A Letter on Luther's Wartburg Bible
                               Symposium Results
                            from Dr. Eberhard Zwink
                               24 February 1997


 Dear friends, thanks to Hans Rollmann to have translated an abridged
 Press Notice on the results of our symposium we held February 20th to
 22nd in Stuttgart. Ten experts met invited by the Director of the
 Wuerttemberg State Library Stuttgart and by the church historian Prof. Dr. 
 Martin Brecht well known as a Luther biographer (he wrote a three volume
 biography in the eighties). 

 The above translated note is to amplify in so far as we got a positive
 result at all: 

 The writer of the marginals was only one and he was obviously a former
 monk being in touch with the problems of marrige and the other monastic
 vows. Perhaps one can isolate some texts never published before and
 coming from the vicinity of Luther or the atmosphere of Wittenberg. The
 result is open. Besides, there are some handwritten parts which are very
 hard to be read on the last leaf which is damaged and paled. 
 
 The purpose of this curious book could not be discovered exactly. Two
 opinions remained: The first that the book with its older remarks is a kind
 of protocol for the first translation during the summer 1522, the other
 that a private protestant theologue perpared his own Latin Bible in the
 language of whom he was used to write, to speech and even to think. For
 both opinions there are arguments. 
 
 Each of the participiants agreed that Latin was the basic language in
 which scholars communicated with one another and that the German
 vernacular language was growing up, was developping in these times by
 and after Luther's translation; ie. Latin was a necessary help, it was a
 _bridge_ between the Original Greek and Hebrew and the vernacular
 German. 

 Eberhard Zwink 
 Head of the Bible Collection
 Wuerttemberg State Library 
 Stuttgart

       __________________________________________________________________
         This text released by Dr. Eberhard Zwink was edited for Project
         Wittenberg by Cindy A. Beesley. Dr. Zwink gives his permission
        to freely distribute, copy or print this text. Please direct any
             comments or suggestions to: Rev. Robert E. Smith of the
               Walther Library at Concordia Theological Seminary.

                           E-mail: bob_smith@ctsfw.edu

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