Kurt Aland

This city's dealings with the Bible run deep. In 1710, the Canstein Bible Institution was founded in Halle — the world's earliest Bible society, using standing type that was never broken down to bring the price of Bibles within reach of the poor; on the shelves of the Marienbibliothek sits an original 1534 Luther Bible; in the nineteenth century, Gesenius, who taught in Halle, compiled the Hebrew lexicon still considered standard today.

In 1947, Aland came to Halle, and stayed eleven years. Later, his name would appear alongside Nestle's on the title page of the critical edition of the Greek New Testament — the volume most students of the New Testament in its original language keep on their desks.

Postwar Halle lay under East German rule; the church bearing witness under persecution runs as one main thread through this city's twentieth century. Aland would not bow: because he resisted the East German regime, he was dismissed from his post in 1958 and soon fled to West Berlin. Even scholarship at a desk, at the decisive moment, exacts its price.

Thirty-one years after he left, on 9 October 1989, the peace prayers at the Marktkirche and the gathering in the market square were cleared with batons and dogs, and 41 people were arrested; a month later, the Wall fell. The witness of standing against power runs on, one after another, in this city; Aland's 1958 belongs in that line.

In this city, we read the Bible in Chinese; those who go deeper into the text may keep a Greek New Testament on their desk as well. God's word has reached every generation through the hands of its keepers — someone copied it, someone printed it, someone edited it, someone would not let go of it even before power. Canstein carried the Bible into the homes of the poor; Aland edited the Greek text of the New Testament, and in 1958 paid for it with his chair. In Halle, the book and the witness have always been bound together.

Today, when a theology student opens a New Testament with Nestle and Aland printed on its title page, they may not think of Halle at all. Yet behind that title page stands this city too.