Luther as Bible Forger, reply to Samuel Garcia

Q

Wikipedia claims that a number of Bible translations into German were printed prior to Martin Luther's birth, some nearly 60 years before the Protestant reformation. If this is true, then why was Luther's Bible so influential?
https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-claims-that-a-number-of-Bible-translations-into-German-were-printed-prior-to-Martin-Luthers-birth-some-nearly-60-years-before-the-Protestant-reformation-If-this-is-true-then-why-was-Luthers-Bible-so/answer/Samuel-Garcia-4

Samuel Garcia

February 26

@baptistmemes on Instagram, High Street Baptist Church member/techie

Many English translations were made before the King James. Yet the King James is the most influential book of all time. Why? Don't assume that earlier means better. In fact, the Bible talks about the words of the LORD being purified seven times. That's a process, not a one time deal. (By sheer coincidence or supernatural working, the King James is the seventh English translation.)

So it does apply to Luther's translation. It's not always the first, but the latter. Latter translations done correctly can purify the text for their present populations. This quality is hard to quantify, but many instinctively and intuitively are attracted to the correct words of God for a language, even if they aren't dogmatically so.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

February 26

Luther’s translation did NOT purify the text, on the contrary he made translation errors very notable and which he defended by appealing to idiomatic usage of German or meaning - not actual words.

Samuel Garcia

21h ago

You’re assuming what he did was wrong.
Purification is done by the furnace of the earth, that is, the context of its current time, not some past time.

People say translations make the Bible “lose the force of the original Greek!” yet never stop to think whether God wanted scripture to be force of its translated language, ie the full force of the English (or in Luther’s case, German). And since He is an Eternally Now God, actually, He does.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

22m ago

Luther claimed - very dishonestly - that in the context of Luke 1:28 and Romans 3:28 by taking away and adding was simply making it more German.

He wasn’t.

In Romans 3:28, faith as justification is affirmed, works of the - old - law are denied, leaving the rest aside, but Luther’s translation limits justification to faith “alone” (his addition) and thereby making all the rest part of the denial, and “works of the law” just becomes and example.

With the Blessed Virgin, he claimed that “full of grace” is not German, but for some reason, he did not have this reticence with John 1:14 or Acts 6:8.

When the same phrase is spoken TO Her, it is just a greeting. When it is spoken OF either Jesus (above Her) or Stephen (below Her), it cannot be a greeting, and he doesn’t care a whit if it is good colloquial German or not.

In other words, he was a perfect hypocrite.

He was also a promoter of killing Anabaptists, if you read his work about Schwärmgeister (btw, since these were also violent Commies, he may have had a point, but he was not for clemency once they were caught and tried).