Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched

After his stand at the Diet of Worms, Luther’s protector, Friedrich the Wise, staged a kidnapping of Luther to protect him. As a condemned heretic, Luther knew his life was in danger; the Catholic Church had ordered for him to be put to death. Luther had no idea that this kidnapping was fake, he thought he was about to die. Instead, he found himself delivered to Wartburg Castle for safekeeping. While living incognito (he grew a beard and used the name Junker George), Luther used this time in exile to translate the New Testament into the German language, completing his work in a mere eleven weeks.

Luther wasn’t the first to realize that the Word of God in the language of the people would turn the world upside down. He was following in the footsteps of others, like John Wycliffe and Jan Hus. Wycliffe had handwritten the Scriptures in English in the late 1300s. However, an event in 1516 would have a monumental impact on Bible translation. On March 1, 1516, a Dutch priest named Desiderius Erasmus published the Greek New Testament. It was the first published Greek text available to the public. It was this Greek New Testament that Luther used to translate into German. Instead of translating from the Latin Vulgate, the official Bible of the Catholic Church, Luther could work from the original language of the New Testament. William Tyndale would this Greek New Testament to translate into English.

It was while studying this New Testament that Luther came to understand that the Latin version used the word “penance” instead of the original word “repentance.” This led to Luther’s objection to the selling of indulgences. Erasmus never left the Catholic Church, but in publishing his Greek New Testament, it is said, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.”