Hence the Anglo-American revision is much more thorough and complete. It embodies the
results of the latest critical and exegetical learning. It involves a reconstruction of the original text,
which the German Revision leaves almost untouched, as if all the pains-taking labors of critics
since the days of Bengel and Griesbach down to Lachmann and Tischendorf (not to speak of the
equally important labors of English scholars from Mill and Bentley to Westcott and Hort) had been
in vain.
As to translation, the English Revision removes not only misleading errors, but corrects the
far more numerous inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the minor details of grammar and vocabulary;
while the German Revision is confined to the correction of acknowledged mistranslations. The
German Revision of the New Testament numbers only about two hundred changes, the
Anglo-American thirty-six thousand. The revised German New Testament is widely circulated;
but of the provisional Probebibel, which embraces both Testaments, only five thousand copies were
printed and sold by the Canstein Bibelanstalt at Halle (as I learned there from Dr. Kramer, July,
1886). Of the revised English New Testament, a million copies were ordered from the Oxford
University Press before publication, and three million copies were sold in less than a year (1881).
The text was telegraphed from New York to Chicago in advance of the arrival of the book. Over
thirty reprints appeared in the United States. The Revised Old Testament excited less interest, but
tens of thousands of copies were sold on the day of publication (1885), and several American
editions were issued. The Bible, after all, is the most popular book In the world, and constantly
increasing in power and influence, especially with the English-speaking race. (For particulars on
the English Revision, see Schaff’s Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version,
New York, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 404 sqq., and the extensive Revision literature, pp. 371 sqq.)
§ 64. Melanchthon’s Theology.
See Literature in § 38, pp. 182 sq. The 21st vol. of the "Corpus Reformatorum" (1106 fol. pages)
is devoted to the various editions of Melanchthon’s Loci Theologici, and gives bibliographical
lists (fol. 59 sqq.; 561 sqq.), and also an earlier outline from an unpublished MS. Comp. Carl
Schmidt, Phil. Mel., pp. 64–75; and on Melanchthon’s doctrinal changes, Schaff, Creeds of
Christendom, vol. 1. 261 sqq.
While Luther translated the New Testament on the Wartburg, Melanchthon prepared the first
system of Protestant theology at Wittenberg. Both drew from the same fountain, and labored for
the same end, but in different ways. Luther built up the Reformation among the people in the
German tongue; Melanchthon gave it methodical shape for scholars by his Latin writings. The
former worked in the quarries, and cut the rough blocks of granite; the latter constructed the blocks
into a habitable building. Luther expressed a modest self-estimate, and a high estimate of his friend,
when he said that his superiority was more "in the rhetorical way," while Melanchthon was "a better
logician and reasoner."