Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/117

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Luther on the Wartburg
73

state with a reasonable degree of definiteness. Only later he became acquainted with it, and then, as we can see now, in his revisions and corrections he occasionally supplanted his own word with one from it.

Keyssner62 had already before Walther compared the three versions of the Psalters from 1524, 1528 and 1531 with each other, and in this way made interesting discoveries as to Luther's translatory activities. Kawerau says concerning this: "Keyssner shows how Luther, in his sympathy for rhythm in language, fairly searches for an expression at the beginning and end of a Psalm, that recommends itself because of its depth of meaning and euphony. He shows how Luther, with his intuitive sense for the right term, chooses from the synonyms that are at his fingertips, how he translates the alien illustrations of the Oriental so that they are understood by the German mind or how he entirely discards them, in order to create the Bible for the Germans."

Before Luther began with the translation of the New Testament he completed the first parts of his Epistle and Gospel Postil. G. Bossert and Koehler64 have treated of the origin of this Wartburg Postil in thoroughgoing investigations; later on Koehler edited it as a part of the Weimar Edition in exemplary fashion (Vol. X, i). In Vol. X, 2, he will give us a valuable introduction.

To the time of Luther's sojourn at the Wartburg also belongs his writing on the vows of the monks. Scheel 64 not only edited this work in German, as has been stated before, but he also furnished for it a very careful commentary, which played great havoc with the contentions of Denifle against Luther, based on this work of Luther.

So much of that which we know from Luther's Wartburg sojourn explains that Luther was by no means