From the time frame prior to Luther, wiki has:
“There were Bible translations present in manuscript form at a considerable scale already in the thirteenth and the fourteenth century (e.g. the New Testament in the Augsburger Bible of 1350 and the Old Testament in the Wenzel Bible of 1389). There is ample evidence for the general use of the entire vernacular German Bible in the fifteenth century.[2] In 1466, before Martin Luther was even born, the Mentel Bible, a High-German vernacular Bible was printed at Strassburg. This edition was based on a no-longer-existing fourteenth-century manuscript translation of the Vulgate from the area of Nurenberg. Until 1518, it was reprinted at least 13 times. In 1478-1479, two Low German Bible editions were published in Cologne, one in the Niederrheinish or West-Westfalian dialect and another in the dialect of Lower Saxony or the East-Westfalian dialect. In 1494, another Low-German Bible was published in Lübeck, and in 1522, the last pre-Lutheran Bible, the Low-German Halberstaedter Bible was published.”
So lets look at these.
Augsburger Bible & Wenzel Bible. I can’t find any discussion of numbers, but the pictures I saw on the Internet included color pictures (http://cranfordville.com/IBC%20Cologne/BibleSession17.pdf), so it is pretty safe to say they were not published in huge numbers for common distribution.
Mentel Bible. High German. Over a dozen editions printed before 1522. High German suggests it wasn’t exactly meant for the common folk. It is described as a literal translation from the Vulgate, and this extract seems to find it deficient (http://books.google.com/books?id=jTWlhe7wlN8C&pg=PA434&lpg=PA434&dq=mentel+bible&source=bl&ots=dRrrjFUlhJ&sig=IIB6hMbcs8WJMLj0pK7y4V068SE&hl=en&ei=J-XyTMaRNc-F4QbO7v2NAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=mentel%20bible&f=false).
Still, that seems to have been the best option for a German wanting to read the scripture prior to Luther.
Were Bibles totally unavailable in German prior to Luther? No. Did Luther’s translation, and his zeal to see it in the hands of commoners, do what the Catholic Church had failed to sponsor for a thousand years? Yes, undeniably.
You wrote:
“Mentel Bible. High German. Over a dozen editions printed before 1522. High German suggests it wasn’t exactly meant for the common folk.”
FALSE!!! High German was a REGIONAL DIALECT. It was spoken by EVERYONE within certain regions of Germany. Look at this map and you’ll know better (again): http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.language-capitals.com/images/karte.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.language-capitals.com/german_varieties_high_german.php&usg=__NLA0gHtnH7m0frPgn3Bu9wguES0=&h=325&w=355&sz=36&hl=en&start=11&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=aPSyUHhGjSsuyM:&tbnh=111&tbnw=121&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmap%2Bhigh%2Bgerman%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbs%3Disch:1
“ It is described as a literal translation from the Vulgate, and this extract seems to find it deficient”
The description is irrelevant. The people of Germany clearly found it worthwhile or it would not have gone to a dozen printings.
“Augsburger Bible & Wenzel Bible. I can’t find any discussion of numbers, but the pictures I saw on the Internet included color pictures (http://cranfordville.com/IBC%20Cologne/BibleSession17.pdf), so it is pretty safe to say they were not published in huge numbers for common distribution.”
What? So were stained glass windows only for clergy? After all they had color pictures. That comment of yours has to be one of the most bizarre I have ever heard from an anti-Catholic and that is saying something. Ever hear of Pauper Bibles? They were almost nothing but pictures. They were to instruct the illiterate. Also, if you knew what you were talking about, and you definitely are not showing any evidence of that, you would know that you’re talking about a mss. Bible. They were hand written, illuminated by hand and would be on the higher end of the cost scale – especially on velum. That did not mean that cheaper Bibles were not produced. We know that they were.
“Still, that seems to have been the best option for a German wanting to read the scripture prior to Luther.”
Maybe, maybe not. There were plenty of options.
“Were Bibles totally unavailable in German prior to Luther? No. Did Luther’s translation, and his zeal to see it in the hands of commoners, do what the Catholic Church had failed to sponsor for a thousand years? Yes, undeniably.”
False. Again, we know that there were plenty of Bibles before Luther. We know people owned them and read them. You keep failing. In post after post, you keep failing.
You cite wikipedia so often that it is strange that you didn’t cite it when it said this:
“There were Bible translations present in manuscript form at a considerable scale already in the thirteenth and the fourteenth century (e.g. the New Testament in the Augsburger Bible of 1350 and the Old Testament in the Wenzel Bible of 1389). There is ample evidence for the general use of the entire vernacular German Bible in the fifteenth century.[2] In 1466, before Martin Luther was even born, the Mentel Bible, a High-German vernacular Bible was printed at Strassburg. This edition was based on a no-longer-existing fourteenth-century manuscript translation of the Vulgate from the area of Nurenberg. Until 1518, it was reprinted at least 13 times. In 1478-1479, two Low German Bible editions were published in Cologne, one in the Niederrheinish or West-Westfalian dialect and another in the dialect of Lower Saxony or the East-Westfalian dialect. In 1494, another Low-German Bible was published in Lübeck, and in 1522, the last pre-Lutheran Bible, the Low-German Halberstaedter Bible was published. In total, there were at least eighteen complete German Bible editions, ninety editions in the vernacular of the Gospels and the readings of the Sundays and Holy Days, and some fourteen German Psalters by the time Luther first published his own New Testament translation.[3]”
This is especially strange since you mentioned the Wenzel Bible and it’s on that page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Bible_translations
