# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S210
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

210 Christian Catechism; A Guide to Religious Instruction.

Mark 2:1; although we gladly grant that in passages of this kind the notion of motion is indeed always included. In his great zeal to improve everything, the author has apparently overlooked the actual purpose, namely to reconcile the English and German catechisms; for the English Bible likewise has "in him." When the good Doctor translates Hebrews 11:3 as "that the world ....... is prepared," it is hard to see what new light is thereby kindled for a German Bible reader. Even the simple verb ἀρτίζω already carries the meaning of completing. Luther's translation is accused of obscurity at the passage Psalm 76:11. But every reasonable, ordinary man of German tongue will perhaps be just as capable of judging the obscurity or non-obscurity of this passage as a Doctor and Professor filled with many philologies and other learning. The new translation reads: "Through the raging of men thou layest up honor, and thou girdest thyself with the remainder of their wrath." As for the literal translation, there is indeed no doubt that chagar means "to gird oneself"; but it is also used, for example at 2 Kings 3:21, of girding on the sword — that is, of being armed — so that Luther has certainly hit upon the true sense of the passage. Here too the author senses that it is not Luther's translation, but really his own, that suffers from obscurity, which is why he further adds in parenthesis: "The sense is: even the ungodly must, though unwillingly, serve God and further his honor." Indeed, even the English Bible ought not to be so obscure: Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. The new translator begins the passage Romans 8:38 thus: "I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers," etc. The only wonder here is that the good Doctor, in his effort to translate literally, has not also rendered "powers," δυνάμεις, in the plural. Just as literally he translates John 1:1, Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, "the Word was God." Wherein the correction lies in this passage is hard to see; the English Bible, too, has it so — but with just as much right. Even granting, however, that the new translation is mostly literal, as for instance at Romans 8:3, "God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh," it is nevertheless quite another thing whether it is also readily intelligible to a German. However important it is that a translation not move too freely, the difference between languages nevertheless requires that our German Bible, as far as construction is concerned, be guided not so much by the then-current Greek manner of thought and speech as by German usage. How close both translations have come to the German ear the reader will be able to judge for himself. So it stands with Luke 2:49: "Knew ye not," etc. That Luther, incidentally, did not pluck the present tense "wisset" out of thin air is shown by the fact that secular writers use the Greek pluperfect in the sense of the present. But through the new version the sense of a passage is also at times weakened, for example at John 18:37: "That"