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72 Dietenberger. The Catholic Church wished at the same time to hide from view the unwelcome yet absolute truth that the Catholic Bibles of the i6th century by Emser and Dietenberger are only thinly-veiled copies of Luther's translation made to conform to the Vulgata; it could even contend that this "deadly parallel" between the Catholic Bibles and Luther's translation was not a sign of their dependency upon Luther, but rather the proof that they had used the same source as Luther, namely, the German Bible of the Middle Ages.

This beautiful theory was then so thoroughly exploded by W. Walther62 that we can hardly understand how an American church historian, who demands to be taken at face value and who contends that he can give an entirely different meaning to the Reformation by reason of his completely exhaustive study of all possible sources, dares to revive once more this old question in almost childish fashion.63 Either he never made the acquaintance of Walther's production or he did not let its truth sink in deeply enough. For Walther shows how just in all those places, where the use of the mediaeval Bible through Luther must have shown itself, granted that Luther used it at all, — for example, in difficult passages, — that just there entirely different translations are to be found, different not only as to the words used, but also as to the method of translation in respect to style as well as to syntax. Parallels only show themselves there where the renderings — especially in the historical books — might, because of their nature, be alike, without being copied. If Luther really was acquainted with the Bible of the Middle Ages, he did not use it. During the first phase of his translation work, and the one that gave the work its characteristics, he was not acquainted with it, as we can