# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1855_S128
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

128 On the Original Form of the Small Catechism, etc.

is found in the second, and since the Large Catechism could readily have appeared in the interval between these two editions of the Small Catechism; the latter is all the more probable because Dr. Luther wrote to his friend Hausmann on March 8, 1529: “The Catechism is not yet finished, but it will soon be finished.”

It is remarkable that no copy of the first edition of the Small Catechism is to be found anywhere, any more than of Luther’s hymns from the year 1529. Even the second original edition is known only from a description by Riederer, since no one to this day knows what became of it.

It was not until Pastor Mönckeberg found in the Hamburg City Library a Low German translation of the first edition from the year 1529, probably written by Dr. Bugenhagen, who at that time was preparing to set the churches of northern Germany in order; all the circumstances attest both to the authenticity of the first edition on which this translation was based and to the fidelity with which the latter was produced.

While the diligent antiquarian Versenmeyer was unable, in more than thirty years, to find any edition earlier than that of 1536, Lic. Schneider was fortunate enough to obtain an original edition from the year 1531 at a Hamburg auction. This now forms the basis of his critical edition of the Small Catechism, because it presents the Catechism in the form in which it remained, in all essential points—with the sole exception of the Fourth Commandment and the Table of Duties—until Luther’s death; on these two points as well, the Book of Concord follows this edition. Beneath the text, the variant readings from eight different separate editions of the Small Catechism and from nine different printings of it contained in the Large Catechism have been documented with the utmost precision. For this the Lutheran Church owes all the greater gratitude, since even the Book of Concord provides no entirely reliable basis for determining the original text—not even in Baumgarten’s very accurate edition, in which I found, on the whole, only two easily recognizable typographical errors in the text itself, and least of all in the very inaccurate New York reprint of Pipping’s inaccurate edition.

It may be asserted without exaggeration that in the past two centuries not as much has been done to clarify the history of the Small Catechism and restore its original text as has been accomplished in these two years through these two works.

(To be continued.)