Luther's Messianic Translations of the Hebrew Bible Erik T

Luther's Messianic Translations of the Hebrew Bible Erik T. Lundeen

Lutheran Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 2020, pp. 24-41 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lut.2020.0004

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/751531

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Luther’s Messianic Translations of the Hebrew Bible by Erik T. Lundeen

May God grant that our theologians boldly apply themselves to the study of Hebrew and retrieve the Bible for us from those rascally thieves [the Jews]. And may they improve on my work. They must not become captive to the rabbis and their tortured grammar and false interpretation. Then we will again find and recognize our dear Lord and Savior clearly and distinctly in Scripture. —Martin Luther, On the Last Words of David (1543)1

n the fall of 1542 the aging Luther, sitting at his dinner table, I is reported to have exclaimed, “Oh, the Hebrews!” He quickly clarified that he was not referring to Jews but rather was speaking “about our people.” These Hebrews, Luther complained, “greatly Judaize[d]” when they interpreted the Hebrew Bible. Above all, he was upset that the leading Basel Hebraist Sebastian Münster still was not pleased with the German Bible translation produced by Luther’s team at Wittenberg.2 Münster’s own biblical translation stuck only to the grammar and had failed to look at the wider sentence and meaning.3 This episode, a brief but telling recollection from Luther’s students, speaks to the Reformer’s preoccupation with the Christian study of Hebrew and the proper translation of the Old Testament. These subjects occupied a constant place in Luther’s mind during the last decade of his life. During this same period, Luther penned his infamous anti-Jewish writings ( Judenschriften), normally considered to include Against the Sabbatarians (1538), On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), On the Ineffable Name (1543), and On the Last Words of David (1543).4 Scholars have helpfully analyzed both Luther’s German translation of the Bible and also his Judenschriften.5 Rarely, however, have these two topics been brought into conversation. This is particularly so regarding Luther’s late revisions to the German Bible, many of which were done at the same time he was penning his anti-Jewish writings.6 Indeed, while Heinrich Bornkamm has offered what remains the fullest study of “Luther’s Christian Translation of the Old

Testament,” Bornkamm himself noted that he paid little attention to Luther’s revisions to the translations.7 Other scholars who have studied Luther’s biblical translations likewise focus on Luther’s translational methodology, his use of the German language, and his translation’s literary qualities, but give little space to either the translational revisions or to the impact which Luther’s negative attitude toward Jewish scholarship may have had on these revisions. Luther’s treatise On the Last Words of David (hereafter LWD), however, explicitly connects Luther’s revisions to the German Bible in the 1540s with his attitude toward rabbinic scholarship. This treatise, including plenty of barbs aimed against Jews and against rabbis in particular, has usually been interpreted either as simply the last of the Judenschriften or as an exposition of Trinitarian theology.8 What is less frequently noted, however, is its function as a programmatic statement on the proper method of translating the Old Testament. Yet Luther began LWD by comparing the various ancient translations of the Bible and spoke of the need for “a uniform Bible.”9 He lamented the proliferation of new biblical translations and therefore decided to discuss 2 Samuel 23:1–7 as a sort of case study on proper translation. However, he did not stick to 2 Samuel 23 but also ranged widely across a number of other Old Testament texts. In doing so, Luther chose to ignore his own earlier translations of these passages and to render them afresh in line with his increased disregard for Jewish scholarship.10 Luther’s LWD thus provides a window into how his sharply negative attitude toward rabbinic scholarship affected his late revisions to the German Bible. In his last years, Luther began, not to interpret the Old Testament in a messianic fashion—something he had always done—but rather to occasionally translate it in ways intended to make a messianic meaning much clearer. He did this particularly in passages that contained grammatically obscure Hebrew wording. A Table Talk entry, dated from the fall of 1542, displays the logic behind this approach.

When any explanation suggested, for example, by the rabbis, disagrees with the totality of the Holy Scripture, we reject it out of hand. For the rabbis have spoiled the whole scripture with their explanations, because they all proceed from the premise that the Messiah must still come and that when he comes, 26 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

he will give us food and drink and then die—which is, of course, sheer non- sense. Now, such expositions we reject at once, as I have repeatedly said to our Hebraist, Dr. [ Johannes] Forster. When he said, ‘Yes, the rabbis understand the passage in this way,’ I answered, ‘Without doing violence to the grammar and words, can we translate it thus and so, so that it would agree with the New Testament?’ If he answered, ‘Yes, that is possible,’ then I said, ‘Then we will choose that translation!’11

This comment discloses Luther’s method of biblical translation. The subject matter (res) of all scripture was Christ. The meaning of individual sentences, therefore, had to be brought into line with this wider subject matter.12 Therefore, while Luther highly valued grammar and grammatical explanations, he also regularly could make statements that gave grammar only a secondary place behind his insistence on bringing grammar into agreement with the wider subject matter.13 To put it differently, Luther “often started with the subject of the text and then tried to prove his interpretation philologically.”14 In order to demonstrate some of the ramifications of this approach, this essay will look in depth at the re-translations of three key Old Testament passages which Luther occupied himself with in LWD. Through analyzing these translational revisions, I aim to demonstrate how Luther’s growing distrust of the Jews in the last decade of his life drove not only the Judenschriften but also key aspects of his revisions to the German Bible. The revised messianic translations analyzed here occasionally stretch grammar to its limits and present an aspect of Luther’s translational legacy that should not be alto- gether followed. Yet they nonetheless give a unique window into the creative and pervasive way in which Luther understood the Old Testament to witness to Christ.

2 Samuel 23:1–7

Luther’s LWD, at least judging by its title, purports to be an exposition of a single biblical passage, 2 Samuel 23:1–7. Yet in this treatise Luther moved far afield, traversing a wide swath of the biblical landscape. Nevertheless, the Reformer did spend significant time on these seven verses at both the beginning and end of his treatise, LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 27

giving them a completely fresh translation and interpretation.15 While for the young Luther this passage seemed rather unremark- able, by 1543 it had become for him a key Old Testament testimony to the Messiah.16 In his late exposition of 2 Samuel 23:1–7, contained in the LWD, two issues in the passage occupied Luther—its potential testimony to the Messiah and its potential for indicting the Jews.17 Luther’s first published translation of 2 Samuel 23:1–7 came in the 1524 Das Ander teyl des alten testaments—part two of his German Bible, initially published in three parts.18 Here verse one was translated: “Thus says David, the son of Jesse, thus says the man who has been established as the anointed ( gesalbeten) of the God of Jacob.”19 In and of itself, this translation was rather unremark- able, containing none of the more explicitly messianic resonances which Luther would give to it. While the underlying Hebrew text Luther translated this rather ,( ָמ ִשׁ י ַח) ․contained the term Ma¯šîah safely as “anointed.”20 This followed the way in which Reuchlin’s Hebrew dictionary suggested unxit (“anointed”) as the equivalent of Ma¯šîah․.21 The Vulgate had David as the christus, a translation with more potential messianic import than Luther’s 1524 rendering.22 Yet the Reformer opted for gesalbeten instead. Remarkably, Luther did not change his translation of this verse in any of the editions of the Bible before 1543, despite the fact that the Bible revisions of 1539–41 had given the verse a second look.23 What did change was the addition of marginal annotations. An annotation added in 1534 made clear that David in the following verses was speaking of an eternal, lovely kingdom, in contrast to the kingdom of the law given at Mount Sinai.24 This gave the text a Christological interpretation, but as of yet did not alter the translation. Further, it agreed with the annotations published by Johannes Bugenhagen on these same verses in 1524, in which the Pomeranian interpreted them as referring to the future kingdom of Christ.25 Another annotation added in 1541 gave the text an anti-Jewish flair, noting with a quotation of Luke 1:52 that God had removed their kingdom from them.26 The important point, however, is that neither of these marginal annotations gave the verse an explicitly messianic translation. 28 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

All of this changed in the 1543 LWD. Here Luther retranslated 2 Samuel 23:1 as follows: “Thus says David, the son of Jesse, thus says the man who is assured (versichert ist ) of the Messiah of the God of Jacob.”27 Two things principally differed here from Luther’s earlier translations. First, the Hebrew Ma¯šîah․ was now translated explicitly as “Messiah.” Luther now believed, following Nicholas of Lyra, that this verse referenced the promise of the kingdom of the Messiah given in Genesis 49:10—a text which Luther had long understood messianically.28 Therefore, rendering Ma¯šîah․ as “anointed” as he had previously was far too cautious.29 Second, David changed from being “established” as the anointed of God, to now being “assured” (versichert ist ) of the promise of God’s coming Messiah.30 This latter translation was particularly novel from a grammatical standpoint. -is quite common and nor (קוּם) The underlying Hebrew verb qûm mally means “to establish” or “to raise.”31 This was, for example, how Reuchlin’s Hebrew dictionary rendered it, and the widespread acceptance of this meaning can be seen by comparing Luther’s translations of this verse to the renderings of his contemporaries.

Sixteenth-Century Translations of 2 Samuel 23:132 Luther LWD: Es sprach David, der Son Jsai; Es sprach der man, der von dem Messia des Gottes Jacob versichert ist. Münster: Dixit David filius Isai, & ait vir ille, qui constitutus erat in Christum dei Jacob. Pagninus: Dixit David filius Isaei, dixit inquam vir qui constitus est excelsius, unctus Dei Iaacob

Why did Luther render this Hebrew verb in a way that no other had done? He openly acknowledged the difficulties of transla- cannot well be reproduced with one ֻה ַק ם tion. “The Hebrew term word.”33 But for Luther, the res of the passage was key. Specifically, Luther not only read these verses as a reference to Genesis 49:10, he had also now come to believe that Hebrews 11:1 in the New Testa- ment (“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for”) explicitly alluded LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 29

to 2 Samuel 23:1.34 Pan-biblical testimony thus reinforced the fact that David here was acting in his role as a prophet, predicting Jesus Christ.35 Because of this, Luther took a quite common Hebrew verb and gave it a fresh and debatable translation—a translation which made the Old Testament’s witness to Christ much more apparent. David now spoke directly of Christ, and he did so with a Lutheran assurance of conscience.

Genesis 4:1

A second passage that Luther surprisingly addressed at length in the LWD concerned a single verse, Genesis 4:1.36 The attention Luther devoted to this verse is striking, as there was no obvious precedent for it being a point of controversy. In it, Eve gives birth to Cain her firstborn and exclaims, in Luther’s first 1523 translation of the verse, “I have received the man of the Lord! (Ich hab uberkomen den man des HERREN ).” 37 In and of itself this seems fairly straight- forward. The only difficulty is that the underlying Hebrew text con- tains a slightly rare and awkward construction. While Luther had early on translated the Hebrew with a genitive, preceding ( ֶא ת) of the Lord,” the Hebrew text had the word ’etַ“ Cain. This small word in Hebrew is most often used as a marker for the direct object of the verb, though occasionally it can have various prepositional meanings. Early on Luther was no doubt puzzled by the grammar of this verse and thus opted for the genitive—a construction that can carry a rather broad semantic range. This genitive translation (den man des HERREN ) remained in German Bibles published throughout Luther’s lifetime. The Vulgate had rendered the phrase as per deum (“through God”).38 The most popular translation among Luther’s contemporaries, however, was a domino (“from the Lord”)—the rendering included in the Latin Bibles of Sebastian Münster, Sanctes Pagninus, and the later Tremellius/Junius Bible.39 There was thus at least a slight variety over how best to understand this verse. The Wittenberg genitive, seen in this light, did not follow the translations of others, but perhaps attempted a more noncom- mittal rendering of the underlying Hebrew. 30 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

At some point after the initial 1523 translation in the German Bible, however, Luther began to suspect a messianic message inher- ent in Eve’s exclamation. In his Genesis lectures of the mid-1530s he tied Eve’s words in Genesis 4:1 to the promise a future seed who would crush the head of the serpent, given in Genesis 3:15. Thus Luther thought that Eve believed the promise of the coming seed but was mistaken in applying it to the person of Cain.40 This interpretation then became inserted into Luther Bibles, starting with a 1538 marginal annotation. It read, “Cain is called the man who is gotten or received. But Eve maintained that he should be the same one whom the Lord had said would crush the head of the serpent.”41 Yet nothing as of yet had caused Luther to alter the genitive translation of this verse given in his German Bible.42 Only with LWD did he explicitly argue for a different translation of Genesis 4:1. Here he noted the translations of earlier Hebraists as “through God” (per deum) and “from the Lord” (vom dem HERRN )—the opinions of the Vulgate and many of Luther’s contemporaries, respectively—but believed such translations followed rabbinical opinion too closely.43 While all Hebraists acknowledged that ’etַ denoted the article for the accusative case, Luther believed that they were unwilling to acknowledge the “truth of the language” in use here because of what such an accusative might interpretively suggest.44 Luther, however, insisted on translating this verse with the accusative. Eve, in this rendering, now made a most striking statement: “I have the man, the Lord!”45 The mother of humanity no longer spoke of a man of the Lord, she now thought she had given birth to the Lord himself. This explicitly messianic translation of Genesis 4:1 was completely unprecedented in the history of Christianity.46 For Luther, similar motives were at play here as with his retranslation of 2 Samuel 23:1–7. First, the res of the passage, seen in the proximity of Genesis 4:1 to Genesis 3:15, in the Reformer’s mind, endowed the former with a high plausibility of a messianic interpretation. Second, the grammar here, confusing at first glance, clearly could accommodate a messianic interpretation if the interpreter so desired. For Luther, the only reason others did not desire such was because they were overly beholden to Jewish opinions. Elsewhere LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 31

in LWD Luther encouraged Christian Hebraists to “wrest the Old Testament from the rabbis wherever possible,” if the grammar could accommodate such an interpretation.47 Luther’s late-in-life retranslation of Genesis 4:1 therefore fit per- fectly with the attitude toward Jewish scholarship enunciated in the Judenschriften. Rabbinical commentaries were not to be trusted.48 Further, if in any place the Hebrew grammar of the Old Testament could, without excessive violence, be bent in the direction of the New Testament message, then it was the responsibility, indeed the imperative, of the Christian interpreter to do so. Interestingly, Luther’s retranslation of Genesis 4:1 in LWD was not included in the 1545 edition of Luther’s Bible. While a marginal annotation added in 1545 made Luther’s interpretation (and translation) given in LWD crystal clear, the biblical text itself maintained the genitive construction. 49 Luther’s retranslation did, however, show up shortly after, but in the 1546 Bible edition, printed just after Luther had died.50 It was put there by Luther’s colleague Georg Rörer, the official corrector on Luther’s translation team.51 Rörer made a number of late emendations to the biblical text which were contested by some but which did have the imprimatur of Luther.52 The fact that Eve thought she had begotten the Lord was, after all, Luther’s interpretation from LWD. The new messianic translation, while striking, would remain in Luther Bibles, and thus in hands of laity, for centuries to come.53

1 Chronicles 17:17

A final retranslation which Luther gave in LWD proved to be his most radical of all. 1 Chronicles 17 is a text concerning God’s eternal covenant with David. Its inner-biblical parallel is 2 Samuel 7, a chapter whose centrality for Christian understandings of messianic prophecy has been clear ever since the pages of the New Tes- tament.54 Indeed, Luther frequently made much of 2 Samuel 7 as a central testimony to the eternal perpetuity of the Davidic line, first promised in Genesis and continuing until the birth of Christ.55 In the recounting of the event in 1 Chronicles 17:17, God promises to 32 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

build David a house—a future dynasty of descendants. David then replies with awe. He says, “Who am I, God, that you have brought me thus far?” He then continues, in Luther’s first 1524 translation of the verse, by saying, “And you, Lord God, have looked on me from above as one person to another.”56 This verse, more so than either of the previously examined verses, is highly obscure in the Hebrew text.57 Indeed, it has continued to trouble commentators even in modern times.58 For this reason, sixteenth-century translations displayed a wide variety in the way they rendered it. Most, broadly following the Vulgate, declared that God had either made David more outstanding than others or had regarded him as such.59 Luther’s early translation differed from this but presented nothing that could be considered radical. This 1524 translation of Luther remained essentially unchanged for a decade and a half. During the 1539–41 revisions of the Bible, however, Luther’s translational team revisited this passage. They com- pared the obscure Hebrew of 1 Chronicles 17:17 with the parallel but equally obscure passage in 2 Samuel 7:19. Judging by the revision protocols, the committee already at this point began to suspect the messianic translation that would become enshrined in LWD. As of yet, however, they left the biblical text unchanged.60 By 1543, however, according to Luther’s new translation in LWD, David now declared, “You have looked at me as in the form of a man, who is God the Lord Most High.”61 David now saw himself as the Most High God, something striking enough that it doubtless would have stood out to any careful reader. As with Luther’s previously studied retranslations, what seems to have been at work here was a heady combination of a difficult Hebrew text, a distrust of Jewish sources, and a desire to bend grammatically obscure places of Scripture in the direction of the New Testament. On 1 Chronicles 17:17, Luther admitted that “the translation of these words by almost all other Hebraists [was] far different.” Yet he believed that the passage had to be translated “according to the grammar” (nach der Grammatica), as he believed himself to be doing.62 The grammar here, however, was entirely obscure. Thus, it is interesting to assess what in fact Luther did. LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 33

Sixteenth-Century Translations of 1 Chronicles 17:17 Luther LWD: Du hast angesehen mich, als in der gestalt eines Menschen, der in der Hoech Gott der HERR ist. Münster: Aspexisti me iuxta praestantiam hominis alicuius magni domine deus. Pagninus: Vidisti me iuxta dispositionem hominis excellentis, o Jehova Deus.

Reading between the lines, Luther likely reached his 1543 translation of this verse by altering the underlying Hebrew text. For the phrase “in the form of a man,” at least one consonant in Hebrew must be changed, only a slight alteration.63 In doing so, however, Luther was not alone. Rather, he was likely following the lead of the LXX which reads in a similar fashion.64 Luther did the same .(”as “gestalt” (“form/appearance תור in understanding the Hebrew This definition does not appear in Hebrew dictionaries of Luther’s time.65 Rather, it follows the LXX rendering of this verse.66 Inter- estingly, not even Johannes Forster, a colleague of Luther’s, followed Luther here in his Hebrew dictionary. Although Forster notes this exact verse and usage, his definition of the Hebrew term under con- sideration diverges considerably.67 In assessing Luther’s translational method, more significant is his insertion of the relative clause that has David defining himself as a man “who is God the Lord Most High” (der in der höhe Gott der HERR ist ). Here Luther did not follow the LXX at all, which understood the verse completely differently.68 To make the text read as translated, Luther would have had to re-vocalize the Hebrew.69 He thus followed advice he had given earlier in On the Ineffable Name, where he had urged “our Hebraists” to “alter the vowel points, disjunctive and conjunctive accents, constructions, significations, and whatever else the grammar allows, and thus turn the text away from the Jewish understanding in a way that rhymes with the New Testament.”70 In this retranslation, therefore, Luther did not merely alter his understanding of the words of an underlying Hebrew text, rather 34 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

he actually changed the Hebrew text itself to meet his newfound understanding of the subject matter of the passage. This aligns with a distrust we see elsewhere in the Judenschriften and in other writings from this period of the Hebrew vowel points, which he (correctly) believed were a late addition to the Hebrew text and therefore not always reliable.71 Luther was thus happy to change them when it meant that the meaning of an Old Testament passage thereby aligned more clearly with the New Testament.72 Luther’s 1543 messianic translation of 1 Chronicles 17:17, as presented in LWD, became the official text of that verse in Luther Bibles beginning that the same year.73 Its Christological meaning was further buttressed by a marginal annotation which made clear that David spoke, not of himself, but of one from his bloodline who would come after him. This descendant would be both among the children of God but also would himself be God.74 This strikingly messianic rendering—buttressed by the elder Luther’s increased aversion to rabbinic interpretations—therefore became placed into Luther’s translation of 1 Chronicles 17:17 for subsequent genera- tions to read and ponder. It was grammatically tenuous, perhaps, but nevertheless drove home David’s role as a prophet of Christ.

Conclusion

Luther’s translation of the Bible has recently been called “the centre of his theological work and the sum of his theology.”75 As for widespread impact, dissemination, and legacy, it is without rival among his written works. Yet it is often neglected in scholarship, particularly as a witness to Luther’s own exegesis and his Christo- logical understanding of the Old Testament. “Luther’s translation of the Bible,” however, “is its interpretation.”76 This makes the work of the translator both more important and more fraught than is often realized. For Luther, this translation of the Old Testament became much more explicitly messianic in a number of key passages in the last years of his life. On the one hand, the messianic translations that have been analyzed here at times stretch the possible meanings of the Hebrew text to its limits. On the other hand, while the translations can be philologically questionable, LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 35 they also reflect an impulse that has always been at the center of the Christian faith, namely that the Old Testament in all its variety nevertheless centrally bears witness to Christ. Luther, buoyed by his desire to reclaim the Bible from the Jews, simply carried this impulse much farther than most before him or since have done. While his translational methodology in this regard is often theologically and grammatically questionable and should not be emulated today, it nevertheless stands as a unique and interesting moment in the long history of Christian attempts to understand the nature of the Old Testament’s witness to Jesus Christ. Through taking grammatical lib- erties in translating verses of the Old Testament to be much more explicitly messianic, Luther made concrete his program of retrieving the Bible from the Jews. It was a program which included not only anti-Jewish policy, but also the creation of a more explicitly messianic translation of the Old Testament itself.77

NOTES

1. Jaroslav Pelikan et. al., eds., Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols., eds. Pelikan and Lehmann (St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1955ff.) 15:352 (hereafter cited as LW); D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 120+ vols., eds. J.F.K. Knaake et al. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883ff.) 54:100 (hereafter cited as WA for the writings, WA DB for the Luther Bible, WA Tr for the Table Talk). 2. “Wir haben einen grossen vleis bei der bibel gethan und auff den sentenz gesehen, quae congruit cum grammatica. Noch haben wir dem Münster nicht zu gefallen gethan. O, die Hebrei—ich sag auch von den unsern—judentzen sehr. Drumb habe ich sie auch in eo libello, quem scripsi contra Iudaeos, auch gemeint.” WA Tr 5:212.13–17 (No. 5521). 3. Münster had produced a literal, two-volume Latin translation of the Old Testa- ment entitled Hebraica Biblia Latina planeque nova Sebast. Munsteri tralatione . . . , 2 vols. (Basel, 1534/5). On the basis of WA Tr 5:330–331 (No. 5723), Thomas Kaufmann has speculated that there was an epistolary exchange between Luther and Münster in 1542–1543 which has now been lost. For this, see his Luther’s Jews: A Journey into Anti-Semitism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 104. Wa Tr 5:330–331, however, gives no clear evidence for any such exchange. 4. Here I have omitted That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew (1523), a remarkably pro- Jewish treatise, since this essay focuses instead primarily on Luther’s anti-Judaism during his final decade of life. 5. For the Judenschriften, see esp. Kaufmann, Luther’s Jews; idem., Luthers “Judenschriften”: ein Beitrag zu ihrer historischen Kontextualisierung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); Heiko Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); Mark U. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 115–142; Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: 36 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

Sixteenth-Century Christian-Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1983), 195–211. For Luther as a translator see Heinz Bluhm, Martin Luther: Creative Translator (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1965); Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, trans. Eric W. and Ruth C. Gritsch, ed. Victor I. Gruhn (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969) [German original, 1948], 219–246; Siegfried Raeder, “The Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work of Martin Luther,” in Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, Vol 2: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Magne Saebø and Michael Fishbane (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 363–406 (esp. 395–406); Siegfried Raeder, “Voraussetzungen und Methode von Luthers Bibelübersetzung,” in Geist und Geschichte der Reformation. Festgabe Hanns Rückert zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1966), 152–178; Christoph Burger, “Luther’s Thought Took Shape in Translation of Scripture and Hymns,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomír Batka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 481–88; Robert Kolb, Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and Its Scripture-Centered Proclamation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Aca- demic, 2016), 209–238 (esp. 209–216). 6. The major revisions were done in 1539–1541, though further revised editions of the German Bible were published in 1543, 1545, and just after Luther’s death in 1546. 7. The chapter “Luther’s Christian Translation of the Old Testament” is pp. 219–246 of Luther and the Old Testament, and provides the inspiration for the title of this present study. Bornkamm notes his inattention to translational revisions on pg. 220, n. 2. Further, Born- kamm worked by comparing Luther’s translation to the supposedly “literal” translations of German biblical scholars (e.g. Bernhard Duhm, Emil Kautzsch), which often had the effect of judging Luther by the standards of 20th century biblical scholarship (a criticism also leveled by Raeder, “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work,” 405). In contrast, I find it more fruitful to compare Luther to the Hebrew text he worked from as well as the translations of his contemporaries, in order to show Luther’s own uniqueness within the context of his own day. 8. For the former, see Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 128–136; Thomas Kaufmann, Luther’s Jews, 94–124; Stephen G. Burnett, “Reassessing the ‘Basel-Wittenberg Conflict’: Dimensions of the Reformation-Era Discussion of Hebrew Scholarship,” in Hebraica Veri- tas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulsen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004),” 193; John T. Slotemaker, “The Trinitarian House of David: Martin Luther’s Anti-Jewish Exegesis of 2 Samuel 23:1–7,” Harvard Theological Review 104, no. 2 (2011): 233–54. For the latter see Mickey Mattox, “From Faith to the Text and Back Again: Martin Luther on the Trinity in the Old Testament,” Pro Ecclesia 15, no. 3 (2006): 281–303; Christine Helmer, “Luther’s Trinitarian Hermeneutic and the Old Testament,” Modern Theology 18, no. 1 (2002): 49–73; Kenneth Hagen, “Luther’s So-Called Judenschriften: A Genre Approach,” Archiv für Reforma- tionsgeschichte 90 (1999): 130–58. 9. LW 15:267; WA 54:29. 10. LW 15:270; WA 54:30–31. 11. WA Tr 5, no. 5533, as translated in W.J. Kooiman, Luther and the Bible, trans. J. Schmidt (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), 187–88, emphasis added. This entry is dated by the Weimar editors to the fall of 1542. 12. For this summary of Luther’s method of biblical translation see Kolb, Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God, 214, citing WA Tr 4:554 (no. 4857). LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 37

13. Compare the following comments: “Thus we see that philologists who are nothing but philologists and have no knowledge of theological matters have their perplexing difficulties with such passages and torture not only Scripture but also themselves and their hearers. First the meaning should be established in such a manner that it is everywhere in agreement, and then philology should be brought into play. But the rabbis do the opposite. For this reason I regret that our teachers and holy fathers have, for the most part, followed their lead” (LW 1:298; WA 42:219, emphasis added); “Grammar is necessary and proper, but it ought not govern the subject matter and should instead serve it” (WA 42:599.6–8; LW 3:70–71, here via Kolb, Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God, 90). Luther’s propensity to give priority to a text’s res over its verba is also noted in Raeder, “Exegetical and Her- meneutical Work,” 401, 403. 14. Raeder, “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work,” 403. 15. LWD focuses on 2 Sam 23:1–7 especially in LW 15:270–277, 345–352; WA 54:30– 37, 94–100. 16. G. Bebermeyer helpfully notes that the editions of the Luther Bible in the 1540s make significant changes to the translation of 2 Sam 23:1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. A glimpse at his charts provides a useful index to the extent of Luther’s late revisions to the Bible. See G. Beber- meyer, “Die Schlussgestalt der Lutherbibel,” Die Lutherbibel: Festschrift zum vierhundertjähri- gen Jubiläum der Lutherbibel (1934): 48–65 (Changes to 2 Sam 23 noted on p. 63). 17. In interpreting 2 Sam 23:1–7 as a messianic prophecy, Luther took a new interpretive approach to this particular text, but it was an approach which lined up with the common Christian approach to see prophecies of David’s eternal lineage as prophecies of Christ. Nicholas of Lyra, for example, interpreted Jer 23:5–8 in this way. For this, see Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Readings of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 96–97. 18. Martin Luther, Das Ander teyl des alten testaments (Wittenberg, 1524). 19. “Es sprach David, der Son Jsai, Es sprach der man der zum gesalbeten Gottis Jacob auffgericht ist.” WA DB 9I:380. ַהֶגֶּבר ֻהַקם ָעל ְמִֹשיַח ֱאלֵֹהי ַיֲעקֹב וְּנִעים ְזִמרֹות ִיְשָֹרֵאל :The Hebrew of 2 Sam 23:1 reads .20 ְנֻאם ָדִּוד ֶּבן־ִיַׁשי וְּנֻאם 21. Reuchlin, Principium libri Ioannis Reuchlin . . . de rudementis hebraicis (Profzheim: Thomas .ad. loc ,” ָ מ ׁ ִש י ַח“ ,(Anshelm, 1506 22. “Dixit vir cui constitutus erat de christo dei iacob. egregi psaltes isrl.” 2 Sam 23:1 in Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria Walafridi Strabonis aliorumque et interlineari Anselmi Laudun- ensis et cum postillis ac moralitatibus Nicolai de Lyra et expositionibus Guillelmi Britonis in omnes prologos S. Hieronymi et additionibus Pauli Burgensis replicisque Matthiae Doering (Basel: Johann Froben and Johann Petri de Langendorff, 1498). 23. The committee’s notes on this verse can be found in WA DB 3:410–411. 24. “Moses sets up the kingdom of the law at Mount Sinai with thunder, clouds, light- ning, and terror. But this kingdom will be lovely, as it is in the spring when it has rained and the sun shines in the morning.” Annotation on 2 Sam 23:4. WA DB 9I:381 25. “In fine vitae suae spiritum dei per se locutum dicit, ut videas quo loco habeas eius psalmos. de quibus Christus dicit, oportet impleri quae scripta sunt in lege & prophetis & psalmis de me [Luke 24].” Bugenhagen then continues, “Et [David] praeterea laudat gratuitam dei erga se misericordiam & contra dei contemptores prophetat, suum scilicet regnum stabile futurum & aduersariorum regnum periturum.” Johannes Bugenhagen, 38 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

Ioannis Bugenhagii Pomerani annotationes ab ipso iam emissae. In Deuteronomium. In Samuelem prophetam, id est duos libros Regum. Ab eodem praeterae conciliata ex Evangelistis historia passi Christi & glorificati, cum annotationibus. Indice adiecto (Basileae: Adam Petri, 1524), 355. 26. “Die Jüden meineten ir Reich were so gewis und sie sessen so feste das unmüglich were sie zu verderben, Weil sie Gottes volck, reich, Stifft und, fur allen beiden, Gottes eigenthum weren, Rom 9. welchen gehöret die Kindschafft die Herrligkeit, der Bund etc. Aber weil sie wider Got stritten / heisst es. Deposuit potentes de sede etc.” Annotation of 2 Sam 23:7. WA DB 9I:381. 27. “Es sprach David, der Son Jsai, Es sprach der man, der von dem Messia des Gottes Jacob versichert ist.” WA 54:94. 28. Lyra had noted the passage in Gen 49:10 in his comments on this verse, while also highlighting the fact that the Chaldean translation (the Targum) interpreted the verse messianically. A messianic interpretation of Gen 49:10, which had a long interpretive history going back to early in the patristic period, was already given by Luther in 1523 in That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew. See LW 45:213. My thanks to this article’s anonymous reviewer for pointing out that citation. 29. LW 15:273; WA 54:33. 30. Grimm’s gives the first definition of versichern as “1) etwas in den objectiven zustand des sicher seins versetzen; bewirken, dasz es vor äuszeren angriffen, gefährdung, schädigung geschützt ist: premunire, versichern.” The third definition is, “3)durch versprechen, verpflichtung, rechtliche bindung sicher machen, fest, sicher stellen; besonders wenn das wort im sinne von ‘einem sicherheit gewähren’ auf personen bezogen wird, kann die vorstellung des schützens hervortreten.” “Versichern” in Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, accessed April 26, 2018, http:// woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/. 31. In 2 Sam 23:1 the form of qûm is a third-person masculine singular in the Hophal tense, which denotes a causative passive. Thus David here “is established,” with the implied subject of the action being, of course, God himself. 32. I have italicized the translations of qûm. Reuchlin’s dictionary gives the translation of this term solely as surrexit (“raised, lifted”). Reuchlin, Dictionarium Hebraicum (1506), 2:465. For the translations here, see Münster, Hebraica Biblia, I:304v; Pagninus, Biblia Veteris ac Novi Testamenti . . . tum verò in primis S. Pagnini ac Fr. Vatabli opera ita ex Hebraeis Graecisq[ue] fontibus expressa . . . (Basel: 1564), 227. 33. LW 15:272; WA 54:32. 34. The 1545 Luther Bible rendered Hebrews 11:1, “Es ist aber der Glaube, eine gewisse zuuersicht, des, das man hoffet.” Heb 11:1, in Martin Luther, Biblia: das ist, die gantze heilige Schrifft Deudsch (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1545). While Luther did believe in a connection between these two passages, nothing from the LXX of 2 Sam 23:1 and the Greek text of Heb 11:1 supports such a connection. 35. For the overlap here of Luther’s translation with his newfound theology of this verse as David being assured of the Messiah, see William M. Marsh, Martin Luther on Read- ing the Bible as Christian Scripture: The Messiah in Luther’s Biblical Hermeneutic and Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017), 176. 36. Luther addresses this passage in LW 15:319–323; WA 54:71–75. This is briefly addressed in Raeder, “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work,” 404. 37. Martin Luther, Das Allte Testament deutsch (Wittenberg, 1523), Gen 4:1; WA DB 8:46. Luther rendered the Tetragrammaton in his Bibles with HERR in all capitals. I have followed conventional modern English style in rendering the Tetragrammaton as Lord. LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 39

38. The Vulgate translated the broader phrase as “possedi hominem per deum.” 39. Münster translated “acquisiui virum a domino” (Hebraica Biblia I:4r ) while Pagninus and the later Tremellius/Junius Bible both translated with the equivalent “acquisiui virum a Jehova” (Biblia Veteris . . . , 3 [see n. 32 for full citation]). Here I have consulted Immanuel Tremmelius and Franciscus Junius, Testamenti Veteris Biblia Sacra sive Libri Canonici, Priscae Iudaeorum ecclesiae a deo traditi, Latini recens ex Hebraeo facti, brevibusque Scholiis illustrati ab Immanuele Tremellio & Francisco Junio (London: Henricus Middletonus, 1580). 40. LW 1:242; WA 42:179. 41. “Kain heisst, das man krieget odder uberkompt. Heva aber meinete, er solt der same sein, da der HERR von gesagt hatte, das er der Schlangen Kopff zutretten wurde.” WA DB 8:46–47. This comment was reprinted, with only slight variations in spelling, in the 1540, 15411 and 15432 editions of the Luther Bible. 42. Interestingly, the notes from the 1539–41 Bible revisions show evidence that Luther and his translation committee had begun to give Gen 4:1 a Christological interpretation. This, however, did not show up in the biblical text itself until after LWD. See WA DB 3:173–174. 43. LW 15:319; WA 54:73. The former, as given above, was the translation of the Vul- gate, while the latter is the German form of the translation of Münster and Pagninus. 44. LW 15:321; WA 54:73. Translation here altered from that given in LW. The German is “die warheit der sprachen.” 45. “Ich habe den Man den HERRN.” LW 15:319; WA 54:71. 46. “Nobody had translated Eve’s words in this way before Luther.” Raeder, “Exeget- ical and Hermeneutical Work,” 404. 47. LW 15:343–44; WA 54:92–93. 48. Of course, Luther was not alone among Christian contemporaries in distrusting rabbinical commentaries. Even Sebastian Münster cautioned that he only used the rabbis “with discretion.” See Stephen G. Burnett, “Sebastian Münster and Jewish Interpretation of Genesis in His Hebraica Biblia (1534–35): Selection and Mediation of Jewish Insight for Christian Purposes,” in Auslegung Und Hermeneutik Der Bibel in Der Reformationszeit, ed. Christine Christ-von Wedel and Sven Grosse, Historia Hermeneutica Series Studia 14 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 396. However, it would be difficult to find a sixteenth-century Christian Hebraist who did not make statements to that effect. The point here is that Luther carried this distrust much farther in practice than Münster and many other Christian Hebraists, whose works show a much more significant engagement with rabbinical writings. 49. The 1545 marginal annotation reads, “God be praised. I have the Lord, the man, the seed who is to crush the head of Satan or the serpent. He will do this.” WA DB 8:47. 50. WA DB 8:46. 51. Helpful information on Rörer can be found in LW 75:477–479 and the literature cited there. 52. Bebermeyer, “Die Schlussgestalt.” See also Koimann, Luther and the Bible, 184–85 and the literature cited there. 53. The first version of the Luther Bible which I have found to change the translation is the 1912 ed. which reads, “Ich habe einen Mann gewonnen mit dem HERRN.” Starting with the 1984 revision and continuing to the present, the text reads, “Ich habe einen Mann gewonnen mithilfe des HERRN.” 54. 2 Sam 7:14 is quoted in Heb 1:5, and the passage as a whole is arguably alluded to in a number of other NT texts including Luke 1:32–33 and Acts 13:23. 40 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

55. E.g. in On the Jews and Their Lies Luther referenced 2 Sam 7 along with 1 Chron 17 to prove the perpetuity of the Davidic line, as previously promised in the famous ‘Shiloh’ passage of Gen 49:10. LW 47:196–199. 56. “Und hast mich HERR Gott angesehen oben erab wie ein mensch den andern.” 1 Chron 17:17 (18:17 in Luther Bibles, following the Hebrew numbering over the Greek), WA DB 9II:148. “Oben erab” in the Luther Bible is a strange construction but always bears the meaning of “from above.” See the uses of it in Joshua 3:13 (WA DB 9/I:11) and John 19:11 (WA DB 6:403). The biblical parallel text in 2 Sam 7:19 is briefly commented upon in Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, 227. ָהָאָדם ַה ּ .ַמ ֲע ָל ה יהוה ֱאלִֹהים :The Hebrew text of the relevant portion of the verse reads .57 .וְרִאיַתִני ְּכתֹור 58. For example, after suggesting a number of textual emendations to the verse, Ralph W. Klein admits, “The text and meaning are very uncertain” (1 Chronicles, ed. Thomas Krüger, Hermeneia [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006], 373). Similarly, Peter B. Dirksen writes, “The Masoretic text does not admit of a meaningful translation” and then proceeds to give his own translation “in all uncertainty” (1 Chronicles, trans. Anthony P. Runia, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament [Leuven: Peeters, 2005], 237). 59. The Vulgate translated, “fecisti me spectabilem super omnes homines Domine.” Münster reads, “aspexisti me iuxta praestantiam hominis alicuius magni domine deus,” while Pagninus rendered it, “vidisti me iuxta dispositionem hominis excellentis, o Jehova Deus.” 60. WA DB 3:452. These 1539–41 revision protocols actually already suggested the LWD translation (“und du hast angesehen Mich, als in der gestalt eines Menschen der in der hohe Gotte der HERR ist”), written at 1 Chron 17:17 in Rörer’s hand. Luther then wrote additional comments in the margin, pointing to 2 Sam 7 where God acts “as one friend with another” (sicut amicus cum amico). He then interpreted the obscure Hebrew in 2 Sam 7:19 as follows: “by the custom of man (ּתוַֹרת ָהָאָדם) ”phrase “custom of man (more hominis) he [the author] signifies the astounding excellence of God, for when he acts with humankind he does not do so as God but empties himself as a man—Phil 2.” While Luther’s committee therefore already had the new translation of 1 Chron 17:17 in mind during their 1539–41 revisions, the Weimar editors note that it was not placed into Luther Bibles until 1543. 61. “Du hast angesehen mich, als in der gestalt eines Menschen, der in der Hoech Gott der HERR ist.” WA 54:44. 62. LW 15:286; WA 54:55. Translation slightly altered from LW. .בתור to כתור To arrive at his translation Luther here would have likely emended .63 , , 64. The LXX reads: και` επειδές̃ με ω‛ ς ‛όρασις ανθρώπου και` ‛ύψωσάς με, κύριε ο‛ θεός. Luther’s emendation agrees with the as (ω‛ ς) of the LXX. ,תור Sebastian Münster’s Hebrew dictionary listed a number of definitions for .65 none of which align with Luther’s translation, but the closest of which to Luther’s gestalt is ornamentum (“line, feature”). Sebastian Münster, Dictionarium Hebraicum, nunc primum aeditum & typis excusum, Adiectis Chaldaicis vocabulis non parum multis (Basel: Froben, 1523), 514. The dictionary contained in Reuchlin’s 1506 De Rudimentis Hebraicis does not contain an entry for the word at all. .as ‛όρασις (“vision, appearance”). Luther’s gestalt follows this תור The LXX renders .66 gives the following example: “And you have looked at תור Forster’s definition of .67 me according to the rank of a man, O Lord God” (“1 Paral. 17. Et vidisti me secundum ordinem LUTHER’S MESSIANIC TRANSLATIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 41 hominis Iehova deus”). Johannes Forster, Dictionarium Hebraicum Novum, non ex Rabinorum Commentis, nec nostratium Doctorum stulta imitatione descriptum, sed ex ipsis thesauris sacrorum Bibliorum, & eorundem accurata locorum collatione depromptum, cum phrasibus Scripturae Veteris & Novi Testamenti diligenter annotatis (Basel: Johannes Froben, 1557), 902. Cf. ibid., pg. 352. 68. The LXX ‛ύψωσάς με (“you have exalted me”) is likely a gloss or attempted would need to be emended to המעלה emendation. To reach such a reading the Hebrew .This is a substantial change .תעלני to be a participle beginning a relative ַהַּמֲעָלה Luther seemingly took the Hebrew .69 whereas others had taken it as an adjective ,(יהוה ֱאלִֹהים) ”clause which modified “Lord God The vowels in Hebrew would have to be changed in order to .(ָהָאָדם) ”modifying “man make this meaning possible. 70. Brooks Schramm, trans. and ed., “On the Schem Hamphoras and On the Lineage of Christ,” in The Annotated Luther, Vol. 5: Christian Life in the World, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 663. 71. For a contemporary discussion of the development of the various systems of vowel pointing, see Emmanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 39–47. For early modern debates over the antiquity of the vowel points, which slightly follow the time of Luther, see Richard Muller, “The Debate over the Vowel Points and the Crisis in Orthodox Hermeneutics,” in idem., After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 146–55. 72. An excellent example of this is Luther’s comments on Gen 47:31. See LW 8:141–43. 73. WA DB 3:452. For the way in which Georg Rörer placed translations from LWD into the Luther Bible, see WA DB 9II: xxxiii–xxxvi. 74. The full annotation reads: “Das ist, Nicht meine Person, sondern meines bluts, Nachkomen, scilicet in futurum et longinquum, der ein solcher Mensch sein wird, der in Höhe Gott der HERR ist. Psal. 89. Wer kan gleich Gotte sein, unter den kindern Gottes. Er ist auch Gottes kind, Aber weit uber andere Gottes kinder, als der selbs auch Gott ist.” WA DB 9II:149. 75. Burger, “Luther’s Thought Took Shape in Translation of Scripture and Hymns,” 484. 76. Raeder, “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work,” 401. 77. The author thanks the anonymous reviewers of the first version of this article, whose comments and suggestions were very helpful.