Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

55 results

Page 1 of 3

  • 26 - The problem of ‘spiritual discipline’: Apocryphal books among sixteenth-century leaders of the Lutheran churches

  • from PART IV - THE BIBLE IN THE BROADER CULTURE
  • Edited by Euan Cameron, Union Theological Seminary, New York
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of the Bible
    Published online:
    05 August 2016
    Print publication:
    01 September 2016, pp 603-619

  • Summary

    The affirmation that by Scripture alone (sola scriptura) one could gain access to all the truth that God desired to reveal to humanity made Martin Luther the more scrupulous in defining the canon of sacred texts upon which to base this foundational principle. As soon as he began translating the Old Testament he consigned the contents of the Catholic Apocrypha to a status more clearly separate from the pure Word of God than it had occupied in the eyes of Holy Mother Church – which from ancient times had itself recognised the lesser legitimacy of the books that made it up. The reformer nonetheless regarded these books – Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Tobias (Tobit), Jesus Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, Esther and Susanna (Daniel and Susanna) – as worthy of respect. He included them in his complete German Bible and composed introductions to some of them. In the complete Bible of 1534 the Apocrypha appeared as an independently paginated section entitled ‘Apocrypha. Das sind Bücher, so nicht der heiligen Schrifft gleich gehalten, vnd doch nützlich vnd gut zu lesen sind’. Other full and partial editions followed from presses in the German-speaking world, in both high and low linguistic forms.

    Within the ambit of Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud (1482–1542) saw to press his first translation of the entire Apocrypha in 1529. The title was initially simply descriptive, but the Strasbourg edition of the following year contained an additional valuation of the content: Apochrypha: Biblical Books that, Although the Ancients Did Not Count Them as Scripture, Are Nevertheless Worthy, Useful, and in Frequent Use. Whether in Wittenberg or Zurich, the founding divines regarded the exhortations of certain apocryphal books in particular as essential to the cultivation of devotion and ethical behaviour. The one to which they referred most often is Ecclesiasticus, Jesus Sirach. The vd 16 lists, under Biblia, thirty-seven Latin and Latin-and-Hebrew editions and eighty-seven High and Low German editions, far more than the publications of all the other apocryphal books taken together. Church leaders recommended it to Latinate men at the higher end of the social spectrum, and they included it in vernacular translation in their advice to those hoped-for domestic ‘priests’, the heads of households; to pastors as a topic for preaching; and to schoolmasters and -mistresses for the inculcation of boys of a young age and girls of any age.

Luther on Women
  • A Sourcebook
  • Edited and translated by Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    13 March 2003
  • Martin Luther contributed extensively to the sixteenth century 'debate about women' with his writings on women and related subjects such as marriage, the family and sexuality. In this volume, Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Susan Karant-Nunn bring together a vast selection of these works, translating many into English for the first time. They include sermons, lectures, pamphlets, polemic writings, letters and some informal 'table talk' recorded by his followers. The book is arranged into chapters on Biblical women, marriage, sexuality, childbirth and witchcraft, as well as on Luther's relations with his wife and other contemporary women. The editors, both internationally-known scholars on Reformation and women, provide a general introduction to each chapter, and Luther's own colourful words fuel both sides of the debate about whether the Protestant Reformation was beneficial or detrimental to women. This collection will make a wide range of Luther's works accessible to English-speaking scholars, students and general readers.

Page 1 of 3