Can only reading the Bible convert anyone?

      The following short blurb appeared in Der Lutheraner and caused me to rejoice at its testimony by the Old German Missouri Synod.  Ask any LC-MS pastor today the question above and you will at best get an equivocal answer.  Not so by Der Lutheraner, vol. 8 (August 4, 1852) p. 198-199:

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Conversion through reading the Bible.

At the beginning of the 17th century, a Jew named [Christian ben Meir Biberbach] Gerson lived in Recklingshausen in Westphalia. Besides the sin of usury, which completely dominated him, there lived in his heart a bitter enmity against Christianity, which often gave vent to blasphemies against Jesus. He, too, seemed to be under the judgment of hardening, with which the unfortunate Israel has been punished for 1800 years after the rejection and cruel murder of its Messiah. But what happened? Once a poor Christian widow came to the usurer to borrow some money from him against high interest. But she had nothing to pledge for it but a beautiful copy of the New Testament Scriptures in Lutheran translation. Gerson finally accepted the pledge. But when he saw that it was the book of the Christians, an eagerness arose in him to know what foolish things might be written in it. He takes two other Jews with him and reads the holy book with them. At the beginning, all of them spill out terrible blasphemies about what they have read. But Gerson, the deeper he gets into it, becomes more and more restless. He feels emotions in himself that he never felt before. He looks up the passages of the prophets in which, according to the testimony of the evangelists, Jesus of Nazareth is prophesied as the Messiah of the people of Israel and of all the nations of the earth. “There I found,” he himself wrote in a book he later published on the Talmud [Des jüdischen Talmuds fürnehmster Inhalt], “such a light that I have to thank God for it.” He was overcome by truth. He therefore went to Halberstadt, where he took lessons for a year from a godly preacher and was then baptized. But after God had shown him mercy and had so graciously saved him from great hellish darkness, the desire arose in him to become an instrument through which others could also share in this grace. He therefore studied theology in Helmstädt, taught many distinguished persons the Hebrew language, which he understood thoroughly, published several writings to expose the Jewish errors and finally died as a pastor in the principality of Anhalt, September 25, 1627.

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     I would repeat a statement, from a previous blog post, by Prof. Peter Nafzger of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, son of Samuel Nafzger, from his book Towards a Cruciform Theology of Scripture, p. 111): 

"Luther would also refer to Scripture as a ‘means-of-grace-word.’” Nafzger immediately follows this with the comment: “But this was not his normal way of speaking. He usually emphasized the need for the oral proclamation [over reading?] of the Word, as well as Paul’s comment that faith comes through ‘hearing’".

Prof. Nafzger explicitly wants to teach that "hearing" the Word excludes the reading of Scripture. But Merriam-Webster includes the following in its definition of "hearing": "to be generally known or appreciated" which can also be achieved by only reading. Or does Prof. Nafzger think that his book can only be "heard" if it is audibly heard, and not read?