One is the Wycliffe New Testament 1388, the other is a study that examines The Case Against Johann Reuchlin. The first book is the audacious translation into English of the New Testament long before there was a hint of what we now call the Protestant Reformation; the other book is about a jurist and humanist, who from 1510 to '20 stood up against the Church and Emperor Maximilian I. He insisted that no legal or cultural ground existed for burning Jewish books within the German territories.

Just how accurately the Wycliffe New Testament 1388 is translated from Latin and Greek, I cannot say. But, I can say without hesitation that it is one of the most beautifully written bibles in English. Its language rivals anything written by Geoffrey Chaucer (1345-1400), who among his many poems gave us the great Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, of course, is considered the first great English poet, and he established the southern English dialect as the literary language of England.

It has always been said that the Bible in the King James Version (KJV) 1611, and which is, of course, still in use today, is the most poetic of the bibles written in English. It certainly can be said that it far surpasses the cold, un-poetic modern . . . .

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This brings me to Johann Reuchlin (or Johannes Reuchlin as he is more often found in German scripts), whose controversial fame in Germany was reached in the early 16^th Century. This German humanist and jurist was not only proficient in Greek, but also studied Hebrew, perhaps also Aramaic, since many passages in the Old Testament were written in Aramaic such as in Jeremiah, or Ezra, and because at the time of Jesus, the language in use in Palestine, especially Galilee, was Aramaic. This study of Hebrew/Aramaic was very uncommon among Christians in Reuchlin's time.

One would have thought that theologians were proficient in both Greek and Hebrew, but as we learn from Erica Rummel's study, The Case of Johann Reuchlin, this was not the case. She calls the Reuchlin affair "an object lesson in cultural diversity." She makes it her aim to show that we cannot classify periods of history with all-encompassing names such as 'Middle Ages', 'Reformation', and 'Counter-Reformation' by describing the circumstances surrounding the Reuchlin affair.

It begins in 1509, when one Johannes Pfefferkorn, who had converted from Judaism to Christianity, proposed to Emperor Maximilian I to confiscate and destroy Jewish books. His reason? To him the existence of such books translated into an insult to the Christian faith, but also served as an obstacle to Jews converting to Christianity. This quite untutored man, who had already written several anti-Jewish pamphlets . . . .

The Case Against Johann Reuchlin is the kind of book that can best be seen as one that whets one's appetite for looking closer at the history of the 16^th Century, and the effect it had on future generations. But, on its own, it is insufficiently clear as to what its author has wanted to achieve with the book. It is unfinished, somehow.

[The Wycliffe New Testament 1388, transcribed by W.R. Cooper, The British Library, cloth, 528 pages, $ 35.00 - ISBN 07234728 3
The Case Against Johann Reuchlin by Erika Rummel, University of Toronto Press, paperback, 174 pages, $22.95 ]

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