LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

ZWECK: LUTHER ON JAMES 53
Up to this point we have had to do with the true and certain chief books
of the New Testament. The four which follow have from ancient times
had a different reputation. 6
The four books that follow are: Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation.
The question that arises is what Luther meant by saying that the whole
number of books prior to this are to be considered “the true and certain chief
books” of the New Testament, and what is the consequent status of the four
that follow. There are many who at this point begin to talk of “protocanonical”
books versus “deutero-canonical” books, as if we were dealing
with two different grades of canonicity, and thus two different degrees of
being God’s Word. That certainly was not Luther’s meaning. As the editor
of AE 35 notes, in a catalogue of “The Books of the New Testament” that
followed immediately upon his “Preface to the New Testament” Luther
listed, and numbered, 23 books of the New Testament, in the same order in
which they appear in today’s English Bibles. The four books in question,
however, are listed separately at the end, and are not numbered. This
catalogue is printed in the Weimar Edition, 7 but is not reproduced in the
American Edition. This is precisely the same procedure that Luther later
(from 1534 onwards) followed in listing the apocryphal books of the Old
Testament. 8 It is self-evident that Luther intended thereby to grant them
similar status.
5. WERE THE OT APOCRYPHA SCRIPTURE FOR LUTHER
What was Luther’s estimation of the status of the Old Testament
Apocrypha It is clear that he did not consider them to be part of the canon
of Scripture. They appear in his German Bible for the first time in 1534,
when the Old Testament was published as a complete unit for the first time.
Earlier editions of the Pentateuch had contained a list of the “24” canonical
books of the Old Testament, numbered in sequence, in the same order which
they still occupy in the English Bible. These 24 books, as the Jews counted
them, include all thirty-nine books which we today have in the Old
Testament (counting the twelve Minor Prophets as one book, and Samuel,
Kings, and Chronicles as one book each, and adding Lamentations to
Jeremiah). After this list follows an unnumbered list of the apocryphal
books: Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Ezra, the Book of Wisdom, Wise Man, and
Maccabees. 9
6 AE 35:394.
7 WA DB 6:12.
8 WA DB 1:35.
9 AE 35:337 n. 1.