The spread and influence of this little book within the bounds of the Palatinate (a province of Germany) and beyond, in fact in the entire world, exceeded all expectations. The time was ripe and it was welcomed by the Reformed everywhere. It was made mandatory in all the schools and churches of the Palatinate to teach the Heidelberg Catechism and to read it from the pulpit every Sunday according to its divisions of fifty-two Lord's Days. Catechetical preaching and exposition was made a fixed institution for the Sunday afternoon service. All education, whether in the home, in the schools, or at the university was based upon it, and the theological training of students for the ministry centered on it.
Besides the original Latin version, a translation into the Dutch language by Petrus Dathenus and another into Saxon-German appeared within a year. The English Turner edition, used in the Anglican Church, appeared in 1567. This was followed by translations into Hungarian in 1567, French in 1570, Scottish in 1571, Hebrew in 1580, and Greek in 1597. During the early years of the 1600s, translators were busy getting it into Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, Bohemian, and Romanian. Even the Dutch East India and West India Companies became zealous missionaries for the Heidelberg, as they circled the globe in their trading ships. Their CEOs sponsored translations into Malay, Javanese, and Spanish in the 1620s, into Portuguese in 1665, Singhalese in 1726, and Tamil in 1754! Then in the 1800s, the Dutch Reformed Church in America went even further, laboring on Amharic, Sangiri, Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Chinese, and Japanese versions.
English Versions
The Heidelberg Catechism was accepted by the Anglican Church in 1567 as a standard expression of her faith, and by the time the great ecumenical Synod of Dort met in 1618-19, the British delegates affirmed that was there was no catechism so suitable and excellent. "Our Reformed brethren on the continent have a little book whose single leaves are not to be bought with tons of gold," was their worthy tribute.
In America, Rev. Archibald Laidlie (1727-1779), serving in the Dutch Reformed Church in New York City, issued an American version in 1765 based on earlier English translations. This became the standard version and the basis of most American editions to come. It was also used by the Reformed Church in the U.S., but many began to notice that the existing English versions were translations from the Latin and the Dutch, not from the original German. Their sentence construction often deviated from the original German. It was time to go back to the sources! In 1859 the General Synod of the Reformed Church in the U.S. appointed a committee for "the preparation of a critical standard edition of the Heidelberg Catechism in the original German, and Latin, together with a revised English translation, and an historical introduction, to be published in superior style as a centennial edition in 1863." This fine, comprehensive edition gave an excellent historical and theological review of the catechism and the text was formatted in parallel columns in the original German, the Latin, modern German, and an English translation conforming closely to the original German. This is known as the Tercentenary Edition (300th anniversary of the German Reformed Church).
In evaluating this translation, however, the RCUS historian Dr. James I. Good observed,
"The translation into English is carefully done from a literary standpoint, but it is somewhat marred by divergence from the original text, so as to favor the peculiar views of the Mercersburg Theology. . . . This edition, however, was never officially adopted by the synod or the Church and has come into only partial use in the Church, the older English translation of Laidlie being the one in common use." (History of the Reformed Church in the U.S., New York, 1911, p. 405).
Modern English Version
In the middle of the twentieth century, the continuing Reformed Church in the U.S. (Eureka Classis) prepared a revision of the Tercentenary. The Committee assigned to this task consulted two new critical German editions from 1907 and 1938. August Lang's Der Heidelberger Katechismus und Vier Verwandte Katechismen (1907), and Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche, herausgegeben by Wilhelm Niesel (1938).
Rev. Robert Grossmann remarked about this 1950 edition that it "sought to return to the earliest text of the Catechism in German and to provide a most careful and direct translation of the same into English" (You Shall Be My People, 1996, p. 107) This edition first appeared with the German and English texts printed on opposite pages and was printed by Reliance Publishing Company in Wisconsin, but later printings deleted the German portion. Its preface reads,
. . . realizing that words and sentence construction become hallowed by use, alterations were made only with great caution after much deliberation to improve diction where permissible, or to state the intent of the original more accurately. The Tercentenary version of 1863 is followed closely.
Coming closer to our day, this 1950 edition was updated in language in 1978 but retained the King James Version of the Bible in the Scripture references. It was eventually printed in 1986. In the near future the RCUS will issue an edition accompanied by Scripture references in the New King James Version, thereby completing the transition to what may be called a Modern English Version. We trust that the truths Mr. Olevianus and Mr. Ursinus penned so long ago have not been "lost in translation," but will continue to be taught, memorized, and cherished for all generations to come.
