The Reading Asabthani in Luther’s Translation of Matthew 27.46

Abstract

This essay argues that Martin Luther’s choice of asabthani in Matt 27.46 instead of sabachthani in his source text, Erasmus’s 1519 edition of the New Testament, was based on the reading azabt(h)ani occurring in many editions of the Latin Vulgate printed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Although Luther based his translation primarily on the Greek and Latin texts included in Erasmus’s Novum Testamentum of 1519, he repeatedly preferred readings of the Vulgate to those of Erasmus. This also applies to this reading asabthani in Matt 27.46.