The Bible our Anabaptist ancestors used in Switzerland was known as the Froschauer Bible. Christoph Froschauer was a printer in Zurich, Switzerland, in the 16th century. His earliest publications were dated 1521, and he began printing the New Testament in 1524. Froschauer based his New Testament primarily on the translation of the New Testament into German by Martin Luther, editing word order and dialect to match the vernacular German spoken by the Swiss people of that region.
A few years later, in 1529, Froschauer finished his printing of the complete Bible, using the Old Testament translations by Anabaptist scholars Ludwig Haetzer and Hans Denk, since Luther had not completed his translation of the Old Testament. This Bible was very popular and much loved among Anabaptists because of its dialect; it was easier for the common Swiss citizen to understand than, for example, the High German of Luther’s translation. Because so many Froschauer Bibles were confiscated and destroyed by Swiss Authorities, there became a shortage of this very popular translation. In 1744, the publisher Simon Kurssner, Cantzley-Buchdrucker, of Strasbourg, reprinted the complete 1536 edition of the Bible originally printed in Zurich by Froschauer.
The old Froschauer Bible, published at Zurich in the time of Luther, is still widely used by the Amish, as it is by the Mennonites.
