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Theories of Interpretation from Manuscript to Print Culture: The Influence of the Material Condition of Scripture and the Hermeneutics of Augustine, Erasmus, and Luther1

Daniel Knauss, Marquette University

Introduction

The intellectual and theological bases for the hermeneutics of Augustine, Erasmus, and

Luther have been well documented, but little attention has been given to the additional influence

of the Bible as they knew it as a material entity with its own history. Interpretation begins with a

definite idea of what it is that’s being interpreted, and this idea is affected by what I am calling

the material condition of the text. By material condition, I mean whatever the interpreter has

observed, experienced, and otherwise believes or assumes about the text as a physical entity that

is subject to change over time.2 This includes the specific forms or media in which scripture is

1. Prepared for a panel on “The Authority and Influence of Print” at The Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Denver, 25-28 October 2001). My thanks go to Michel Barnes, John Donnelly, S.J., and Rev. David Peters, who read and commented on this paper at various stages of its development, as well as Tim Machan whose seminar at the Newberry Library was the occasion for me to come into direct contact with the products of early print culture and contemporary scholarship about it.

2. The interrelation between the material condition of texts and reading practices has been emphasized by scholars involved in the social history of the book whose interests have developed out of the fields of bibliography, textual criticism, paleography, the history of education, writing, and literacy. Annales historians have been especially concerned with the socio-cultural and material aspects of book production, dissemination and reception. See Lucien Febvre, Henri-Jean Martin, and Roger Chartier. I take my starting point in this paper from D. F. McKenzie’s observation that “new readers . . . make new texts, and that their new meanings are a function of their new forms” (Bibliography 20), Jerome McGann’s contention that “producing editions is one of the ways we produce literary meanings” (The Textual Condition 33), and especially Chartier’s insistence that

When the “same” text is apprehended through very different mechanisms of representation, it is no longer the same. Each of its forms obeys specific conventions that mold and shape the work according to the laws of that form and connect it, in differing ways, with other arts, other genres, and other texts. If we want to understand the appropriations and interpretations of a text in their full historicity we need to identify the effect, in terms of meaning, that its material forms produced. (Forms 2)

Chartier is interested in the ways that different readers read and understand a text, which, however fixed, cannot compel or guarantee that all readers will read and respond to it in the same way. Chartier’s notion of “object studies” involves examining the ways in which one book is read and used as it moves through different culture groups. My interest in this paper is similar in that I attempt to trace the different ways the Bible was read by

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made available. Other considerations about the provenance and reliability of the text that we now

regard as text-critical issues are also important. Since a great deal is known about what

Augustine, Erasmus, and Luther read and how they read, they are especially good examples of

how interpretation is responsive to the material conditions of texts. Specifically, I want to suggest

that their views of spiritual or allegorical exegesis3 have much to do with the ways in which they

experienced and conceived of scripture as a material entity.

Augustine, Erasmus, and Luther according to its changing material embodiment and their awareness/understanding of it as a material text. Another important theoretical basis comes from Jerome McGann’s critique of modern textual criticism, his work on “the textual condition,” “the social theory of texts,” and “materialist hermeneutics” where texts are considered “as autopoietic mechanisms operating as self-generating feedback systems that cannot be separated from those who manipulate and use them” (Textual Condition 15). Neither have I neglected the fields of historical theology and intellectual history; rather, I believe this paper shows how such studies are complemented by the more material emphases of the history of books and reading practices.

3. For concise overviews of the history of biblical interpretation from its beginnings to the present, see Hagen The Bible in the Churches and Grant A Short History. More detailed and focused studies of note include Smalley, Preus, Lubac, Margerie, Muller and Thompson, and Kugel and Greer.

Augustine’s notion of spiritual reading is based on a metaphysical distinction between the

literal, human text of scripture and the divine exemplar, spiritually apprehended only in faith by

the Christian reader. Augustine adopted this view largely because it could accommodate his

awareness of the textual deficiencies and limitations of scripture in the manuscript culture of late

antiquity. Erasmus held to the same theory of texts, language, and interpretation for similar

reasons. Luther’s notion of spiritual reading, however, rejects a sharp distinction between the

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literal and the spiritual. For him, the spiritual sense is the literal sense properly understood. This

position was enabled by Luther’s immersion in a culture of print where the material condition of

scripture offered, or seemed to offer, personal texts of unprecedented stability and clarity.

Viewed in this way, Augustine, Erasmus, and Luther serve as indices to change in interpretive

practices brought about by the transition from manuscript to print culture.

I. Augustine (354-430)4

As approaches to the problem of divergent and otherwise problematic manuscripts, early

textual criticism and editing had arisen long before Augustine.5 Even though these practices were

not a focal point within the grammatical and rhetorical education he received, it was not possible

for anyone in Augustine’s milieu to be substantially unaware of or unconcerned with text-critical

problems. All studious reading required and began with praelectio (literally “pre-reading”), the

preparation and correction of a hand-copied text. Punctuation, accents, and gaps between words

were usually omitted by copyists and had to be added by readers before they turned to exposition

and interpretive commentary (enarratio) of form and content.6

Augustine’s experience as a reader began in his youth in this context. His literary

4. In a review of Brian Stock’s Augustine the Reader, James O’Donnell has recently remarked that “the greatest remaining field to be explored” in Augustinian studies centers on the “vast trove of information in Augustine about the textual and cultural practices of his time,” particularly “the cultural practices of reading.” I can barely begin to tap that vast trove here, but certain salient points are evident, especially in Confessiones. Augustine’s retrospective reading of/writing about himself as a reader was written just after De Doctrina Christiana; text-critical and interpretive issues were at the forefront of Augustine’s mind, and he had begun his correspondence on such matters with Jerome. For a good overview of Augustine’s relationship with scripture, see Anne-Marie La Bonnardière, “Augustine’s Biblical Initiation” in Bright, 42-51 and Bright generally.

5. See Grant, Heresy and Criticism.

6. On Augustine’s use of praelectio or “explanatory reading,” see De doctr. 3.2.4. Cicero’s terms for the work of ennaratio are verborum interpretatio and historiarum cognitio (De Oratore 1.187). See Marrou, History 165 and 279 for an overview of praelectio and ennaratio. See also M. L. Clarke and S. F. Bonner.

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education, according to James O’Donnell, “made him a typical late Roman pedant, with a

comprehensive knowledge of a few authors.”7 Peter Brown notes that teachers “would explain

each text, word by word . . . [W]ithin its narrow limits, [Augustine’s education] was

perfectionist. . .Vergil, for such people, had not only never made a mistake, but had never

written a line that was not admirable.”8 From the perspective of Latin grammarians, Augustine

was trained to be a “guardian of language” (custos Latini sermonis),9 or in Augustine’s own

words, a guardian “of articulate utterance” (vocis articulatae custos).10

7. O’Donnell, Augustine 3. According to Brown, 24-5, the authors studied were Vergil, Cicero, Sallust, and Terrence.

8. Brown, Augustine of Hippo 24-5 quoting Augustine, De Utilitate Credendi 6.13. See also Marrou, Saint Augustin 1-104 and A History of Education 274ff.

9. Seneca, Epistulae 95.65.

10. Soliloquia 2.19. Kaster writes, The Latin grammarian “was to protect the language against corruption, to preserve its coherence, and to act as an agent of control” (17). This charge involved the protection of literary texts and the Latin linguistic-cultural tradition.

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When Augustine first confronted the Christian scriptures as a serious reader, he found

them unsuited to (and seemingly unworthy of) his vocation and training. He remarked that what

he read was “unworthy (indigna) in comparison with the dignity (dignitas) of Cicero.”11 The Old

Latin Bible available to Augustine was composed in the second century by missionaries in Italy

and Africa. It was not only simple in style but downright rude in its literalistic translationese.12

Augustine writes in the Confessions that the jarring experience of reading scripture explains why

he “fell in” with the eloquent Manichaeans who had much to tell him about God “with the

support of many huge tomes.”13 The material-textual culture of Manichaean society appeared to

be much more amenable to the classical grammarian than Christianity.14

11. Confessions 3.5.9. Cf. De Catechizandis Rudibus 13. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are from Chadwick.

12. For an overview of textual problems in the scriptures of the early church, see Grant, Heresy and Criticism. On the African Latin Bible, see Mohrmann, “Le latin commun et le latin des chrétiens,” Vigiliae Christianae: A Review of Early Christian Life and Language, 1 (1947): 1-12. Rpt. in Etudes 3:13-24.

13. Confessions 3.6.10. Pride is the reason Augustine gives for his failure to understand scripture—pride that was perhaps linked with his unfocused desire for matter delivering spiritual wisdom and his expectations about the eloquent style that a book of wisdom should possess. Many scholars have accepted the latter view, yet it contradicts the preceding passages in Confessions where Augustine stresses the fact that he had acquired the ability to value the matter of a text apart from its style. It seems safest to suppose that he did not understand what he read on a literal level, and it is likely that the deficiencies of the Latin translations available made the Christian texts look like a philological nightmare to someone accustomed to Latin texts of better provenance.

On Augustine’s difficulties with the Christian scriptures’ lack of eloquence, see Mohrmann, “Saint Augustine and the ‘Eloquentia’” in Etudes 1: 351-70. See Marrou, “La bible et les lettrés de la decadence” in Saint Augustin and his Retractatio, vol. 2 of Saint Augustin, esp. 473ff. as well as A History. See also Erich Auerbach, “Sermo humilis” in Literary Language, 25-66; esp. pp. 48ff. and Mimesis, 66-74; 153-55. Courcelle, Recherches, 60ff. notes the Bible’s distance from the Ciceronian ideal as a problem for Augustine but sees the principal difficulty as what Augustine himself says it was—pride. Courcelle goes further to suggest on the basis of Augustine’s Sermones 51 that in his pride Augustine was put off by apparent contradictions in the gospel genealogies and the nativity story.

14. See Stock, Teske “Augustine, the Manichees and the Bible,” 208-21 in Bright, and Brown, Augustine of Hippo 250, 256ff. Samuel Lieu is the leading authority on Manichaeism; see especially his chapter in Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire: “‘Ingens Fabula et Longum Mendacium’--Augustine and Manichaeism,” 117-153.

Mani, the founder of the sect, was regarded as an artist (Asmussen, 37ff.). (Lieu discusses Manichaean artistic and architectural remains in Manichaeism in Central Asia, 12-22 and 54-58.) His followers specialized in adapting, syncretizing, and appropriating existing literature and art in every culture they encountered. They were clearly quite successful since Manichaean texts have been discovered as far afield as Ireland and China, and their essential agreement is remarkable. Indeed, Manichaeism was a wildly successful missionary movement unique in its

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explicit, foundational aim of disseminating its scriptures in many languages and nations. (See Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire, 60ff. and Manichaeism in Mesopotamia, 22ff.)

Augustine’s involvement with the Manichaeans immersed him in a religious reading community with the following signal characteristics: (1) Some parts of the New Testament were accepted in addition to the Manichaean canon. The central Manichaean texts were written or dictated by Mani, the founder of the religion, who was believed to be divine and prefigured by Jesus, Zarathustra, and Buddha (Ort, 117ff.). Mani claimed that these “forerunners” had failed to set their teachings in writing, which led to the corruption of their doctrine. True religion was “recovered” in Manichaeism (Ort, 23). (2) The Manichaean corpus was disseminated in codices that were often carefully crafted, ornate works of art (Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire 7). These texts mandated their own propagation through rigorous word-for-word literal translation. Manichaeism depended on books and was a book religion (Ort, 20ff; 106ff.). (3) The Manichaean texts were read extremely literally as inspired teachings that sought rational acceptance, not faith. The cosmogonic myth they elaborated constituted a science (Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire 22-4).

For a critical edition of the central Manichaean text, see The Kephalaia of the Teacher. Ed. and trans. with commentary by Iain Gardner. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 37 (Leiden: Brill, 1995). The title Kephalaia (plural of kephalaion, “kernel or essence”), illustrates how differently it was understood, as a sacred text, compared to Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman understandings. All these other groups had traditions of exegesis that pursued allegorical or otherwise spiritual significance (often figured as the “kernel”) by “piercing through” the literal text, or “husk.” (This figure was a commonplace for Augustine and Jerome; it remained so throughout the medieval and renaissance periods.) By contrast, Manichaean texts offered the kernel directly, without any husk. As Lieu writes, “Every part of [Mani’s] teaching on the origins and the present day workings of the universe is intended to be literally understood and supposed to be scientifically accurate. . . . [T]otal acceptance of the Manichaean gnosis is essential for the believer’s redemption as it demands his participation in a special lifestyle which has a salvific function and which is only meaningful within a literal understanding of the cosmogonic drama. . . . This literalism made Manichaeism a static religion. . . . . literal interpretation of the [Manichaean cosmogonic] myth also set strict limits to . . . cultural adaptations and ensured a high degree of doctrinal uniformity among the far-flung communities of the sect” (Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire 22-4).

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The Manichaean scriptures formed a canon of inspired writings dictated by the god-man

Mani, whose followers rigorously preserved his words. When they attacked the provenance and

authenticity of the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament,15 the Manichaeans could

easily point out or rely upon their audience knowing the following facts: (1) Unlike the

Manichaean scriptures, the Christian scriptures were not written by Jesus or by others during his

lifetime. (2) Unlike Mani’s writings, the Christian scriptures were not stabilized or disseminated

in a widely agreed-upon canon16 that was unified in codices.17 (3) Unlike the Manichaean texts,

the Christian corpus was a composite of different (and for the Manichaeans as well as some

Christians) incompatible languages, religions, and cultures. Augustine wrote in his Confessions

15. See, for example, Contra Faustum Manichaeum 10.3 and 11.2. The Manichaeans’ main objections to Catholic Christianity centered on their aversion to the Old Testament and all things Hebrew/Jewish. On Manichaeanism and the Jews, see Lieu, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia 12-14. Decret, 11-12 outlines their view of the Old Testament as follows: (1) The Old Testament should be discarded because its prophecies have not been fulfilled; furthermore, the Law and principal characters are immoral and disgusting; (2) Christ rejected the Old Testament; (3) Christians should reject the Old Testament and live by the New Testament, especially since they don’t observe the Law anyway. For the Manichaeans, the Old Testament had nothing to say about Christ whatsoever. For them it was “an old garment on to which one should not sew a new patch . . .” (O’Meara, 67). In the New Testament, the Manichaeans rejected Acts, parts of the Gospels and parts of Paul’s letters on the grounds that they had been interpolated by Judaizers. Many biblical texts were widely believed (including the Christian community before and during Augustine’s life) to be corrupted by bad translation, bad copying, and malevolent interpolation which was usually blamed on the Jews by Christians and non-Christians alike (O’Meara, 67). This charge was not baseless; Tatian’s Diatesseron had in fact been interpolated by Judaizers, and Mani had grown up in a Christian sect that used this text. (See Margerie 3: 11-12, 37n11).

16. Augustine’s African Church was one of the first in the Latin West to assemble and disseminate a canon. This was done at councils held at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397. Although Augustine follows the Hippo list (De doctr. 2.8.13), the order is open to change since it was rare to find all the books bound together. Some aspects of Augustine’s order are idiosyncratic. He says Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are only thought to be Solomon’s since they resemble the other, but tradition holds that Jesus of Sirach wrote them, and since they “have been thought worthy of being accorded canonical authority, they are to be counted among the prophetic books” (2.8.13). In his Retractiones, Augustine later wrote that he had learned of the more general and probable opinion that Jesus of Sirach was not the author (2.4). He also notes that for St. Paul what he is calling the “Old Testament” in De doctr. only meant “the covenant given on Mount Sinai” (Retractiones 2.4). On the Biblical texts, the canon, and exegesis in the early church, see the articles reprinted in Ferguson et al. See also Anne-Marie La Bonnardière, “The Canon of Sacred Scripture,” in Bright, 26-41.

17. Augustine himself used both scrolls and codices. See Confessions 8.6.14, 8.12.29-30; Tractatus in Evangelium Iohannis 53.7.9. See also Sharpe and Van Kampen, and Harris, 295ff.

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that he “did not think there was any defence against the Manichaean criticisms of [the] scriptures.

. . [The Manichaeans] asserted that the scriptures of the New Testament had been tampered with

by persons unknown, who wanted to insert the Jews’ law into the Christian faith.”18 However,

the lack of hard evidence for these claims eventually led Augustine to doubt them.19 An

alternative emerged after Augustine’s encounter in Milan with Ambrose’s spiritual exegesis.20

18. Confessions 5.6.21.

19. Even though Augustine was unconvinced by the Manichaean arguments about the nature of a reliable text and the Christians’ deficiency in this area, the problem remained to make sense of biblical passages that, as the Manichaeans charged, were nonsensical on a literal level, seemed to contradict aspects of Christian faith and doctrine, and/or were morally repugnant. Manichaeism was a materialist religion, and Augustine connects Manichaean materialism with the Manichaean practices of producing and reading their scriptures. According to Karl Morrison, “Ambrose’s use of the figurative, or ‘spiritual,’ interpretation of Scripture freed Augustine from the literal understanding that has intruded materialism [especially through the Manichaeans] into his thinking about God” (21). After hearing Ambrose, Augustine saw that the scriptures’ obscurity was a means of both concealing and disclosing divine meaning that transcended human language. (See Confessiones. 3.5.9, 5.14.24, 6.3.3, 6.5.8, 6.11.18, 7.21.27, 8.2.3; De doctr. 1.6.6, 2.6.7-8, 3.37.56) But as long as he held onto a materialist worldview, Augustine found the Christians’ scriptures impenetrable and their teachings impossible to accept since the metaphysical assumptions were so vastly different. To undergo complete conversion, he had to reject the Manichaean materialist mindset with its attendant reliance upon fixed, literally interpreted scriptures. His introduction to an alternative form of exegesis—spiritual/figurative interpretation—was what first enabled him to begin making this shift, which was completed later by his acceptance of the existence of immaterial, spiritual being after reading “Platonic books” (Starnes, 130).

20. On Ambrose’s exegesis, see Margerie 2:76-114. On hearing Ambrose’s sermons, Augustine wrote, “I heard first one, then another, then many difficult passages in the Old Testament scriptures figuratively interpreted, where I, by taking them literally, had found them to kill. So after several passages of the Old Testament had been expounded spiritually, I now found fault with that despair of mine, caused by my belief that the law and the prophets could not be defended at all against the hostile critics” (Confessions 5.14.24; see also 6.4.6 and De Spiritu et Littera). NB— Chadwick’s English is not very close to the literal sense of Augustine’s Latin, which is better put as “. . . I had often heard [Ambrose] resolve one or another puzzle [aenigmate] from the Old Testament, where I was being killed, when I understood it literally.” Augustine does not explicitly refer to figurative reading here, just spiritual reading.

Hearing Ambrose’s sermons radically altered Augustine’s view of interpretation. He realized that, spiritually interpreted, scripture was consistent with Christian doctrine, and it was wrong to expect Christian doctrine to make sense according to Manichaean, literalist exegesis. This did not prove Christianity was true; it proved that if one accepted Christianity the proper catholic way--by faith and on the authority of tradition (which entailed accepting the traditional, unofficial canon of scripture)--scripture could be coherently expounded and defended. Spiritual interpretation was not simply a method of reading; it implied (and required) a conversion of the reader’s standing in relation to scripture. (See Bruns, 141-43 for a detailed yet concise exposition of this point and the central characteristics of Augustine’s hermeneutics.) One must believe to understand. See Sermones 43 (rpt. In Bright, 313-15) on “unless you believe, you will not understand”—Augustine’s LXX based Old Latin reading of Isaiah 7:9. This is one of Augustine’s favorite verses in the Bible, although his preferred rendering is from the Septuagint and is less faithful than modern Bibles to the Hebrew. Augustine was aware of the variations in different versions in their rendering of this verse; see De doctr. 2.12.17.

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As we have seen, Augustine’s early grammatical-exegetical education instilled him with

what Jerome McGann calls a “lexical idealist” mentality.21 That is, he believed that the authority

of a text was based on its near, if not absolute fidelity to the letter of the authorial, original text.

This belief was emphasized to an even greater extent by the Manichaeans. But in the process of

becoming receptive to the Christian scriptures, Augustine’s lexical idealism was substantially

relaxed and modified. It was essential to Augustine’s conversion that spiritual interpretation

allowed him to reject the necessity of relying on texts that derived their authority from the

effectiveness of human authors and scribes to establish and maintain them.22 In De Doctrina

Christiana, the words (verba) of scripture function as signs (signa) referring the pious reader to a

divine reality (res).23 To understand the verba of scripture, Augustine prescribes the methods he

had learned in school: praelectio is to be followed by enarratio, but figurative or spiritual

21. Jerome McGann defines “textual” or “lexical idealism” as an understanding of texts that equates their authority with their authoriality. In this view authorial texts are always assumed to embody a single, static, ahistorical ideal text representing the author’s “final intentions.” McGann criticizes the chimerical quality of such an ideal, especially in the face of texts like those comprising the Bible. The lexical idealist position defines texts solely in terms of their lexical content (as opposed to the bibliographic) and regards critical, edited texts as essentially the same thing as the work they represent. See McGann, A Critique.

22. Mark Vessey makes a similar point in the context of Augustine’s relations with Jerome; see “The Great Conference: Augustine and His Fellow Readers,” 52-73 in Bright. I do not claim that Augustine’s lexical idealism was eliminated; rather, it was diminished and problematized for him in a productively self-conscious way. He often referred to “the original” when he meant contemporary Hebrew and Greek versions, and he tenuously maintained a high regard for the Septuagint (early third century BC Greek rescension of Hebrew Old Testament) as (probably) inspired, although he remained reliant upon Origen’s Latin translation of it. Since Augustine couldn’t read Hebrew at all or Greek very well, his linguistic limitations probably contributed to his belief in the efficacy of spiritual interpretation, yet in De doctr. he writes of the need to refer to the original languages in cases of doubtful words (2.11.16). At least a little Greek and Hebrew should be known, since even in Latin translations, some words are transcribed from the original languages because they are untranslatable (2.12.17-2.13.20). If one cannot read the original languages, the literal translations are to be preferred not because they are self-sufficient but because they help control the liberty taken by the translators who attempt to deliver the general sense of the text. Augustine also notes that “correctness” of language (i.e., avoidance of solecisms) in translations is not so important since correctness is just a human convention set by someone else in the past. In all this Augustine appears neither rigidly and naively idealistic nor relativistic about the condition of the biblical texts.

23. De doctr. 2.2.3-2.3.4; 3.9.13.

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exegesis is admitted as a necessary adjunct for persistently ambiguous passages that defy a literal

reading.24 As Augustine describes it, spiritual interpretation allows the interpreter to exchange his

24. On Augustine’s view of language, interpretation, and scripture with reference to De doctr., see Bernard, Colish, Jordan, Louth, Markus Signs and Meanings, and Thomas Williams’ “Biblical Interpretation” and Christopher Kirwan’s :Augustine’s Philosophy of Language,” both in Stump and Kretzmann, 59-70 and 186-204. See also the essays in Markus, Augustine: A Collection and Bright and Arnold.

After describing what scripture is and the proper state of sanctification required for reading it properly, book two of De doctr. deals extensively with text-critical concerns. Note especially 2.14.21—“The first thing, in fact, to which those who wish to know the divine scriptures should devote their careful attention and their skill is the correction of their copies, so that the uncorrected ones give way to the corrected ones, when they derive, that is, from one and the same type of translation.” The end of book two and all of book three deals with approaches to interpreting ambiguous passages, with book three giving the most attention to “spiritual” exegesis.

Karl Morrison suggests that “The variability of manuscripts through scribal independence and error may be behind Augustine’s disregard for the intent of the author and his acceptance of multiple interpretation in manuscript traditions. [These are aspects of Augustine’s spiritual exegesis.] Indeed, he had good reason to understand this kind of mimetic hazard, given the fact that manuscripts of his own works escaped to copyists before he was able to revise them” (31). This is only approximately correct. In large part, the variability of manuscripts made spiritual exegesis

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reliance on the variable words of human, material texts for faith in a divine, spiritual reality that

can be used to guide the interpretation of every part of the written text of scripture.

II. Erasmus (c. 1466/9-1536)

significant and useful to Augustine, and once meaning had been lifted from a human to a divine ground, it was easy to accommodate a diversity of possible authorial intentions and reader interpretations that all referred to that divine ground in different ways. Augustine does not disregard authorial intentions; rather, he subordinates his regard for them beneath his regard for the divine intention and sum of scripture (i.e., caritas and regula fidei).

It should be stressed that Augustine never ignored the prudence of taking pains to discern and use the best available texts. Words strain, crack and sometimes break, slip, slide, perish and decay with imprecision and will not stay still, but Augustine believed that this problem can be positively dealt with by using the best texts available along with the traditional methods of praelectio. Augustine was quite realistic about the questionable provenance of many biblical texts and translations—but these were not primary concerns, as they were for Jerome and later Erasmus. It is significant that in his anti-Manichaean writings, Augustine never argues that there are no corrupted or interpolated Christian texts. Rather, he contends that the Manichaeans had to take all of scripture on faith or else leave it all alone; one can’t muck about picking and choosing what one thinks is authoritative and what is not. Thus he recommends to Faustus, “There, if one finds something absurd, it is not permissible to say ‘the author of this book has strayed from the truth’ but rather ‘this manuscript is false’ or ‘the translator has made an error’ or finally that ‘you do not grasp what is said’” (NPNF 1.4 Contra Faustus Manichaeum, 11.5). Among the three possibilities given, Augustine’s emphasis is clearly on the last one.

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Erasmus’ early and lifelong experience with biblical interpretation and the Bible as a

material entity was quite similar to Augustine’s. The son of a manuscript copyist, Erasmus’

formative experience with classical, biblical, and patristic manuscripts attuned him to their

historicity and linguistic variability.25 Léon-Ernest Halkin notes that at the monastery library at

Steyn, Erasmus read classical and patristic authors “in manuscript and incunabula [i.e., books

printed with movable type before 1501]. He recopied them and learned them by heart.”26 In

148627 Erasmus “sent a copy of . . . Terrence to [a] friend and, showing himself already a

philologer, he amended its text.”28 Departing from the scholastic notion of the sacra pagina

(sacred page), Marjorie O’Rourke-Boyle writes that Erasmus saw the text of scripture as “an

exemplar to be clarified linguistically at the threshold of mystery.”29

However, Augustine’s view of language and spiritual interpretation was standardized in

medieval exegetical practice, and Erasmus inherited them as a matter of course.30 He

25. On Erasmus’ father, see A. Sottili, Wolfenbutteler Renaissance Mitteilungen (August, 1982): 86-8; also, Compendium vitae in EE 2.1.47-52. On Erasmus’ dealing with manuscripts, particularly with regard to his work on the New Testament, see Bentley and also Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations 36-42. Gilmont notes that “The Brethren of the Common Life adopted the ars artificialiter scribendi without difficulty, opening several printing shops from the end of the fifteenth century onwards” (15). See also Post, 346-9.

Erasmus’ classicism, initiated while poring over manuscripts in the monastic library at Steyn, was based on his understanding of ancient texts as archaeological sites where the reader’s task was to recover the original spirit of the authors’ culture and language. See Hoffman, esp. his second chapter “Language, Literature, and Scripture;” on Erasmus’ experiences in the library at Steyn, see Halkin.

26. Halkin, 5.

27. This is the date suggested by Allen.

28. Halkin, 5-6; EE 1.31.

29. Boyle, 119. See Enchiridion, H 75, 18-24; LB 5.32A. Augustine says the same thing in Ennarratio in Psalmum 44.5.

30. As Paul Rorem notes, “Although Augustine did not establish the fourfold system of exegesis [the quadriga], Scripture was understood in the Middle Ages along the lines of Augustine’s own exegesis and principles of

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recommended in Ratio Verae Theologiae (1518) that if a biblical text was unclear or morally

offensive, or if it needed to be accommodated to an audience, then allegorical exegesis was

permissable.31 In other words, allegorical reading refers to a spiritual res in order to tame

problematic verba. It is likely that Erasmus retained this tolerance for allegorical or spiritual

interpretation because its metaphysical underpinnings, the distinction between verba and res also

supported his text-critical work on scripture.

By the time Erasmus printed his emended Vulgate (and subsequently an entirely new

Latin translation) alongside his Greek text of the New Testament, the Vulgate was widely

ascribed greater stability and authority than Augustine ever gave the texts that he used.32 Gillian

interpretation, especially in his widely circulated [De doctr.]. His basic teaching about language, about signs, about multiple meanings to a biblical text, were all foundational for medieval hermeneutics from the Carolingians to the Humanists” (367). This is not to say Augustine was the sole or even primary source for medieval exegesis; for detailed discussion of its roots and development, see Lubac, volume 1.

We know that Erasmus closely read and was greatly moved by De doctr. when he found it at the monastery of Groenendael ca. 1493 (EE 1: 590), and he clearly had a medieval, Augustinian understanding of language and textuality. As Mary Carruthers explains, throughout the Middle Ages a distinction was observed between the res or dictamen (the pre-linguistic, authorially intended meaning of a text) and the lexical, material text itself, i.e., the verba in the liber scriptus. If the res and verba seemed to be at odds with each other, a medieval reader would judge the text (or verba) to be deficient and alter it to conform with the reader’s apprehension of the res (Carruthers, 189ff.). Ironically, this belief is what led medieval scribes to make some of the alterations to the Vulgate (and the Greek text, as in the case of the Johannine Comma) that Erasmus strove to correct, yet he still worked under the same basic premises with a more complex historical understanding of the Bible as a collection of material documents.

Carruthers’ claim about the res-verba distinction in the Middle Ages has to be qualified, since obviously at some point it ceased to be a common assumption. If not, Erasmus’ work on the Bible would not have been so controversial. At what point do the biblical res and verba start getting conflated? Lesley Smith notes that there was a tendency to conflate them in the late middle ages; see her chapter, “The Theology of the Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Bible” in Gameson, 223-32.

31. Ratio H 274, 24-38, 67-88; LB 5: 124E-125A. See Boyle, 121. In his early work, Erasmus stressed the allegorical far above the literal. He often used the traditional husk/kernel figure and inherited the spirit-letter/spirit-flesh dichotomy from Origen and Alexandrian fathers. (However, he conflated two of Origen’s three senses—the moral and allegorical. He never dealt with the eschatalogical/anagogical senses.) None of this altered in Erasmus’ theory so much as in his emphasis and practical application over time, particularly after he found and published Valla’s Adnotationes. But even before that, Erasmus’ focus had already turned to the philological and historical study of scripture, and this focus increased over time, along with the amount of exegetical stress he placed on the sensus literalis; i.e. literal-grammatical-historical level.

32. Jerome’s Latin translation was commissioned in 382 AD and completed in 405, but it was not widely accepted for many years, and then only in the Latin West.

14

Evans notes that in the Middle Ages, there was generally no distinction made between original

texts and translations.33 Predictably, controversy arose when Erasmus printed his critically

annotated Greek New Testament and Latin translation, since they could be seen as an impious

attack on the authority and integrity of scripture itself.34

33. Evans, 182.

34. There were good reasons for the reaction Erasmus received. Erasmus’ glosses pointed out that lacking the Greek, readers of the Vulgate had erroneously believed that marriage was referred to as a sacrament. He remarked that Ephesians was Pauline in spirit but not style and questioned whether James was really the author of the book of James. Erasmus showed that the New Testament writers made faulty quotations from the Old Testament by comparing quotations to the Septuagint. He questioned whether John the apostle wrote Revelation and revived the idea that it might have been written by a heretic, even though Erasmus ultimately remarked that God couldn’t have allowed that. See Rummel, Erasmus and His Catholic Critics and Coogan.

15

Defending his work to Martin of Dorp, Erasmus insisted on the necessity of

distinguishing scripture itself (the “originary text”), translations of scripture, and the transmission

of both.35 Jerry Bentley has pointed out the significance of Erasmus’ title for his first edition of

the Greek New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum. As Erasmus explained in later

correspondence, a testamentum is not necessarily written—it can be simply the unwritten,

immaterial contract. An instrumentum is the written form. The Old Testament existed before

Moses wrote the Pentateuch; and the New Testament existed when Jesus instituted it at the last

supper, well before anything was put into writing. Thus it was more accurate, in Erasmus’ view,

to refer to the biblical texts as instrumenta and “the documents that describe the Hebrew and

Christian covenants”36 as testamenta.

35. EE 2.337; cf. 2.456; LB 9.752ff. Erasmus rejected the assumption that every word was inspired. Even though scripture was inspired as a whole, the Holy Spirit had left the writers free to be human.

36. Bentley, 121. Erasmus used Augustine and Jerome as backing for this view when it was challenged; see EE 1858 (7:140). This letter is to Robert Aldridge and dated August 23, 1527. On the language theory where God gives us the instrumenta we need for speech—sounds, letters, words, grammar, and agreement among ourselves about conventions for meaning, see Walton 1:10-11.

16

Erasmus’ distinction between instrumentum and testamentum observes Augustine’s

distinction between res and verba. Allowing for a disjunction between divine meaning and

human means of signification, Bentley notes that Erasmus was able to recognize “more clearly

that the scriptures were liable to almost infinite corruption. He realized better than the other

humanists that the scriptures were human documents, only as reliable as the human beings who

transmitted them. At one point he even ventured the daring suggestion that the original authors of

scripture themselves introduced error into their work.”37 Erasmus also realized that his own

work was, as Erika Rummel writes, “liable to be corrupted again,” so his Annotations were to

have “the function of safeguarding his emendations.”38 But even these he hardly regarded as

infallible.39 As with Augustine, it seems likely that the verba-res distinction that accompanied

the distinction between the literal and spiritual senses of scripture functioned for Erasmus as a

means of accommodating interpretation to his acute awareness of the mutable material condition

of scripture. Positing a letter-spirit and verba-res distinction where the meaning of the divine

author exceeds the capacities of human language to contain it, Erasmus, like Augustine, had a

theoretical position that squared with his faith and the facts of his experience with biblical and

patristic texts.

III. Luther (1483-1546)

Luther marks a decisive break from the Augustinian view of language and interpretation

37. Bentley, 142. Erasmus suggested that the authors of the New Testament could and did err in their quotations from the Septuagint.

38. Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations 25.

39. EE 373:49-54—“I include these pointers (so to call them) . . . partly in hopes of preserving my work intact, that it might not be so easy in the future for anyone to spoil a second time what had once been restored with such great exertion.”

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that Erasmus substantially maintained. For Augustine and Erasmus, interpretation necessarily

began with textual criticism and philological study. As I have previously argued, Augustine and

Erasmus both accepted the legitimacy of spiritual or allegorical exegesis largely because it gave

them a way to accommodate interpretation to their awareness of the inevitable imperfection of

human texts. Luther, by contrast, broke with this line of thought and denounced allegorical

exegesis, even though he never truly abandoned it in practice.40 He was able to do this because

40. See Bornkamm, “Luther’s Exegetical Method,” 87ff. In Luther’s works, see esp. “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit” in Answer to the Hyperchristian, Hyperspiritual, and Hyperlearned Book by Goat Emser in Leipzig— Including Some Thoughts Regarding His Companion, the Fool Murner (WA 7:262-83; LW 39:175-203). Kerr lists a number of key passages from Luther’s works on his view of scripture and exegesis. Luther speaks negatively about allegorical exegesis in his Table Talk; e.g., WATR 1; LW 54:46-7 (#335) and WATR 5; LW 54:406 (#5285).

On Luther’s exegesis in general, see Preus; Pelikan; Wood, Luther’s Principles; Doermann’s “Luther’s Principles of Biblical Interpretation” in Meuser and Schneider; Isaac “The Changing Image of Luther as Biblical Expositor” and Maschke “Contemporaneity: A Hermeneutical Perspective in Martin Luther’s Work,” both in Maschke et al., 67-85 and 165-82.

Friedenthal remarks that at Erfurt Luther “was no philologist, and ‘textual criticism’ was not his field . . . . What he sought . . . was the ‘clear’ transparent text, the ‘naked truth’” (52), or, as Ebeling puts it, the “kernel of the nut” (77). That essence of scripture—its spiritual message—was not received from the traditional doctrines of the church but from the right reading of scripture itself where the spiritual significance of the text coexisted with the literal sense, properly understood.

At least in his early life, Luther adhered to the traditional spirit-letter distinction and the quadriga (Ebeling, 98), but he always gave considerable emphasis to the literal-grammatical level. According to Gerhard Ebeling,

The hermeneutic principle which [Luther] laid down in his early period implicitly and inevitably implied the abandonment of the fourfold meaning of scripture. Once its meaning was reduced to the relationship between Christ, the words and faith, the whole mighty hermeneutic system became meaningless, and was quite clearly replaced by a concern for the fundamental theme of scripture in its literal sense. Thus at the beginning of the Operationes in Psalmos of 1519, Luther explains: ‘Our first concern will be for the grammatical meaning, for this is the truly theological meaning.’ (Ebeling, 107; WA 5:27; LW 14:287)

Quite early, then, Luther sought for “the naked truth” in the literal-grammatical sense of scripture, though not in quite the same way or capacity as Erasmus or Valla.

Luther believed that scripture was only apprehended meaningfully, i.e., spiritually and in faith, through the reader’s existential contact with it. The passage of time renders its spiritual significance a dead letter, and the spirit of scripture is not apprehended by textual recovery projects (Ebeling, 99-100) but rather the reader’s existential engagement of the text between God, death, and the devil with questions like “What must I do to be saved?” For Luther, who had made his exegetical/Reformation breakthrough with the Vulgate, such questions could be answered by interpretation that emphasized the literal-grammatical sense of scripture, but only because the literal was not distinct in any way from the spiritual sense. As Hagen points out, for Luther, “the literal sense was literally the prophetic sense” and “experience [with the spiritual, existential concern of the text] was a necessary part of adequate interpretation” (3-4). On the importance of experience for Luther, particularly the experience of scripture as the living voice of God, see Robert Stupperich, “Luther’s Itio Spiritualis,” trans. Hamish Ritchie, in Stephens, 245-57.

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his hermeneutics were shaped by a medieval mentality and a modern technology. As an heir to

the monastic tradition, Luther tended to conflate the sacra pagina with sacra scriptura (sacred

writing) and the verbum Dei (Word of God)41 while the ascendancy of print and the first “pre-

critical critical editions”42 of the Bible made concerns about the integrity of its texts marginal and

less visible compared to the situation of manuscript culture.

41. Hagen, Luther’s Approach, 35-48.

42. Muller uses this term in his introduction.

19

Showing both continuity and discontinuity with the past, Luther remained quite

Augustinian in his interpretive practices but not in his assumptions about the nature of scripture

as a human text. Luther follows Augustine in emphasizing the self-correcting nature of scripture

and the primacy of right reading conducted by the pious reader who understands its sum and is

thus able to apprehend existentially the spiritual import of any given passage.43 At the same

time, Luther’s approach to interpretation differs from that of Augustine and Erasmus because he

does not make a sharp metaphysical distinction between the literal and spiritual senses, the verba

and res.44 The Word and the word are distinguished as categories of reception only; they cannot

be discretely located within the two categories of res and verba. Consequently, the need to

correct the text of scripture through rational methods is substantially reduced in importance. Such

methods are often useful but technically not a necessity for Luther.45

Luther’s novel hermeneutical understanding should be understood as a part of the

43. For Luther, the spiritual message of any part of scripture was to be found in its resonance with Pauline Christological and soteriological themes. He believed that the gospel pervaded all of scripture and centered on justification by faith in the crucified Christ. In other words, Luther read the whole Bible in light of Pauline theology, especially as it is expressed in Romans. All interpretation must exalt the promises of God and the benefits of Christ (promissa dei et beneficia Christi) worked out from an understanding of the distinction between law and gospel and the principle of sola fide.

44. See Hagen, A Theology of Testament.

45. When Erasmus’ first edition of the New Testament came out, Luther was lecturing on Romans 9. He got a copy of the book and took it in the classroom, using it until the next edition came out—the book he relied on for his own German New Testament translation. At the same time, Luther rejected Erasmus’ Latin translation, going so far as to assert that “we should have nothing to do with this translation.” He accepted some of Erasmus’ text-critical glosses (e.g., scripture does not uphold marriage as a sacrament) but intensely disliked much of the commentary. Luther felt that Erasmus was deriding Christians by noting conflicting patristic interpretations of parts of scripture. He rejected Erasmus’ reading of Romans which follows Jerome; Luther’s own preference was for Augustine’s application of Romans in his anti-Pelagian writings. (WABR 1:70-71; LW 48: 23-26) On the other hand, Luther followed Erasmus’ glosses in rejecting the idea that marriage is called a sacrament in scripture, and both (especially Luther) questioned whether James was apostolic. Both were uneasy about Revelation. Luther went further than Erasmus’ more moderate skepticism when in his 1522 edition of the New Testament Luther rejected Paul as the author of Hebrews, asserting that it is neither apostolic nor prophetic. However, unlike Erasmus, Luther’s rationale for questioning the authorship and value of certain books was not based on text-critical points but rather his recognition

20

emerging mentality of the culture of print. Unlike Erasmus, Luther’s formative and lifelong

reading centered on printed books; in fact, he never mentions reading the Bible or any other book

in manuscript.46 Because of the material and technological innovation of print, Luther could

emphasize and universalize the reader’s personal, direct relation to God through scripture in way

that was previously unthinkable. The Bible could also be viewed as a fairly stabilized text

available in numerous, mechanically reproduced copies47 that could be pored over until they were

literally worn out, as Luther reports having worn out his psalter.

that they did not conform to his notion of the spiritual message of scripture. They did not “preach Christ.”

46. No doubt he was not exclusively a reader of printed books, I merely wish to point out the implicit emphasis on print in the records we have about Luther.

47. Johns rightly points out that although printed texts did not differ as substantially as they had before print, the fixity that print offered remained more of an ideal attributed to it rather than a reality. Johns regards this thesis as a correction to the work of Eisenstein, who tends to stress the uniformity offered by printed texts. However, Eisenstein is typically aware that uniformity was less a reality than an ideal, especially in the case of scripture. See her chapters, “The Scriptural Tradition Recast” and “Scripture and Nature Transformed” in the first and second volumes, respectively, of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Regarding the specific problems that Luther encountered when the reality of print failed to live up to its ideal, see Newman and Edwards.

21

According to Jean-François Gilmont, Luther’s life as a reformer and prolific publisher

coincided with “the real transition period”48 when printing came into its own.49 Though only half

a generation separates them, Luther’s early life as a reader of scripture was deeply affected by the

emerging print culture in experiences that differ markedly from Erasmus’ in that they do not

evoke the medieval world of manuscript culture. Luther first had the opportunity to pore over a

complete Bible at length when he was given a red, leather-bound personal copy of the Vulgate in

the Erfurt monastery.50 His “Reformation breakthrough” came from tireless reading of the Bible,

not from philological study.51 It is significant that Luther had his university printer make a

special edition of the Vulgate psalter (and later of Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews) for his

students in 1513,52 since this shows how far removed Luther’s experience was from Augustine’s

and the young Erasmus copying and emending a manuscript of Terrence.53 The most important

48. Gilmont, 11.

49. Gilmont puts the transition years at ca. 1520-40, emphasizing how Luther did a great deal to contribute to the explosion of print. Only 40 German language books were printed in 1500, with no significant change in that rate until 1518 when there were 71 German titles, 20 by Luther. In 1518 there were 111 titles printed, 51 by Luther. In 1520, there were 208 titles, 133 by Luther. Most of these publications by Luther were pamphlets, not books. At the same time there was also an upsurge in the printing Latin titles (Haile 167; 384n5). See John L. Flood, “The Book in Reformation Germany” in Gilmont, 46-8 and Edwards, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 126. Jardine notes that from 1476-82, English book collectors shifted their attention from hand-copied to printed books (Worldly Goods 143).

50. WATR 1; LW 54: 13-14. See Wood’s first chapter in Captive to the Word, “Luther’s Introduction to the Scriptures,” 11-20.

51. WA 54:179; LW 34:327.

52. The Wolfenbüttel Psalter—see the preface to LW 10:ix ff.

53. It is not difficult to see Luther’s skeptical attitude toward Erasmus as analogous to Augustine’s toward Jerome; Luther himself makes this comparison in his letters to Spalatin and Erasmus. Both Augustine and Luther were at a disadvantage when faced by a Jerome or Erasmus since they lacked comparable linguistic and editorial skills and their views, interests, and attitudes toward scripture varied accordingly.

Luther’s grasp of Greek was not at the level of an Erasmus, but unlike Erasmus, Luther became competent with Hebrew over time. The process was gradual, however. When he began learning Hebrew, Luther used Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica (1513), which was indeed rudimentary. He did not have dictionaries or commentaries until he

22

books in Luther’s career—those that supported his exegetical and translation work—were the

new, fresh fruit of humanist textual criticism and philology: Erasmus’ New Testament editions

(1516-), Lefevre’s Psalterium Quincuplex (1509), Jerome’s third psalter (Psalterium

Hebraicum), Reuchlin’s Septem Psalmi Poenitentiales (1512), the Soncino Hebrew Bible (1495),

various dictionaries and lexicons, and not least of all, the Vulgate.54

With printed resources like these, Luther did not need to labor through or even think

about praelectio with quite as much urgency as Augustine had recommended; others had already

done the linguistic and text-critical groundwork. As John O’Malley notes, “Luther was

dependent in this area on the philological researches of Erasmus and Valla.”55 Books like theirs

were produced precisely for people like Luther to facilitate their translation, interpretation, and

exposition of scripture, and this opportunity was made possible by the creation of new texts that

were held to be relatively cleansed and stabilized after centuries of corruption and change. Even

while Erasmus called attention to the perpetual openness of his Greek New Testament with

references to manuscript variants, questions about the authorship of certain books, his solicitation

of corrections, and his distinction between instrumentum and testamentum, critical editions like

began working on his Old Testament translations in later years. See Koenig.

Erasmus wanted to spread an evangelical grasp of the spirit of the gospels, and he believed the restoration of the original texts was essential to that project. It was of course central to Luther’s translation work, but from Luther’s perspective Erasmus could appear as a too literalistic, pedantic grammarian (WABR 1:70-71; LW 48: 23-26, 52-55,116-119). This negative view of Erasmus has been countered well by Richard DeMolen.

54. In the spring of 1517 Luther published his exegetical commentary on the penitential psalms in German with his own German translations of each psalm with Jerome’s third psalter (Psalterium Hebraicum) and Reuchlin’s Septem Psalmi Poenitentiales (1512) as his sources, which shows his desire to use translations that are closer to the Hebrew than the Vulgate. Nevertheless, Luther never worked exclusively with the Hebrew; he continually made use of the Vulgate, and he rejected Erasmus’ attempts at an improved Latin New Testament even though he immediately took advantage of Erasmus’ Greek text as soon as it was available.

55. O’Malley, 8.

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the Novum Instrumentum still did much to mask the slippery field of textual change and variance

that lay behind them. Luther, while mindful of such things, typically subordinated praelectio to

ennaratio.

Kenneth Hagen observes that Luther’s main concern was with ennaratio, which meant

taking out the spiritual message of scripture in detail and applying it in public.56 In this vein

Luther referred to his ennaratio on Galatians as “a testimony of [his] faith in Christ.”57 Luther,”

Hagen writes, “was not interested in a correct proof text. . . . He had whole sections, chapters,

and books committed to memory. The text for him in the tradition of ennaratio was a sacred

page, not a series of chopped up verses.”58 In this light, Luther’s translation of the Bible can be

seen as a kind of ennaratio. Heinz Bluhm is quite right when he says, “[The Luther Bible] is the

most personal and subjective of all renderings of the Scriptures produced in the West.”59

Describing his rules for translation, Luther gives ennaratio priority over praelectio, writing that

in the case of obscure passages, one should first consider how they refer to the gospel and/or the

law. If the obscurity persists, one should consult Christian scholars who understand Hebrew.60

Luther’s preface to the Old Testament makes the same point as his humility and anxiety about the

quality of his sources, translation methods, and the final product are countered by his

56. Hagen, 2. See the chapter-long discussion of Luther’s understanding of ennaratio, 49-66. Ebeling similarly notes that Luther’s concern as an interpreter of scripture focused on explicatio and applicatio, which were never very distinct for him; both were bound up in the reader’s personal experience of God.

57. WA 2, 1519 Dedication, print “A.”

58. Hagen, 5.

59. Bluhm, “Luther’s German Bible” 184. Hans Lufft’s [the name is likely a pseudonym] edition of Luther’s New Testament (Wittenberg, 1534) includes a woodcut where St. Matthew is modeled after Luther, indicating that Luther’s translation work was being presented as inspired, the fruit of a “Pentecostal moment.” See also Meinhold.

60. WATR 1; LW 54:42-3 (#312); cf. WATR 5; WA 54:445-46 (#5533).

24

Augustinian confidence in the ability of the right reader to come to the true, spiritual

understanding of the text.61 But in Luther’s case, unlike Augustine’s, spiritual reading has been

transformed into spiritual writing not of exegetical commentary but of the biblical text itself.

Luther asserts that it is not linguistic skill but “the understanding of Christ” that makes his

translation superior to all others. The source of true knowledge about Christ is not, as it was for

Augustine, something that exists apart from the verba of scripture in the traditions of the church;

it is in the literal text of scripture, and to perceive it spiritually, the reader has to be corrected by

61. WADB 6:2-11; LW 35:357-62. Luther first remarks that in taking on the project of translating the Hebrew into German, he has “undertaken too much.” Knowledge of Hebrew has degenerated (even among the Jews) but Luther is hopeful that “if the Bible is to come up again, we Christians are the ones who must do the work, for we have the understanding of Christ without which even the knowledge of the language is nothing.” That is why Jerome and other ancient translators “made mistakes in many passages.” Luther declines to claim perfection in his translation, yet he does “venture to say” that his translation “is clearer and more accurate at many points than the Latin.” Given what he has written just before this point, he is suggesting that his success is due not primarily to his linguistic and philological skills; rather, it is a consequence of his understanding of the spiritual and Christological significance of scripture. Finally his concern turns to the inevitable errors of printers—if they “do not, as usual, spoil it with their carelessness, the German language certainly has here a better Bible than the Latin language.”

25

the text, rather than the text by the reader.62 Textual corruption, for Luther, was primarily a

problem introduced by ignorant, greedy, and malicious printers.63

Conclusion

62. This, at least, was the Evangelical theory, so “right reading” became a major emphasis. Luther’s extensive interpretive aids accompanying his New Testament show how the Bible was made to be self-interpreting. See Edwards, esp. 109-30.

63. After his New Testament was published, Luther became enraged with his printer for introducing errors into the text, and then there was the problem of other printers copying it badly without his supervision and the appropriation of his text by Catholics like Emser. Such problems were a continuous source of worry, anger, and frustration for Luther throughout his life. (See Gilmont, Newman and especially Edwards.) Brecht notes that Luther feared that after his death his translations would be altered and anyone would be free to make their own (3:110). Luther also expressed distaste toward the explosion of printed religious matter other than scripture several times. He does so in his preface to the Wittenberg (1539) edition of his collected works in an attempt to distance himself from the situation he did much to create (WA 50:557-661; LW 34:283-88).

Augustine and Erasmus interpreted scripture with the assumption of a metaphysical

distinction between the human words and text(s) (verba) and the divine meaning (res). This

distinction accompanied and enabled their use of spiritual or allegorical exegesis (really the

eisegetical imposition of a familiar, already-known res) in cases of obscure biblical texts that

could not be resolved by other means, including text-critical, linguistic, and other philological

methods. I have argued that this hermeneutic can be understood largely as a response to and a

means of coping with an awareness of the variability and instability of scripture as a historical

26

and material entity. I have also argued that Luther departed from this view and rejected

allegorical exegesis along with the traditional distinction between the literal and spiritual senses

of scripture largely because he lived and moved in a world of print where the Bible was

ostensibly clarified, restored, and stabilized by humanists such as Erasmus who were amphibious

with respect to manuscript and print culture. Luther did not merely accept humanist editions of

the scriptures at face value, but they largely shielded him from the textual instability that was of

considerable concern for Augustine and Erasmus. His emphasis on the Bible as the Word of God

made personal, contemporary, and immediately accessible depends upon the existence of printed

editions of scripture in the original languages and the way in which they masked the underlying

sea of textual variance and instability which was a given for Augustine and Erasmus.

27

Abbreviations Augustine’s Works: BA Bibliothèque Augustinienne. Oevres de Saint Augustin. 74 vols. Paris: Etudes

Augustiniennes. Chadwick Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. DDC Teaching Christianity, De doctrina christiana. Vol. 11. The Works of Saint

Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. 18 vols. (ongoing) Ed. John E. Rotelle. Hyde Park, New York: New City P, 1990-

NPNF A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. 28 vols. in two series. New York, 1886-1900 but frequently reprinted. Erasmus’ Works: CWE The Collected Works of Erasmus. 86 vols. (ongoing) Toronto: U of Toronto P,

1974- EE Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami. Ed. P. S. Allen et al. 12 vols.

Oxford: Clarendon, 1906-58. H Ausgewählte Werke. Eds. Hajo and Annemarie Holborn. Munich: Beck, 1933;

rpt. 1964. LB Opera Omnia. Ed. Jean Leclerc. Leiden 1703-6. Rpt. Hildesheim: G. Olm,

1961-62. Luther’s Works: LW Luther’s Works: American Edition. Ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman.

55 vols. St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1955-86. WA D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Ed. J. F. K. Knaake et

al.66 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883-1997. WABR D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefwechsel. Ed. Konrad

Burdach et al.18 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1930-85. WADB D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Deutsche Bibel. Ed. Karl

Drescher et al. 12 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1906-61. WATR D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden. Ed. Karl

Drescher. 6 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1912-21.

28

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_____. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953.

Asmussen, J. P. Manichaean Literature: Representative Texts Chiefly from Middle Persian and Parthian Writings. Delmar: Scholars, 1975.

Bentley, Jerry H. Humanists and Holy Writ. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983. Bernard, Robert W. “The Rhetoric of God in the Figurative Exegesis of Augustine.” 88-99

Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on His Sixtieth Birthday. Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem, eds. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.

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Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969. Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther. Trans. James L. Schaff. 3 vols. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985-93. Bright, Pamela J., ed. Augustine and the Bible. Vol. 2. The Bible through the Ages. Notre

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Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 2000.

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