A revised edition of Reformer’s translation ranked among 2022 bestsellers.
Only 4 percent of Germans say they read the Bible every day, according to a poll conducted by Insa-Consulere and the German Christian news agency IDEA. A full 70 percent say they never read it at all.
And yet in 2022—500 years after its initial publication—Martin Luther’s German translation of the Scripture was a bestseller once again. The German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart, sold 130,000 copies last year.
This could, perhaps, presage a resurgence of Bible reading, but Christoph Rösel, the Bible society’s general secretary, would be surprised if that’s the case. It’s more likely, he said, that people care about the historic importance of the Bible for German language and literature. They buy it out of curiosity and respect.
“It is and will remain a classic,” he said. “Our understanding of the world and nature, our art, literature and music, our annual holidays have all been shaped by Luther’s Bible and the religious practice derived from it over the centuries.”
Just don’t ask too many questions about what that Bible says.
“People may not know it much,” Rösel explains, “beyond the parts they already have in their head.”
The German language is peppered with idioms from Luther’s translation, like “better an end with horror than a horror without end” (Ps. 73:18–19) and “growing with his pounds” (Luke 19:11–27). Every day, people use words developed by the 16th-century Reformer to express the holy text in workable, common language—vocabulary like bloodhound, baptism of fire, and heart’s content.
And the language itself owes a debt to Luther.
“Luther’s …
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