Luther's translation of the New Testament differed from earlier German versions in two ways. Firstly, he worked directly from the original Greek, whereas the

He wanted everyone to find God's speaking in the Bible.

others had translated Jerome's Latin version. This made the earlier works translations of a translation and therefore fairly unreliable. Secondly, since Luther grew up on the boundary between the two German languages, the dialect he spoke was a mixture of both High German and Low German. This was under God's sovereign hand. The result was that not only could the new version be read by all Germans without further translation, but eventually Luther's Bible also gave the nation of Germany a common language. Luther was determined to make his translation a book for the common man. He wanted everyone to find God's speaking in the Bible. No longer would religious churchmen be the sole interpreters of God's Word.

The first edition of Luther's New Testament translation was printed in September, 1522. It had no date and no indication of the printer nor the translator, both of whose lives were at stake in publishing such a book. Luther did not begin to translate the Old Testament until his return to Wittenberg, for he felt he needed help in such a great undertaking. In 1534, after fifty reprints and sixteen revisions of his translation of the New Testament, Luther published his first complete revised edition of the Bible.