I love this old German bible that I bought on eBay recently. The images are a little spooky...a couple of them quite graphic. I would love to add translations to each of the images. Tom Paper 4/14/2022

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11/25/25

Das Neue Testament from 1827 “nach der deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers” is a 19th‑century printed edition of Luther’s German New Testament, produced when his text had long been the standard Protestant Bible in German‑speaking communities, including immigrant communities in North America. It does not represent a new translation, but a reprint (with minor editorial and typographical adjustments) of Luther’s established New Testament text in a contemporary book format.​

Historical context

• Martin Luther first published his German New Testament, often titled “Das Newe Testament Deutzsch,” in 1522, translating from the Greek and Latin into an accessible Saxon German that became foundational for later standard German.​
• By the 18th and early 19th century, Luther’s Bible was so dominant among Protestants that printers in Germany and abroad routinely issued new editions for church, home, and school use, often updating typefaces, orthography, and paratexts while retaining the Luther translation itself.​

The 1827 edition itself

• An 1827 “Das Neue Testament” based on Luther’s translation appears as part of a complete Luther Bible printed in Philadelphia by J. G. Ritter, aimed at German‑speaking Protestants in the United States. These editions usually have a separate title page for the New Testament, two‑column blackletter or roman type, and sometimes omit or separately paginate the Apocrypha while clearly stating that the text follows Luther’s German Bible.​
• Bibliographical descriptions note features such as chapter summaries (“kurzer Inhalt eines jeden Capitels”), cross‑references, and lists of Sunday and feast‑day Epistle and Gospel readings, which made the volume practical for both private devotion and liturgical reading.​

Relation to Luther’s original work

• Textually, an 1827 Luther‑based New Testament stands downstream of centuries of minor revisions Luther and later editors made between 1522 and 1545 and in subsequent standardizations; it reflects that received “Lutherbibel” tradition rather than Luther’s earliest Wartburg draft.​
• The 1827 printing participates in the broader reception of Luther’s Bible as a linguistic and confessional touchstone: it preserves his characteristic renderings and phrasing (with updated spelling), so readers in 1827 encountered essentially the same theological and literary voice that had shaped German Protestantism since the Reformation.​

Source: Perplexity.ai

--G. Ly

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