"The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me." So wrote Martin Luther, the great reformer who fought to give the Bible to the German people.
In translating the Bible for his fellow Germans, Luther opened floodgates of thought in Western Europe that could never again be shut. His Bible—the Luther Bible—set the standard for future translations of the Scriptures from Latin and Hebrew and Greek into languages ordinary people could understand—such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and English.
Luther's bold break from the Roman Catholic Church changed the face of Western Christendom forever. This, in turn, created a climate in which men, women, and children could finally own and read the Bible without fear of reprisal.
