Rosenzweig and Luther. The Concept of Faith in the Perspective of «New Thinking» and Bible Translation

In his “The Star of Redemption”, Rosenzweig engages not only in an argument with philosophy, but also with theology. Next to Augustine and Friedrich Schleiermacher Martin Luther was a counterpart in whose face he developed his dialogical “new thinking”. The essay takes up the traces of this dispute in the letters to focus here on Rosenzweig's reading of Ricarda Huch's “Luther’s Faith”. This literary picture is then related in a sketch to Luther's Reformation theology as it emerges from contemporary research. In a next step, the “Star” is interpreted as a book that, on the one hand, owes much to a previous reception of Luther, but on the other hand, also shows the Reformator's thinking in a new light. Finally, the late writings on the problem of translation come into view in order to justify Rosenzweig’s “Verdeutschung” of the Hebrew Bible, undertaken together with Buber, to Luther’s “German Bible”.