for this Bible boom was not, that there had not been any
translations into German before, but most of these were translations from
Latin and imitated that style, also there was a kind of interpretation which
needed theological training to understand it.
Luther deliberately chose words from the language of commoners, “which
the mother at home, the children on the streets, the common man on the
market” would use, he also used imaginatively alliterations and rhymes
which made it easy to learn the texts by heart and which, indeed, have since
then found their way into German literature until this very day (Bertholt
Brecht, a modern German dramatist, said that his writing was most
influenced by Luther’s Bible).
Luther emphasised, that the Bible must be easily understood so that it does
not need interpretation by theologians, that people heard God speaking
directly to them in their language.
Of course, it did not take long until protestant orthodoxy talked of the use of
language literally as the true word of God, a fundamentalist use, which
Luther had deliberately avoided.
He said that human communication can be misinterpreted, and so he
showed for example, that the Bible can tell the same story in different
versions, for instance the creation story is told twice, at first man and woman
are created on the sixth day, and in the second version the man is created
first, then flora and fauna, and the woman later.
But, according to Luther, God speaks to you in a human voice.
Yet humans can distort Gods word as well, as did Eve, asked why she ate of
the forbidden fruit, answered that God had told them not to touch the fruit on
the tree, or they might perhaps die (Genesis 3,3)
But God had not said anything about ‘touch’ nor about ‘perhaps’.
Luther used this example to say that the word of God should not be diluted
or changed, and that by doing so our relationship with God is clouded.
For Luther, this was the case with much of human interpretation of the Bible,
even by the Church as a human institution, until the time when the Saviour
comes who would give us the unaltered word of God and all
misunderstandings would be solved.
For Luther, the meaning of all Holy Scriptures is “what Christ is doing”.
Nobody has brought the meaning of the Bible onto such a short formula. But
this is a good reason to alter the festival of ‘Reformation Day’ into a ‘Festival
of Christ’.
Brigitte Williams
StOM Page 15