PREFACE.
Memorialized by the Faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo., the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, assembled as Fifteenth Delegate Synod from June 20 to 29, 1917, at Milwaukee, Wis., unanimously passed the very appropriate resolution to publish as a Memorial of the Quadricentennial of the Glorious Reformation a German-Latin-English edition of the Book of Concord containing the Symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The work on Concordia Triglotta was begun immediately. Chiefly owing to the economic conditions created by the World War, however, the completion. of the large undertaking was delayed much longer than anticipated. And the fact that we are now in a position to write the Preface to the finished book, together with its detailed Indexes and extensive Historical Introductions, we regard and gratefully acknowledge as a special favor of God, whom alone also we credit with whatever merit any one may anywhere justly ascribe to this work, or any part of it.
As for the German and Latin texts embodied in Concordia Triglotta, the former was compared with the original German edition, published 1580 at Dresden. Obsolete forms as "Gezeugnis," "Oberkeit," "gebeutet," and, as a rule, also such forms as "nimmet," "gehet," "stehet," etc., were replaced with: "Zeugnis," "Obrigkeit," "gebietet," "nimmt," "geht," "steht," etc. The Latin text was revised according to the first authentic Latin edition, published 1584 in Leipzig, and quite a number of misprints still found in Mueller's eleventh edition of 1912 were corrected.
While I, the undersigned, alone am responsible for the Latin and German texts, the English translation of the Triglot is throughout the joint effort of Prof. W. H. T. Dau and myself. It is based on the original German and Latin texts, respectively, and on the existing English translations, chiefly those incorporated in Jacobs's Book of Concord.
The Preface to the Christian Books of Concord, the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and the treatise Of the Power and Primacy of the Pope are translated from the Latin; the Smalcald Articles, the two Catechisms of Luther, the Formula of Concord, and the Visitation Articles, from the German. In the Catalog of Testimonies the translation of the introduction, the ten theses, and the conclusion are based on the German text, while the passages quoted from "Orthodox Antiquity" are translated from the original Greek and Latin, respectively.
In the running titles of the Triglot the small numbers indicate the pages in the editions of the Symbolical Books of J. T. Mueller and J. G. Walch. The pages of A. Rechenberg's edition are given in brackets in the Latin columns; e. g., on page 100 of the Triglot, "M. 74. 75" indicates the corresponding pages in Mueller; "W. 67—69," the pages in Walch; "R. 49," the page in Rechenberg.
Whatever in the three texts of the Triglot is included in brackets does not belong to the text proper. When reading the longer passages, it may perhaps, in some instances, be advisable simply to skip the brackets in order not to disturb the natural flow of a period.
