Luther's 1545 Bible - in English by… DeepL Translator (The LED Bible)

[2024-04-01: this publication is now in print, see that blog post; 2021-09-13: added note on Rom. 3:28 in red]

      The success that I experienced with the DeepL Translator, a German based service, on my Der Lutheraner project caused me to attempt to do something that I have desired to do many times – machine translate Luther's 1545 German Bible, his final translation. It is strange to me that Luther's German translation seems to have been ignored when Lutherans produced an English translation, e.g. the AAT, NET, and now the Wisconsin Synod's EHV. They all wanted to translate from the original languages of Greek and Hebrew. And yet many times these followed previous English translations, even with their errors. Most, like the LCMS, just follow the current fad and go with the popular "evangelical" translation, the NIV, and now the ESV. — The online translators seemed not good enough to reproduce in English what the German text said and how it said it, until DeepL came along.  So I decided to do a test file of a portion of Luther's 1545 German Bible.  And I was surprised again at how well the DeepL English translation came out.  It sounded much like the King James Version in many places, which pleased me.  And in the vast majority of cases, with a few exceptions, it was true to Luther.  What were my test verses? In the following sequence, hover over the Bible verse to get the KJV translation, then click on the corresponding Luther English version below it:

Gen. 4:1 — 2 Sam. 7:19 — Job 19:25-26 — Isaiah 7:14 — John 1:1

Luther   —    Luther     —      Luther     —      Luther     —   Luther

See also this blog post for other comparison points made by Prof. Ludwig Fuerbringer between Luther's 1545 translation and later "Revised" translations. [2021-09-13: Of course I should have mentioned that this version is the only English version that has Luther's translation of Romans 3:28 (see here and here):

“We hold therefore that a man is justified without works of the law, but by faith alone.”]

      So I processed and polished the whole text of Luther's 1545 German into English.  Considerable time was taken to remove obvious errors, to format, and to hyperlink for ease of navigation. Errors still remain, but they are surprisingly few. — Although this does not contain the Apocrypha, a nice bonus is the chapter headings and other notations that were included in orthodox German Lutheran Bibles. One feature that I would like to add in the future is the emphasis of some verses and phrases in these same German Bibles.  But for now…

The following 5MB PDF is also available on Internet Archive.

A 2MB DOCX file of the above may be downloaded >>  HERE  <<.

      No longer will I be tied to translations made by Calvinists or Reformed translators who call themselves "evangelical".  Now I can have Luther's best translation.  This is the one that the Old German Missouri Synod used and defended.  This is the one that orthodox Lutheran theologians and dogmaticians studied, annotated, and published.  This begins to reverse the devastating effect of two World Wars: the loss of the German language among American Lutherans, and so Luther's Bible. — I will continue to use the KJV most of the time, but when it becomes more critical to get the correct translation, I will be consulting not only the original languages, but also Luther's 1545 Bible, now in English.  Maybe I will call it the

LED Bible — Luther in English by DeepL.