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 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 κλῆσις in the sense of the call to eternal salvation through God. Thus: 1 Corinthians 1:26; Ephesians 1:18, 4:1, 4; 2 Thessalonians 1:11; Hebrews 3:1; 2 Peter 1:10. All these cases concern the purely religious idea of the call through the Gospel taught by the apostle; the word κλῆσις 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 Septuagiant ἓν τῷ ἔργῳ σου παλαιώθητι and καί ἕμμενε τῷ πόνῳ σον), with “beharre in deinem Beruf” and “bliebe in deinem Beruf,” instead of “bliebe bei deiner Arbeit.” The later (authorised) Catholic translations (for instance that of Fleischütz, Fluda, 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 presant purely secular sense. The preceding exhortation, verse 20, στήθι εν διαθήκη σου, he translates “bliebe in Gottes Wort,” although Sirach 14:1 and 43:10 show that, corresponding to the Hebrew תק, which (according to quotations in the Talmud) Sirach used, διαθήκη really did mean something similar to our calling, namely one’s fate or assigned task. In its later and present sense the word Beruf 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 κλῆσις) 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 Freiheit eines Christenmenschen 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 πόνος, 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 (Psalm 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 הק (verse 20) has a certain resemblance to the κλῆσις of the Gospel, but here Luther did not use the word Beruf for the Greek διαθήκη. The connection between Luther’s two seemingly quite unrelated uses of the word Beruf is found in the first letter to the Corinthians and its translation.
In the usual modern editions, the whole context in which the passage stands is as follows, 1 Corinthians 7:17 (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
