3. According to the lexicons, kindly confirmed by my colleagues Professors Braune and Hoops, the word Beruf (Dutch beroep, English calling, Danish kald, Swedish kallelse) does not occur in any of the languages which now contain it in its present worldly (secular) sense before Luther's translation of the Bible. The Middle High German, Middle Low German, and Middle Dutch words, which sound like it, all mean the same as Ruf in modern German, especially inclusive, in late medieval times, of the calling (vocation) of a candidate to a clerical benefice by those with the power of appointment. It is a special case which is also often mentioned in the dictionaries of the Scandinavian languages. The word is also occasionally used by Luther in the same sense. However, even though this special use of the word may have promoted its change of meaning, the modern conception of Beruf undoubtedly goes linguistically back to the Bible translations by Protestants, and any anticipation of it is only to be found, as we shall see later, in Tauler (died 1361). All the languages which were fundamentally influenced by the Protestant Bible translations have the word, all of which this was not true (like the Romance languages) do not, or at least not in its modern meaning.

Luther renders two quite different concepts with Beruf: First the Pauline klhsiV lcAlas in the sense of the call to eternal salvation through God. Thus: 1.Korinther 1,26 ; Epheser 1,18 ; Epheser 4,1 ; Epheser 4,4 ; Philipper 3,14 ; 2.Thessalonicher 1,11 ; Hebraeer 3,1 ; 2.Petrus 1,10. All these cases concern the purely religious idea of the call through the Gospel taught by the apostle; the word klhsiV KAlaS has nothing to do with worldly callings in the modern sense. The German Bibles before Luther use in this case ruffunge (so in all those in the Heidelberg Library), and sometimes instead of "von Gott geruffet" say "von Gott gefordert". Secondly, however, he, as we have already seen, translates the words in Jesus Sirach discussed in the previous note (in the Septuagint en tw ergw sou palaiwyhti and kai emmene tw ponw sou), with "beharre in deinem Beruf" and "bliebe in de inem Beruf" instead of "bliebe bei deiner Arbeit". The later (authorized) Catholic translations (for instance that of Fleischütz, Fulda, 1781) have (as in the New Testament passages) simply followed him. Luther's translation of the passage in the Book of Sirach is, so far as I know, the first case in which the German word Beruf appears in its present purely secular sense.The preceding exhortation, verse 20, sthyi en diayhkh sou, he translates "bliebe in Gottes Wort" although Sirach 14:1 and Sirach 43:10 show that, corresponding to the Hebrew qx, which (according to quotations in the Talmud) Sirach used, diayhkh really did mean something similar to our calling, namely one's fate or assigned task. In its later and present sense the word Feruf did not exist in the German language, nor, so far as I can learn, in the works of the older Bible translators or preachers. The German Bibles before Luther rendered the passage from Sirach with Werk. Berthold of Regensburg, at the points in his sermons where the modern would say Beruf; uses the word Arbeit. The usage was thus the same as in antiquity. The first passage I know, in which not Beruf but Ruf (as a translation of klhsiv) is applied to purely worldly labour, is in the fine sermon of Tauler on Ephesians 4 (Works, Basle edition, f. 117.v), of peasants who misten go: they often fare better "so sie folgen einfeltiglich irem Ruff denn die geistlichen Menschen, die auf ihren Ruf nicht Acht haben". The word in this sense did not find its way into everyday speech. Although Luther's usage at first vacillates between Ruf and Beruf (see Werke, Erlangen edition, p. 51), that he was directly influenced by Tauler is by no means certain, although the Freedom of the Christian is in many respects similar to this sermon of Tauler. But in the purely worldly sense of Tauler, Luther did not use the word Ruf: (This against Denifle, Luther, p. 163.)

Now evidently Sirach's advice in the version of the Septuagint contains, apart from the general exhortation to trust in God, no suggestion of a specifically religious valuation of secular labour in a calling. The term ponov, toil, in the corrupt second passage would be rather the opposite, if it were not corrupted. What Jesus Sirach says simply corresponds to the exhortation of the psalmist (Psalms 37:3), "Dwell in the land, and feed on his faithfulness" as also comes out clearly in the connection with the warning not to let oneself be blinded with the works of the godless, since it is easy for God to make a poor man rich. Only the opening exhortation to remain in the qx (verse 20) has a certain resemblance to the klhsiv of the Gospel, but here Luther did not use the word Beruf for the Greek diayhkh the usual modern editions, the whole context in which the passage stands is as follows, 1 Corinthians 7:17-24 (English, King James version [American revision, 1901]): "(17) Only as the Lord hath distributed to each man, as God hath called each, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches. (18) Was any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Hath any man been called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. (19) Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of God. (20) Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called (en th klhsei h eklhyh ; an undoubted Hebraism, as Professor Merx tells me). (21) Wast thou called being a bondservant? care not for it; nay even if thou canst become free use it rather. (22) For he that was called in the Lord being a bondservant is the Lord's freedman; likewise he that was called being free is Christ's bondservant. (23) Ye were bought with a price; become not bondservants of men. (24) Brethren, let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God."

In 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 follows the remark that time is shortened, followed by the well-known commandments motivated by eschatological expectations: (31) to possess women as though one did not have them, to buy as though one did not have what one had bought, etc. In verse 1.Korinther 7.20 Luther, following the older German translations, even in 1523 in his exigesis of this chapter, renders klhsiv with Beruf; and interprets it with Stand (Erlangen ed.,.LI, p. 51.)

In fact it is evident that the word klhsiv at this point, and only at this, corresponds approximately to the Latin status and the German Stand (status of marriage, status of a servant, etc.). But of course not as Brentano, op. cit., p. 137, assumes, in the modern sense of Beruf: Brentano can hardly have read this passage, or what I have said about it, very carefully. In a sense at least suggesting it this word, which is etymologically related to ekklhsia passage, an assembly which has been called, occurs in Greed literature so far as the lexicons tell, only once in a passage from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, where it it correspond to the Latin classis, a word borrowed from the Greek, meaning that part of the citizenry which has been called to the colours. Theophylaktos (eleventh-twelfth century) interpretes 1 Corinthians 7:20; en oiw biw kai en oiw pagmati kai politeumati wn epistensen. (My colleague Professor Deissmann called my attention to this passage.) Now, even in our passage, klhsiv does not correspond to the modern Beruf: But having translated klhsiv with Beruf in the eschatologically motivated exhortation, that everyone should remain in his present status, Luther, when he later came to translate the Apocrypha, would naturally, on account of the similar content of the exhortations alone, also use Beruf for ponov in the traditionalistic and anti-chrematistic commandment of Jesus Sirach, that everyone should remain in the same business. This is what is important and characteristic. The passage in 1 Corinthians 7:17 does not, as has been pointed out, use klhsiv at all in the sense of Beruf; a definite field of activity.

In the meantime (or about the same time), in the Augsburg Confession, the Protestant dogma of the uselessness of the Catholic attempt to excel worldly morality was established, and in it the expression "einem jeglichen nach seinem Beruf" was used (see previous note). In Luther's translation, both this and the positive valuation of the order in which the individual was placed, as holy, which was gaining ground just about the beginning of the 1530's, stand out. It was a result of his more and more sharply defined belief in special Divine Providence, even in the details of life, and at the same time of his increasing inclination to accept the existing order of things in the world as immutably willed by God. Vocatio, in the traditional Latin, meant the divine call to a life of holiness, especially in a monastery or as a priest. But now, under the influence of this dogma, life in a worldly calling came for Luther to have the same connotation. For he now translated ponov and ergon in Jesus Sirach with Beruf; for which, up to that time, there had been only the (Latin) analogy, coming from the monastic translation. But a few years earlier, in Proverbs 22:29, he had still translated the Hebrew hkalm, which was the original of ergon in the Greek text of Jesus Sirach, and which, like the German Beruf and the Scandunavian kald, kallelse, originally related to a spiritual call (Berufl, as in other passages (Genesis 39:11), with Geschäft (Septuagint ergon, Vulgate opus, English Bibles business, and correspondingly in the Scandinavian and all the other translations before me).

The word Beruf; in the modern sense which he had finally created, remained for the time being entirely Lutheran. To the Calvinists the Apocrypha are entirely uncanonical. It was only as a result of the development which brought the interest in proof of salvation to the fore that Luther's concept was taken over, and then strongly emphasized by them. But in their first (Romance) translations they had no such word available, and no power to create one in the usage of a language already so stereotyped.

As early as the sixteenth century the concept of Beruf in its present sense became established in secular literature. The Bible translators before Luther had used the word Berufung for klhsiv (as for instance in the Heidelberg versions of 1462-66 and 1485), and the Eck translation of 1537 says "in dem Ruf, worin er beruft ist". Most of the later Catholic translators directly follow Luther. In England, the first of all, Wyclif's translation (1382), used cleping (the Old English word which was later replaced by the borrowed calling). It is quite characteristic of the Lollard ethics to use a word which already corresponded to the later usage of the Reformation. Tyndale's translation of 1534, on the other hand, interprets the idea in terms of status: "in the same state wherein he was called" as also does the Geneva Bible of 1557. Cranmer's official translation of 1539 substituted calling for state, while the (Catholic) Bible of Rheims (1582), as well as the Anglican Court Bibles of the Elizabethan era, characteristically return to vocation, following the Vulgate.

That for England, Cranmer's Bible translation is the source of the Puritan conception of calling in the sense of Beruf; trade, has already, quite correctly, been pointed out by Murray. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century calling is used in that sense. In 1588 unlawful callings are referred to, and in 1603 greater callings in the sense of higher occupations, etc. (see Murray). Quite remarkable is Brentano's idea (op. cit., p. 139), that in the Middle Ages vocatio was not translated with Beruf; and that this concept was not known, because only a free man could engage in a Beruf; and freemen, in the middle-class professions, did not exist at that time. Since the whole social structure of the medieval crafts, as opposed to those of antiquity, rested upon free labour, and, above all, almost all the merchants were freemen, I do not clearly understand this thesis.