Editing Book of Concord (section)

==English translations==
English translations of individual documents of ''The Book of Concord'', notably ''The Augsburg Confession'', were available since the 16th century.<ref>''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church'', Theodore G. Tappert, editor, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), v.</ref> The first complete English translation of ''The Book of Concord'' was the 1851 Henkel edition followed by a second edition in 1854. These volumes included historical introductions.

[[Henry Eyster Jacobs|Henry E. Jacobs]] and others published the next English version in 1882 with a revised "People's Edition" in 1911. The 1882 edition was accompanied by a companion volume that contained historical introductions and English translations of other documents illustrative of the history of ''The Book of Concord''.

The third complete English translation, which also included the German and Latin texts, was published in 1921 as a jubilee observance of the 400th anniversary of the Reformation (1917) called the ''Concordia Triglotta: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church, German-Latin English'' edited by Friederich Bente.<ref>''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church'', Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), vii-viii.</ref> This edition introduced the practice of inserting in square brackets the translations of variant readings of either the Latin translation of the German or the German translation of the Latin text. A smaller edition with just the English text was also published.

The differences of the German translation of ''The Apology of the Augsburg Confession'' from the original Latin text were made apparent by Bente's insertion within square brackets of the variant readings of his English translation of the German text into the main body of his translation of the original Latin text. [[Justus Jonas]], who had originally translated the ''Apology'' from Latin into German, made use of both the quarto and the octavo editions. The other reason for the differences is the "looseness" of the Jonas translation that is more like a paraphrase than a translation.<ref>Roland F. Ziegler, "The New English Translation of ''The Book of Concord'' (Augsburg/Fortress 2000): Locking the Barn Door After ...," ''Concordia Theological Quarterly'', 66 (April 2002) 2:150.</ref>

With the appearance of the 1930 ''Bekenntnisschriften'' [[Textual criticism|critical text]], a new English version was deemed desirable. This was begun but left unfinished by John C. Mattes, who died in 1948. In 1959, the "Tappert" edition was produced, with Theodore G. Tappert as general editor and translator and with [[Jaroslav Pelikan]], Robert H. Fisher, and Arthur Carl Piepkorn as additional translators.<ref>''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church'', Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), viii.</ref> This edition discontinued the practice of inserting translations of variant readings in square brackets.<ref>''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church''. Theodore G. Tappert, translator and editor, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), iii.</ref> However, it began the practice of providing the translations of both the German and Latin texts of the Augsburg Confession since both texts of that confession are considered authoritative. The manner of presentation was the translation of the German text on the top of the page, that of the Latin on the bottom.

An extensive revision of the Tappert edition was published in 2000, translated and edited by [[Robert Kolb]] and Timothy J. Wengert. As with the Tappert edition, the "Kolb-Wengert Edition" was translated by scholars from two different Lutheran denominations (Kolb of the [[Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod]] and Wengert of the [[Evangelical Lutheran Church in America]]).<ref name="Concord 2000">''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church'', Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 107-109.</ref> This edition provided the translations of both German and Latin texts of the Augsburg Confession on alternating pages. The translation team also included Eric Gritsch, Charles Arand, William Russell, James Schaaf, and Jane Strohl.

The Kolb-Wengert edition exhibits one of the difficulties in the translation of ''The Apology of the Augsburg Confession''. Two editions of ''The Apology'' were published in 1531, namely, the "[[quarto]] edition" and the "[[octavo]] edition", which are so designated based on the format in which they were printed.<ref name="Concord 2000"/> The quarto edition was printed with the first publication of ''The Augsburg Confession'' in April or May 1531; hence, the name "editio princeps" ["first edition"]. The octavo edition followed in September, 1531.<ref name="ReferenceA">''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church'', Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 108.</ref>

The Kolb-Wengert translation of ''The Apology of the Augsburg Confession'' uses the later octavo edition text of 1531 rather than the earlier quarto edition text of 1531, with the variant readings of the quarto edition appearing in italics. The Tappert edition had used the quarto edition as the basis of its translation.<ref>''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church'', Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 108-109.</ref> The editors and translators of the Kolb-Wengert edition decided to use the octavo edition as the main source for their translation because they believed the octavo edition was the official text of ''The Apology''. This is the position of the German scholar Christian Peters, who claimed the quarto edition was merely a stage on the way to a definitive text, i.e. the octavo edition.<ref>Christian Peters, ''Apologia Confessionis Augustanae. Untersuchungen zur Textgeschichte einer lutherischen Bekenntnisschrift'', (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1997); cf. Roland F. Ziegler, "The New English Translation of ''The Book of Concord'' (Augsburg/Fortress 2000): Locking the Barn Door After ...," ''Concordia Theological Quarterly'', 66 (April 2002) 2:150.</ref>

The octavo edition Latin text was utilized in a private Latin edition of ''The Book of Concord'' in 1580.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Scholars question whether or not this octavo edition text can be considered the text approved by the Lutheran Church in the 16th century.<ref>Roland F. Ziegler, "The New English Translation of ''The Book of Concord'' (Augsburg/Fortress 2000): Locking the Barn Door After ...," ''Concordia Theological Quarterly'', 66 (April 2002) 2:150-151.</ref> The official 1584 Latin ''Book of Concord'' has the quarto edition text as its text of ''The Apology of the Augsburg Confession''.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Another notable feature of the Kolb-Wengert edition is the setting off of "the [[filioque]]" of the [[Nicene Creed]] in square brackets.<ref>''The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church'', Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 23; cf. Roland F. Ziegler, "The New English Translation of ''The Book of Concord'' (Augsburg/Fortress 2000): Locking the Barn Door After ...," ''Concordia Theological Quarterly'', 66 (April 2002) 2:149-150.</ref>

The most recent English version of the Book of Concord was published in 2005 to commemorate the 425th anniversary of its publication and the 475th anniversary of the presentation of ''The Augsburg Confession.'' Entitled ''Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions—A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord'', it is a revision of the English text of the ''Concordia Triglotta'' and was edited by Paul T. McCain, Edward A. Engelbrecht, Robert C. Baker, and Gene E. Veith.<ref name="McCain">Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Paul McCain, ed., St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005.</ref> A second edition followed in 2006.