Bible translations into German

The most influential is Luther's translation, which established High German as the literary language throughout Germany by the middle of the seventeenth century and which still continues to be most widely used in the German-speaking world today.

The earliest known and partly still available Germanic version of the Bible was the fourth century Gothic translation of Wulfila (c. 311–380).

This version, translated primarily from the Greek, recorded or established much of the Germanic Christian vocabulary that is still in use today.

[1] There is ample evidence for the general use of the entire vernacular German Bible in the fifteenth century.

This edition was based on a no-longer-extant fourteenth-century manuscript translation of the Vulgate from the area of Nuremberg.

In total, there were at least eighteen Catholic 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.

In 2017, on the 500th anniversary of Reformation Day, a completely revised version of the Luther Bible was published.

The translation is mainly due to Zwingli and his friend Leo Jud, pastor at the St. Peter parish.

Johannes Crellius (1599–1633) and Joachim Stegmann, Sr., did a German version of the Socinians' Racovian New Testament, published at Raków in 1630.

[9] Dominic de Brentano translated the New Testament and the Pentateuch and Anton Dereser translated the rest of the Bible; this was published at Frankfurt in sixteen volumes from 1815 to 1828, and then was revised by Johann Martin Augustin Scholz and published in seventeen volumes from 1828 to 1837.

Rabbi Michael Sachs worked with Arnheim and Füchs on a new translation of the Tenakh published at Berlin in 1838.

Loch and Reischl did a translation from the Vulgate, compared with the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, published at Regensburg from 1851 to 1866.

[11] Other well known German language Bible versions are: Zürcher Bibel, Elberfelder, Schlachter, Buber-Rosenzweig (OT only), Pattloch, Herder, Hoffnung für Alle (Hope for All), Die Gute Nachricht (The Good News), Gute Nachricht Bibel (Good News Bible, revision of "Gute Nachricht"), Bibel in gerechter Sprache (Bible in equitable language, i.e. non-sexist).