The knight in the castle
Luther hidden at Wartburg, translates the Bible
Luther leaves Worms under imperial safe conduct. On the road back to Wittenberg, he is ambushed by masked horsemen — arranged by his protector, the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, who has been warned that the emperor intends to act against Luther once the safe conduct expires.
Luther disappears. The world thinks he is dead or kidnapped.
He is at the Wartburg — a castle above the Thuringian forest — disguised as a knight named Junker Jörg, growing a beard, learning to ride, writing letters in secret to his colleagues.
And translating the New Testament.
He does it in ten weeks. From Erasmus's Greek text — the same text the humanists have been using for years — into German so clear and natural that it sounds not like a translation but like a German writer who happened to be an eyewitness.
Luther does not translate into the formal written German of the educated class. He translates into the language of the marketplace, the home, the trades. He walks around Wittenberg later and listens to how people actually speak, and uses those words.
When he returns to Wittenberg in March 1522 — against everyone's advice, because his movement is fracturing without him — he brings the translation with him.
Printed in September 1522, the September Testament sells out its first edition of three thousand copies in weeks. A second edition is issued before the year is out.
The Bible that Wycliffe began, that Tyndale will continue, that the King James translators will complete — Luther begins it in ten weeks in a castle, writing as a fugitive.
“I wanted to make Moses so German that no one would suspect he was a Jew.”
— Martin Luther, on his translation method, c. 1522 AD
“They read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading.”
Luther translated the New Testament in ten weeks while in hiding, under an assumed name, with the emperor looking for him.
The conditions were not ideal. The situation was not safe. The time was not adequate. He did it anyway, as fast and as well as he could, because the people needed it and he was the one who could do it.
The September Testament that came out of those ten weeks changed the German language and the German church. It gave ordinary Germans the scripture in their own speech for the first time. It is one of the great acts of linguistic and theological service in history.
Done in hiding. Done in ten weeks. Done by a fugitive with a fake beard.
The conditions are rarely ideal when the most important work gets done. What are you waiting for that you could begin now, in the conditions you actually have, with the time you actually have?