A month or so ago I decided to use one of the German Bibles at church rather than my English Bible. But I had a lot of trouble finding some of the verses. I figured it was partially because some of the names of the books are different than their English counterpart and partially because I was a little rusty at finding the books since the last congregation I attended always put the verses on the big screen. In any case, I decided to go back to my English Bible.
Then several weeks ago Brian and I decided to get our own German Bibles. We looked at several versions and decided on one that we had seen some other people using. Once again, had trouble finding some of the passages.
But last week I finally figured it out. Some of the books are not in the same order. First Peter through Third John are before Hebrews instead of after James.
So I got to wondering, is like this in all German translations? Maybe some of you other folks with German translation can shed some light on it.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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4 comments:
I'm curious - what version did you end up with? We have the Schlachter, Elberfelder, & Hoffnung for Alle. In each of these, the books are listed as they should be.
The translation is called Neues Leben, which is similar to the New Living Translation in English. However, I'm not sure about the version of the Bible I used from the church. Pretty sure it wasn't Neues Leben and almost positive the books were not in the normal order -- but I would have to look again to be sure.
Alisha -- the different order likely goes back to Martin Luther and the 16th century Reformation. Most German Bibles will follow his NT order, I'm guessing, even in "Catholic Austria," since Luther was so influential on the German language. Luther thought James was "an epistle of straw" because he could not find the pure gospel of Christ = "justification by faith" in it. He probably would have eliminated it from the NT entirely if he thought he could get away with it, but he was enough of a pragmatist to know he'd get lynched by his own followers for that. He did manage to eliminate all of the "Old Testament Apocrypha," however. But, if you find James last, that's Luther's fault. I don't know if there are German Bibles translated by Roman Catholics or non-Lutherans. I have two or three, all with the Lutheran order.
Chip -- Thanks for the explanation on why some of the books have been moved around from the traditional order. I'm glad that the version I have isn't the only one with this order.
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