The September Testament
Das Newe Testament Deutzsch (Wittenberg, September 1522)
Martin Luther, hidden, calling himself Junker Jörg
Eleven weeks of work by a man with a false name and a beard, in a room with one window and a view of trees.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 800
- Stat total
- 1000
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
The whole New Testament, from Erasmus’ Greek rather than from the Latin — and the German it invented is still the German Germany reads.
It does not argue at all. It hands over the text the argument was about, to people who had only ever heard it read in a language they did not speak.
The scholarship is real: Greek, with the Vulgate at his elbow, and Melanchthon checking. Its enemies attacked the marginal notes, not the translation.
Five thousand copies in three months, at a price that was most of a week’s wages, and a second printing before Christmas.
Cited for this book
He was an outlaw. The Edict of Worms said no man might shelter him and any man might kill him, so his own prince had him seized on the road and hidden in a castle, where he grew a beard, called himself a knight, and translated the New Testament out of Greek into German in about eleven weeks. He was twenty-six years short of finishing the Bible when he started; the New Testament took a season.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Into Their Own Tongue | Exegesis | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 44 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 46 | As on Angels’ Wings | History | Argument | 82 | 100% | 15 |
| 49 | A Boy That Driveth the Plough | Bible | Argument | 88 | 95% | 10 |
| 52 | Scripture or Plain Reason | Bible | Argument | 95 | 100% | 5 |