After the invention of the printing-press, and before the Reformation, this mediaeval German Bible was more frequently printed than any other except … - Philip Schaff

Besides the whole Bible, there were numerous German editions of the Gospels and Epistles (Plenaria), and the Psalter, all made from the Vulgate.

The charge that Luther adapted the translation to his theological opinions has become traditional in the Roman Church, and is repeated again and again by her controversialists and historians.

The Original Text. The basis for Luther's version of the Old Testament was the Massoretic text as published by Gerson Ben Mosheh at Brescia in 1494. He used also the Septuagint, the Vulgate of Jerome (although he disliked him exceedingly on account of his monkery), the Latin translations of the Dominican Sanctes Pagnini of Lucca (1527), and of the Franciscan Sebastian Münster (1534), the "Glossa ordinaria" (a favorite exegetical vade-mecum of Walafried Strabo from the ninth century), and Nicolaus Lyra (d. 1340), the chief of mediaeval commentators, who, besides the Fathers, consulted also the Jewish rabbis.<ref>Lyra acquired by his Postillae perpetuae in V. et N. Test. (first published in Rome, 1472, in 5 vols. fol., again at Venice, 1540) the title Doctor planus et utilis. His influence on Luther is expressed in the well-known lines: