Designing Bibles



Today we’re in Coburg, where Luther lived for six months in 1530 dur­ing the Diet of Augsburg—his friends wouldn’t let him attend, wor­ried for his safety—and worked on his trans­la­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment while hang­ing around the cas­tle. (If you’re con­fused and think­ing that I should’ve said the Wart­burg rather than the Coburg cas­tle was where he trans­lated the Bible, you’re right—but he was there ear­lier, in 1521–22, work­ing on the New Testament.)

It’s well-known that Luther trans­lated the Bible into Ger­man, and it’s often thought that he was the first one to do so. But that’s not true at all. In fact, there were 17—that’s right, 17—other trans­la­tions of the Bible into Ger­man before Luther’s!

The real­ity  is that the West­ern Church of the time did not for­bid the trans­la­tion of Scrip­ture, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief. In fact, Luther’s con­tem­po­rary, the Mex­i­can bishop Juan Zumár­raga, autho­rized his own Fran­cis­can order to trans­late the Bible into the indige­nous tongues of the Native Americans.

But sev­eral things are dif­fer­ent about Luther’s Bible. First of all, it was trans­lated from Greek and Hebrew, not from the autho­rized Latin Vul­gate, as were most of its pre­de­ces­sors. But even this isn’t the most impor­tant thing. The most impor­tant aspect of Luther’s Bible was that it was meant to be accessible—accessible by being read­able, and by being inex­pen­sive! Yes, price mattered!

Gutenberg’s Bible was the first book printed in the West using mov­able type. But while the tech­nol­ogy was new, the social sys­tem was still old. We have in the Guten­berg Bible a clas­sic prod­uct designed for the nou­veaux riches. His Bible promised to up-and-coming classes the same access to writ­ten cul­ture afforded pre­vi­ously only by eccle­si­as­tics and nobility.

We can see that in even in its style. Gutenberg’s work left the intial let­ters unprinted with space left for illu­mi­na­tion. His printed Bible was meant to sim­u­late the great illu­mi­nated Bibles owned by the nobil­ity and rich monas­ter­ies, but for a bargain-basement price. That’s not to say they were cheap. Gutenberg’s Bible would have cost the aver­age worker a for­tune. It was still a pres­tige piece, not meant for study but to dec­o­rate the col­lec­tions of those who wished to be iden­ti­fied with book culture.

What we see in Luther’s work is an entirely dif­fer­ent kind of thing. Here was a whole Bible meant for study, for read­ing. It was designed to be printed en masse, to be bought and dis­trib­uted to many peo­ple below the nobil­ity, used in churches and schools for cat­e­ch­esis. We can see the dif­fer­ence in the design. Older Bibles were large, folio-sized objects, printed in small num­bers. Luther’s was was small, mass-produced, and affordable.

Freida Sullivan says:
August 26, 2010 at 3:25 am
I encour­age you both to con­tinue with God’s Help!! Freida Sullivan
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Jason says:
August 26, 2010 at 5:48 am
Wow, sounds like Mar­tin Luther was the Henry Ford of bibles.….Enjoying your blog, keep it up.
Los Ange­les, Ca.
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Terry Stettler says:
August 27, 2010 at 4:20 am
Excel­lent arti­cle. The value of the print­ing press to enlight­en­ment can­not be overestimated.
Thank you.
Terry Stet­tler
Eas­ton, Pennsylvania
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