# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S57
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A New Homiletical Monthly. 57

...is advertised in this issue: "The Lutheran translation has been thoroughly compared with the original text and, with consultation of the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and the German Bible works of J. F. Meyer, Stier, De Wette, etc., corrected in many places." Will the congregations, then, agree that from now on their children are to learn different verses out of the catechism than they learned in their youth, even while they still find them differently worded in their old Bible? Or does one not consult the congregations at all, but instead, in properly hierarchical fashion, introduce such newfangled books on one's own self-appointed scholarly authority? What Sunday-school directors, church council, or other ecclesiastical body can have commissioned Schaff to turn the Lutheran translation into a Schaff translation? Who has examined the "corrected" passages? Or could Luther, Melanchthon, Cruciger, etc., indeed err, while Dr. Schaff, with his advanced scholarship, cannot? And what, then, are these corrections? We do not know the catechism, but judging by the samples that lie before us in his sermon, a petty, opinionated, quite uncomprehending spirit must prevail in the corrections in many places. Let the reader hear and judge for himself whether I have said too much about a man who lays so presumptuous a hand upon the sanctuary of our German church. John 17:24, Luther translates: "for thou hast loved me before the world was founded." The learned Schaff corrects this: "for thou hast loved me before the foundation of the world." John 1:1, Luther: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word." Schaff: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 5:26, Luther: "As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son also to have life in himself." Schaff: "As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself." Psalm 19:3, Luther: "One day tells it to the next, and one night declares it to the next." Schaff: "One day tells it to the next, and one night proclaims it to the next." On one occasion Schaff even "improves" Luther by way of a Ballhorn [i.e., a corruption masquerading as a correction]. Luther says at Romans 8:32: "God has not spared his own Son." Schaff: "God has not spared his only-begotten Son." But the text in fact reads "τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ" [his own son], and there is no other reading of this verse 32. The improvement of Psalm 139:14, where Luther translates: "I thank thee, Lord, that I am wonderfully made," whereas Schaff has instead: "that I am fearfully and wonderfully made," is somewhat more intelligible, but likewise quite insignificant and wholly superfluous.

Among the "homiletical rules and counsels," also from the editor, Dr. Schaff, one finds some strange things — for example, No. 3: "A preacher must have a twofold call: an inward one from the Holy Spirit, and an outward one from the lawful authorities of the church. Without such a call he has no authority, and is a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." Here Schaff, quite sadly, confuses the nature of a