A reminder of our German roots was found a few years ago at New Jerusalem Lutheran Church in Lovettsville. It is the oldest Bible at this historic church, a massive tome which was known as the Elector’s Bible or Kurfürstenbibel, printed by Johann Andreas Endter of Nuernberg in 1765. It was found several years ago during Spring cleaning hidden in dark corner of the organ loft.
Known as a Luther Bible, its German text is Martin Luther’s translations (New Testament 1521-22; Old Testament completed 1535) of the scriptures from the original Hebrew and Greek. It includes, in addition to the Old and New Testaments and the books of the Apocrypha, several prefaces, biographies of 11 Princes Elector, Dukes of Saxony, who were instrumental in authorizing the publication, glossaries, woodcut and engraved illustrations, chronological register, indexes, and the text of the unaltered Augsburg Confession.
For almost two centuries, from 1613 to 1792, the Endter family printed the text of Luther’s Bible in Nuernberg. Today, these large-format (folio) editions are still the most frequently encountered family Bibles from the 17th and 18th century. The skill and efficiency of the printing shop and Nuernberg’s convenient trading position led the Saxon Dukes to have their ceremonial Bibles printed in Nuernberg, and not in their own lands.
The New Jerusalem Bible was printed in 1765. Coincidentally, that was the year in which this church was established as a “preaching point” of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Frederick, Maryland, which dates itself to 1738.
The preaching point in Loudoun County was created during the 1763-1768 ELC ministry of the Rev. Samuel Schwerdtfeger. But since Rev. Schwerdtfeger came to Maryland in 1753-54, he obviously couldn’t have brought a 1765 Bible with him – although someone arriving later might have.
But Schwerdtfeger himself might have brought it later. According to A.R. Wentz’s History of Evangelical Lutheran Church, Schwerdtfeger’s tenure at ELC was not a happy one, and in the summer of 1768 he abruptly left Frederick for a visit to Germany. He returned in 1770, when ELC was in the process of issuing a call to John Andrew Krug. Krug did accept the call and started his long ministry at ELC (and New Jerusalem) in 1771.
According to Dr. Wentz, Schwerdtfeger was shunned by the congregation in Frederick when he came back in 1770. Under the circumstances he probably would have visited the congregation in Loudoun County where he was more welcome, since pastoral visits there were infrequent. They were most likely glad to see him.
Schwerdtfeger would have been in a position to easily acquire one or more Nuernberg Bibles on his visit to Germany where he would have returned to his homeland in Bavaria. He had attended the University at Erlangen – which is only short distance from Nuernberg. It is easy to imagine that he would have given the Bible to the congregation in Loudoun where he felt more welcome than in Frederick.
Rev. Schwerdtfeger moved on: after a few years he removed to Albany, New York, and when the Revolutionary War broke out, his Loyalist sympathies led to his persecution and imprisonment. After the war he went with other Loyalists to what was called “Upper Canada” in the vicinity of Morrisburg, Ontario, where he established the Lutheran Church and spent the rest of his days. He is known there as “the Saint of the St. Lawrence.”
Meanwhile, the Loudoun congregation (called after 1832) continued to be served by ministers from Frederick until 1832, when it obtained its first resident pastor, built a parsonage, and began calling itself “New Jerusalem.” It is probable that the congregation stopped using this Bible around that time, in the 1830s, when English became the language of worship—and also of church records.
259 years have not been kind to the Elector’s Bible. The cover boards are missing. The sections containing the preface and the biographies of the Prince Electors have fallen away. The rag-based paper pages of these early books were ideal as wadding for muzzle-loading guns.
The 1765 Elector’s Bible is a powerful reminder of the courage and perseverance of our ancestors, who brought their faith and their families – and little else – to this frontier settlement in the New World, and played their part in the founding of this Nation.
–Michael Zapf and Edward Spannaus