Of course, this is a falsehood. Luther, himself, in his Table Talks said, "When I was young I acquainted myself with the Bible -- read the same often, so that I knew where any reference was contained and could be found when anyone spoke about it." Luther's translation of the New Testament was not published until 1522, and his version of the Old Testament was not published until 1534.

Catholics, between the years 1466 and 1522, had already published fourteen complete editions of the Bible in high German and five in low German. During this same period of time, that is, from 1450 to 1520, Catholics had also published 156 Latin, 6 Hebrew editions of the Bible, besides 11 complete editions in Italian, 10 in French, 2 in Bohemian 1 in Flemish, and 1 in Russian.

The objection to Luther's translation is summed up by a non-Catholic as follows:

"He has in many places confused, stultified and perverted the old trustworthy text to its great disadvantage, and also poisoned it with heretical glosses and prefaces -- he almost everywhere forces the Scriptures on the question of faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of." (Janssen, History of the German People, XIV, 425).

We know that he ridiculed the Book of Ecclesiastes, that he rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse as not being Apostolic, and that he called the Epistle of St. James, "An Epistle of straw." He changed the meaning in Romans 3:20 and Romans 4:15 by adding the word "only." Likewise, he added the word "alone" in Romans 3:28. When this was pointed out to him, he made this comment:

"If your new papist makes much ado about the word 'alone' just say straight out to him: 'Dr. Luther will have it so, and says, papist and donkey are one and the same things; thus I will and am determined to have it; my will is the reason'."