Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/190

132 page 170 we also read: "It would be difficult in any case to believe that a complete translation of the entire New Testament could have been made by a man of Luther's limited attainment in Greek, and with the imperfect apparatus that he possessed in the short space of ten weeks. . . . Any minister to-day who has had a Greek course of a college and seminary is a far better scholar than Luther. Let such a man, if he thinks Luther's achievement possible, attempt the accurate translation of a single chapter of the New Testament — such a translation as he would be willing to print under his own name — and multiply the time consumed by the 260 chapters. He will be speedily convinced that the feat attributed to Luther is an impossible one." And just this we pronounce childish argumentation. We could call attention to the fact that R. P. Olivetan completed his French translation of the entire Bible, printed 1536, in one year; that Luther finished his writing against Sylvester Prierias, that in Walch's edition fills 80 columns, in two days; that Luther was in fact a linguistic genius; that an educated man in the thirties acquires a dead language much faster and more thoroughly than a youth from 16 to 20, and this all the more, the dearer and more valuable, yes, even decisive for his whole life, the contents of a book written in that language is to him; that Luther since 1519 had been a careful reader of Homer, writing many marginal notes into the copy which Melanchthon had presented to him (this copy is extant at London, cf. Pr. Smith, Notes from English libraries, Zeitschr. f. Kirchengesch. 32, pp. 111-115; compare also: O. G. Schmidt, Luther's Bekanntschaft mit den alten Klassikern, 1883). We also could emphasize the important fact that Luther for more than ten years was well versed in the contents of the New Testament through the Vulgata. But aside from this we would like to ask Vedder whether he has forgotten that Luther, as can be proved, since 1516 used the Greek original in the preparation of his lectures, and certainly not seldom also when he prepared his sermons, and that it more and more became the foundation for his whole theological work; that he, before his stay at the Wartburg, had treated the Epistle to the Romans, Hebrews, Galatians, perhaps also the Epistle to Titus and the first to the Corinthians in lectures, the Epistle to the Galatians beside this also in a voluminous commentary; in short, that