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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Luther's Chronology of the World, Part 2 (English translation)

In an earlier post Part 1 (from March 2012, see Table of Contents), I introduced the work of Luther called Chronology of the World, or Luther's Chronology or Calculation of the Years of the World; in German it's Luthers Chronikon oder Berechnung der Jahre der Welt.  This work was published in volume 14 (columns 484 - 723) of the St. Louis Edition of Luther's Works, and Franz Pieper hailed it as a wonderful work that was
"...particularly important, because Luther here clearly provides the authority of Scripture over all human research and science."
Luther and Pieper say we should believe the Bible, even where it is contradicted by "human research and science".  Everybody knows that the Bible is constantly contradicted in its details in today's modern world, not only by "technical science", but also by archaeologists who may think they have found physical evidences that contradict the Biblical account.

This work of Luther was not included in the original English translations of the American Edition of Luther's Works, nor is it planned to be in the "New Series" of the same name that is in the process of being published now by Concordia Publishing House.  None of the "endorsements" for the "New Series" (Harvard! Boston! Nebraska! Princeton! Notre Dame! Marquette!) lament the fact that Luther's Chronikon is not included.  One wonders why this work is not included... could it be because they don't have space for it, or could it be that they don't believe the Biblical account is true in all its details, including the years of the world... and so it would be too embarrassing before the world?  Could it be that they believe "human research and science" over the Bible?

Could it be they might believe whatever NASA finds in its "research" regarding the origins of the universe?  We are all waiting breathlessly for the great finding on Mars now.  Maybe modern science will put the findings of the "God particle" to good use and have it tell us from whence it came?  Maybe nanotechnology will help us in this quest?  Maybe our universe isn't just millions or billions of years old, but a googol years old?

But there was a Lutheran pastor who has translated this work of Luther, not as "interesting stuff", but because the Biblical account is true.  Yes, the Bible is true...  our universe is only a few thousand years old.  The Lutheran pastor was Pastor Kenneth K. Miller of the Lutheran Churches of the Reformation or LCR.  I received a copy of this translation from a Lutheran pastor in Australia some years ago and am publishing this paper now on my blog.  Pastor Miller has since passed on and I want to honor his memory with this important translation work.  The scanned copy is a bit rough in some areas for several reasons:
  1. The Australian copies were done on their A4 (Metric?) size paper which is narrower and longer than American standard 8-1/2" x 11" size of Miller's original paper, hence some pages are a bit skewed.
  2. Evidently the originals had been 3-hole punched, so a few pages show text cut off by the punched holes.
  3. Some pages are missing — I don't know why yet.  It could be that the missing pages were blank (without any events) in the original St. Louis Edition and therefore extraneous.
Dr. Martin Luther's Chronology
Tr. by Kenneth K. Miller

Download scan in PDF format (~ 1.5 MB) as of September 6, 2012:
Translated by Kenneth K. Miller
Pastor
A slightly higher resolution version, about 4 MB, is here.

Because of the great amount of information in this work of Luther, I will present further explanations as I can and provide clear links between various posts on this subject.  In the next Part 3, I provide a download of the original version from the St. Louis Edition.
[Added image Dec. 21, 2014]
In the next Part 3...

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