Darby Bible - German Translation

German Translation

The Darby Bible in German is known as the "Elberfelder Bible". The erstwhile Count Julius Anton Eugen Wilhelm von Poseck (1816–1896) had been translating some N.T. Epistles into German. In 1851 he sent his work in progress to J N Darby for review. This stimulated Darby to begin work in 1854 on a full translation and he proceeded on the German translation with von Poseck and Carl Brockhaus (1822–1899). The German NT was published by Brockhaus in 1855. Julius von Poseck supplied the German language skills for the NT work, but when he moved to 2 Algernon Road, Lewisham, London (SE13) the Old Testament translation was made by J N Darby, Carl Brockhaus and a Dutch Hebraist, Hermanus Cornelis Voorhoeve (1837–1901). The OT work commenced 1869 and was completed in 1871, when the whole Bible was published. Since then there have been a number of significant updates and revisions, including the revisions in 1960, 1975, 1985 and most recently in 2003. Among the revisers of this edition were Arend Remmers and Christian Briem. The publisher's description says, 'Elberfelder Übersetzung in überarbeiteter Fassung 2003 Neubearbeitung . . . mit dem Ziel, weiterhin genaue, wortgetreue Übersetzung bei verständlicher Sprache zu bieten.' CSV publisher.

Darby's principles of translation are in the Introduction to his German translation of the New Testament:

"While the scholar can examine . . . the original text, the way for it is closed to the unlearned and to the one who does not know the language of the original text. It was therefore our endeavour and our purpose to come to the aid of the latter and to present to them, with little expense, an as faithful and exact rendering of the Word of God, in their own language, as possible. Any translation will, indeed, be more or less imperfect, and how great the difficulties are to transfer the expressions of a language, especially those of the rich Greek language, into another language, will only those recognize who have attempted to execute a translation . . . It is certainly possible that we could have clothed some passage into a more beautiful German; only, without being slaves of the words, the thought always guided us that an as faithful rendering of the original text as possible outweighed any other consideration, so much the more as we believe with a perfect conviction in the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures as the revelation of the infinite wisdom of God and the expression of His gracious character in Christ Jesus. Seeing, however, that no one is able to grasp the whole extent of this revelation and that there is often a meaning hidden within a sentence that transcends the comprehension of the translator, which is lost in a free translation, but could be discovered in a more exact one through a deeper instruction of the Holy Spirit, it is thus an imperative necessity to reproduce the Word of the original text as it were in a mirror."