# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1864_S353
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume X.    December 1864.    No. 12.

(Submitted by Pastor Keyl, Sr.)

Proposal and Specimen
for the Preparation of a Bible Commentary from the Writings of Dr. Luther
and of the Lutheran Theologians of the Reformation Era.

Dr. Luther mentions in a letter to Lauterbach that several friends had asked him to set everything else aside and write summaries and glosses on the whole Bible. (W. A. 21, 1532, from the year 1544.) In another place he expresses his often-cherished wish "that a short commentary might be made on the whole Bible for preachers, especially in Latin, as the good man Nicholas of Lyra undertook, which work would not be to be despised, if it were improved." (14, 353.)

The preparation of such a commentary from Dr. Luther's writings was urgently recommended, before all others, by C. Porta in his Pastorale Lutheri of the year 1582. He does this in chapter 5, section 11, where he first expresses his regret that it was not possible for Dr. Luther himself to produce such a work, for it could not be paid for with any amount of gold, and then continues: "so we rightly thank the dear God from our hearts for that which he has given us through this man out of undeserved grace, who nevertheless has commented and written so much on and about the biblical books that an almost complete Glossa ordinaria on Holy Scripture could be assembled out of his books, one that would far surpass all others; for although the patres orthodoxi in prima ecclesia (the orthodox fathers in the early Church), and afterward also many eminent and unimpeachable theologians of our own time, have written useful and excellent commentaries and explanations on almost all the books of Holy Scripture, they are nevertheless, both in rebus (in matters) and in verbis (in words), not to be compared with the inspired expositions of our Luther — which I can prove and demonstrate with the following testimonies of highly praised and well-deserving theologians." Here follow testimonies from Erasmus, Melanchthon, Brentius, Regius, Weller, and M. Neander (see the "Lutheraner," vol. 3, no. 9).

In the following, section 12, Porta gives instructions on how such a Glossa ordinaria should be compiled. First he urgently recommends to all preachers