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There are statues of Martin Luther around the world.
And in nearly all of them, Luther is represented as an imposing figure,
dressed in his academic robes and always with a Bible in his hand.
Luther had a profound and intimate relationship with
the text of Scripture which he cherished above all other books.
If we had to point to only one, and the most important achievement of
Luther's life and work, it would be that he made the Bible into a book
that is read around the world and not only by elite educated men.
Luther grew up at a time when almost no one read the Bible.
This is hard for us to imagine today when thanks to the internet,
all texts are available all the time.
But in Luther's day, the Bible existed in a Latin translation called the Vulgate.
Most people could not read Latin however and the Catholic church
strictly prohibited translations into the modern European languages.
Despite this, so great was people's hunger to read the Bible that occasionally
fragments of it were translated usually at great risk of persecution and even death.
In the fourteenth century, for example, an Englishman named John Wycliffe inspired
a movement to translate the Bible into English.
In time, the Wycliffe inspired translation will be responsible for
about 80% of the King James version published after the Reformation.
But in Wycliffe's own time, Catholic authorities had him arrested and
his translation confiscated and destroyed.
In the 15th century, a group of Christians calling themselves Law Lords were
burnt at the stake by the authorities just for
having a translation of pieces of Saint Peter’s epistles from the New Testament.
What was so frightening about ordinary people reading the Bible?
Catholic authorities were afraid that uneducated people would come up with
strange and possibly dangerous ideas when they tried to understand some of the more
mysterious passages in the sacred text.
Luther was aware of this risk, but
he also believed that to put the Bible in the hands of the ordinary
Christians was to give them a powerful tool to think for themselves.
In particular to think for themselves about religion and to discover for
themselves the truth about Christ.
Luther not only translated the Bible from its original languages into German,
he also made sure that those translations were published and made widely available.
As a result, for the first time in Christian history,
everyone could read the Bible.
The common person on the street, the woman in the marketplace,
the child at school, as well as religious authorities.
Making the Bible accessible like this in ordinary language completely
transformed German culture as well as the German language.
It also shaped how people approach the Bible today.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Luther's translation and dissemination
of the Bible changed everything about the way that people read, think, and act.
In this first unit, we will learn about Martin Luther's personal and intellectual
relationship with the Bible and about how that relationship ignited the reformation.
Luther was at different times of his life an ordained Catholic priest who
preached daily on the Bible and
a professor of theology who lectured on the Bible to his students.
Luther cherished the Bible because he believed it offered what he had sought so
passionately and painfully all his life.
The hope of forgiveness for his sins, granted by living Jesus Christ.
Luther spent many years in the monastery attacked by the devil,
or as some people might say today, suffering from anxiety and depression.
He was terrified of eternal damnation, but in the Bible stories about
Christ which he read throughout these dark and frightening hours,
Luther found the comfort and certainty that God was not angry with him.
That God is a merciful God, who loves, forgives and gives life to the sinner.
Luther loved the bible the way we might love a person who saved our life, and
he wanted everyone to have access to this life saver.
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