King James Only Movement

ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM: HIS NEW TESTAMENT AND ITS IMPORTANCE

By James White
 

Europe of 1516 presented quite a world of contrasts. Superstition still ruled many people’s minds, yet men of great scholarship and insight were to be found in every nation. Great political struggles were taking place, struggles which would soon give form and outline to the Europe of today. Nationalism was on the rise, and the papacy on the decline. Heretics were still being burnt at the stake, and the ages-old cry of reform was not thought to mean reform outside of the Roman Catholic Church but rather within it. Luther had yet to post his 95 Theses. In that year of 1516 a momentous event occurred - at Basle, Switzerland. From the press of John Froben came Novum Instrumentum omne, diligenter ab Erasmo Rot. Recognitum et Emendatum, Desiderius Erasmus’s edition of the Greek New Testament, along with his own new Latin translation, with annotations. This work, put through five different editions in Erasmus’s lifetime, would have lasting effects on Biblical scholarship. Who was Erasmus? Why was he the first to publish a critical edition of the Greek New Testament? How did this edition change Christianity?

To answer these questions, we must look at Erasmus the man, and determine how he viewed his work. We must examine his times, his acquaintances, friends and foes. We must take up his New Testament and weigh its worth, and then see in what ways it effected scholarship in the following generations. It will be seen that Erasmus of Rotterdam had a far-reaching and often unnoticed effect on the world.

Desiderius Erasmus was a man who shrouded his past in secrecy. Well he might, considering the social implications of it. So well did he perform his task that we are not even sure of the year of his birth. Zweig declares it to be 1466,¹ others also give 1469.² The main sources of information available concerning his childhood come from Erasmus’s requests for dispensations from the Pope. The reason is clear - Erasmus was illegitimate, and hence could not hold a benefice without a special dispensation from the Pope. In requesting this we are given his only personal history, and much to be expected, we find some inconsistency with the known facts. One can hardly blame him - it seems his father, aside from not being married to his mother Margaret, was also under orders. Being illegitimate was bad enough - being the son of a priest was worse. Though Erasmus tried to excuse his father with a tale of romance before his father’s taking of vows, the fact that Erasmus had a brother (Peter) three years older than himself seems to indicate otherwise. This situation was to plague Erasmus his entire life, though it was eased somewhat by a special dispensation bestowed upon him at Westminster Abbey in 1517.

Erasmus’s parents died early, and left him to be raised by others. The young Dutch boy did not seem inclined to study at first, and never did like his native tongue that well. In 1497 he entered the Augustinian monastery at Steyn, and while Columbus was sailing to the New World, Erasmus was ordained a Catholic priest by the Bishop of Utrecht. Though released from his vows as an Augustinian Canon by Ammonius in 1517, Erasmus never broke his vows as a priest, and died under orders.³

Desiderius Erasmus was a traveler. He visited most of the European countries, spending time in England at Cambridge, as well as in Paris and Basle. He was friendly with a vast number of men, great and small. His correspondence fills a number of large volumes, and to call his writings “voluminous” is not an overstatement.

Erasmus was not inclined to accepting criticism, especially not from a younger person. Scholarly debate was one thing, but unfortunately, in that day and that climate, many were disposed to add in charges of impiety or heresy to make things a little spicier. Erasmus spent much of his time (too much, it seems) in writing apologies and defenses of his works, and he too was able to dip his pen rather deeply in the acid in his attacks on others. His early work In Praise of Folly set the tone for the rest of his life (much to his chagrin), and the notes and comments in his Greek New Testament continued the tradition of the vituperative language he utilized in debate. Referring to Erasmus’s penchant for writing apologies, Faludy comments,

The writings of Erasmus demonstrate the view that he was a forerunner of the Reformers. Though he never left the Roman Catholic system, he attacked abuse wherever he found it. He was truly a humanist, but in the 16th century definition. He felt that people had the ability to understand the things of God, if only they were given the chance. He was known for his vitriolic denunciation of superstition, relics and the like. That is not to say that he did not accept the supernatural - far from it. One must remember that in the Europe of 1500 there were enough splinters of the Cross to fill an entire ship! It was the abuse of relics that he despised. His acceptance of diabolism is seen in this letter to Richardoto in 1533:

“I used to say jokingly to my friends that they were not fleas that bit me, but demons; and it turned out that this was no pleasantry, but a reality; for it is not long since a woman was burnt who, though married, had carried on a secret commerce with the Devil for eighteen years past. Among other trimes, she admitted that by the hand of her lover she had sent into this very town several large bags of fleas. The place where she was burnt is called Klychove, and is about two leagues from here. I am writing this to you while standing; and even while finishing this letter these cursed animals bite me cruelly in my trousers and around my neck.”⁵

It may be that Erasmus is here laughing up his sleeve - most likely he is not.

In reference to Erasmus’s production of the Greek New Testament, and his Latin translation of the same, it must be pointed out that his humanistic tendencies played an important part in driving him to the work. A valuable source for our knowledge of this is the Preface to the work, as well as some of the notes written by him. For example, in the first edition of 1516 he writes,

I vehemently dissent from those who would not have private persons read the Holy Scriptures nor have them translated into the vulgar tongues, as though either Christ taught such difficult doctrines that they can only be understood by a few theologians, or the safety of the Christian religion lay in ignorance of it. I should like all women to read the Gospel and the Epistles of Paul. Would that they were translated into all languages so that not only Scotch and Irish, but Turks and Saracens might be able to read and know them.⁶

Some think it offensive to have the sacred books turned into English or French, but the evangelists turned into Greek what Christ spoke in Syriac, nor did the Latins fear to turn the words of Christ into the Roman tongue - that is, to offer them to the promiscuous multitude...Like St. Jerome I think it a great triumph and glory to the cross if it is celebrated by the tongues of all men; if the farmer at the plow sings some of the mystic Psalms, and the weaver sitting at the shuttle often refreshes himself with something from the Gospel. Let the pilot at the rudder hum over a sacred tune, and the matron sitting with gossip or friend at the colander recite something from it.⁷

The sufficiency of the human soul in matters of religion was a dangerous idea in a world where the papacy ruled all. His idea is definitely in line with the Reformers who were about to break upon the world, and it certainly is not surprising that many conservatives associated Erasmus with them, bringing down on him numerous charges of heresy. Nor should we be too harsh on Erasmus for his less-than-generous responses to such attacks.

Roland Bainton rightly points out that when scholars accused Erasmus of faulty erudition as well as deficient orthodoxy, “the first charge touched his pride, the second his very existence as a member of the Christian community."⁸ We shall look more closely at some of these attacks later.

Erasmus’s interest in the ancient texts of the New Testament began quite early. The monastery at Steyn had quite a library of which to boast, and it is sure that Erasmus made good use of it. Then in 1504, he ran across Lorenzo Valla’s Notes on the New Testament in the Praemonstratensian Abbey of Parc near Louvain. So taken was he with Valla’s work that he published it at Paris the same year. This was a risky undertaking, for Valla certainly is not remembered as a saint, and his emendations of the Vulgate text could bring nothing but attack from conservative Catholics. Valla’s scientific comparison of texts, however, pierced to Erasmus’s heart, and would eventually be seen twelve years later in his New Testament.

Another influence upon Erasmus was John Colet. A friend of Erasmus, he encouraged him, partly through his lectures on St. Paul, to undertake the task that had already captured his imagination. Just when he began is hard to say. We know from a letter written to Peter Gilles in the autumn of 1512 that he was already underway, working both on the New Testament as well as the epistles of St. Jerome.⁹ We also know that it was during this time in England that he availed himself of some of the manuscripts in the area.

The enormity of the task must be realized. The modern textual critic has at his disposal the work of hundreds of great scholars - lists of manuscript collations, critical editions of the text that in one volume give him a vast mountain of information - texts that open up literally thousands of manuscripts from all over the world. This was hardly the situation in which Erasmus found himself.

The actual texts utilized by Erasmus for his Greek testament are a bit of a mystery. Different writers say different things. It is agreed that Erasmus had ten man scripts: four from England, five from Basle, and one borrowed from his friend John Reuchlin.¹⁰ Reuchlin’s codex seemed to Erasmus the oldest, though it is actually from the 10th or 12th century. It represented the best of the available codices, yet Erasmus distrusted it, and utilized it only for the book of Revelation. Erasmus wrote to Reuchlin in August of 1514 and said,

"It is also my intention to see to the printing of the New Testament in Greek, with my own annotations added. They say that you have an eminently correct copy of this [New Testament in Greek], and if you would lend it to John Froben you will do a favor not only to him and to me, but also to all the studious. Your copy, intact and unstained, will be returned to you."¹¹

Instead, he found five manuscripts. He was disappointed with their quality, especially since this would require him to do more work than he planned. The second best codex available to him he found at Basle - but again, Erasmus used it little, for he felt it had been tampered with and brought into conformity with the Vulgate text (which was not true). Hence the two best sources in his hands went predominately unused. He knew of the great Vaticanus manuscript, but it was at Rome and out of reach. As for the other manuscripts at Basle, he used two inferior manuscripts from the monastic library at Basle. One was of the Gospels, and still today has Erasmus’s corrections visible and the other of Acts and the Epistles. Metzger dates them as from the twelfth century.¹⁶ He compared these with a few others. Only Reuchlin’s text contained the book of Revelation, and he was forced to utilize it at that point.

Hence, Erasmus’s first edition was based on ten manuscripts, none of which could be called exceedingly “ancient,” and even at that he basically ignored the two best exemplars before him. That despite this his text was relatively good is more a witness to the preservation of the Scriptures over time than the (admittedly) great scholarship of Erasmus.

There was also a time factor involved. Froben wished to get the edition out as soon as possible. Possibly he had heard of the project of Cardinal Ximenes, which eventually upon publication was called the "Complutensian Polyglot,” (Complutum being the Latin name of Alcala, the place of publication) the New Testament Greek portion of which had already been printed in 1514, the leaves being stored away until papal approval could be obtained. Therefore, the distinction must be made between the first printed Greek New Testament (Ximenes’ Complutensian) and the first published Greek New Testament, that of Erasmus.

Erasmus was aided by two scholars - Nikolaus Gerber (to whom numerous misprints can be attributed) and Ioannes Oecolampadius, later an aid to Zwingli and a leader in the Reformation movement. Oecolampadius looked up all references to the Hebrew of the Old Testament, as Erasmus did not know Hebrew. Refusing payment for his services, Oecolampadius accepted only one of Erasmus’s manuscripts, the introduction to the Gospel of John, and is said to have treated it as a relic, kissing it and hanging it on a crucifix while he prayed, that is until is was stolen.¹⁷

Between the inferiority of the manuscripts available, the stress for time under which the printer’s copy was made, and the numerous mistakes made by Gerber, it is amazing that the first edition made it into print at all. Erasmus himself called it “precipitated rather than edited”(praecipitatum verius quam editum)¹⁸ and that it was “hurried out headlong.”¹⁹ Scrivener said of it, “[It] is in that respect the most faulty book I know.”²⁰ Erasmus immediately began the tedious task of revision, as well as undertaking to defend his work.

The book contained 679 pages, about half of which were given over to his own annotations to the text and descriptions of errors in the Vulgate version. The rest was Erasmus’s Latin translation and the Greek text. As an added precaution against attack, Erasmus (ironically) dedicated the volume to Pope Leo X, even though he had not yet received an answer to his request to do so. It was a lucky gamble for him, as when the Pope’s answer did arrive, it was positive in tone.

Some of the problems with Erasmus’s text are, to modern readers, almost humorous. For example. The text he utilized for the book of Revelation was Reuchlin’s. Unfortunately, this manuscript was missing the last leaf, containing verses 16 through 21. He found the text for verse 20 in Valla’s notes, but was left with nothing for the other five verses.²² Time factors being what they were, Erasmus decided to translate from the Vulgate into Greek to fill the gap. He warned his readers in a footnote that he had done so, but he still came in for some (well-deserved) criticism. Metzger gives a footnote in which he lists some of the words that Erasmus came up with that have absolutely no manuscript support whatsoever, and yet appear in the “Textus Receptus.”²³ Some examples include orthrinos at Revelation 22:16, elthe twice in verse 17 (its actually erchou), eltheto for erckestho in the same verse, suntusrturoumai gar for martnro and epitithe pros tauta for epithe ep auta in verse 18 and so on. That these mistakes have been maintained, sometimes with fanatical zeal, for over 450 years is just this side of amazing! Other erroneous readings arose because of the mistakes of Gerber in writing. One famous example is Revelation 17:8. His reading of ouk esti kaiper esti should have been ouk estin kai parestai. Not only was this error not corrected, but it slipped into Luther’s German and was not corrected until 1892! The Textus Receptus maintains it today against a mountain of evidence.

The most famous textual “problem” involved in Erasmus’s work was 1 John 5:7, the famous Comma Johanneum. Absent from every Greek text he had (indeed, some think from every Greek text in existence!), he rightly omitted it. A hue and cry was raised upon publication, and charges of heresy and Arianism were cast about. Erasmus asked his friend in Rome, Bombasius, to consult the famous Codex Vaticanus concerning the passage. When Bombasius replied that the verse was not contained in that ancient codex, Erasmus rashly proclaimed that if he were to find so much as one Greek text containing the “Three Witnesses” he would include it in his next edition. Of course, such a manuscript was quickly produced. Many suspect it as having been produced specifically for the occasion. It is today known as minuscule 61 and is housed at Trinity College, Dublin. It is dated to the 16th century, and Metzger reports it opens of its own accord to the passage in 1 John, its having been consulted at that point so often.²⁴ True to his word Erasmus included the spurious passage in the third edition (1522) “that there be no calumny.”²⁵ He expressed in a lengthy footnote his doubts concerning the authenticity of the manuscript. However, verse remains today a touchstone of orthodoxy for some, most notably the Roman Catholic Church.²⁶

Some other notes of interest include Erasmus’s questioning of the authenticity of such passages as Mark 16:9-20 and the pericope of the adulteress in John 8. Despite all of the above criticisms, Erasmus’s work was truly amazing, especially in light of the circumstances.

The Latin translation that came along with the Greek text precipitated no small amount of protest as well. The very idea of reading anything but the Vulgate text caused some people indigestion. Erasmus was severely criticized for translating logos at John 1:1 into the Latin sermo rather than the Vulgate verbum. Erasmus felt sermo more accurately expressed the richness of the phrase logos in the Greek. Such liberties were not easily accepted by the establishment.

For the second edition of his work Erasmus consulted a Latin manuscript lent to him by the King of Hungary known as Codex Aureus, two manuscripts from the Austin Priory of Corsendonk, and a Greek MS from the monastery of St. Agnes.²⁷ Other comparisons were made in later years, though the changes were not major, as has been seen.

All in all there were five editions before Erasmus’s death - 1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. Erasmus did not see the Complutensian Diaglott until 1522, and he was unashamed to utilize its better text in Revelation in his edition of 1527. The total copies of the first two editions was 3,300, showing it had quite a readership despite its controversial nature.²⁸ It was reprinted at least 69 times between 1516 and 1536, and that does not include separate editions of the Latin or Greek versions. Hence, as Faludy points out, the New Testament was “printed the equivalent of once every 90 days for a period of twenty years.” That adds up to a conservative figure of 300,000 copies before Erasmus passed away.²⁹

The Effects of the New Testament

Publication of the New Testament text had two distinct effects - the first was the stirring up of controversy. The second, and hopefully more important, was the spawning of numerous translations into the common languages. As the latter is much more positive than the former, we will look at it in conclusion.

Even before his work came off of the press, Erasmus encountered opposition. Martin Dorp, a young scholar of the University of Louvain, contacted Erasmus. He asked that the older scholar undue some of the damage done by In Praise of Folly, and he included in his letter a concern about Erasmus’s work on the Biblical texts. He objected to any change in the Vulgate text, and argued that since the Greek texts came from the Greek church (which had not remained truthful) while the Latin was guarded by the true Church, the Greek text is secondary and corrupted. Dorp’s letter was not vitriolic. Mangan gives a lively description of Erasmus’s reply:

Conclusion

Footnotes
1. Stefan Zweig, Erasmus of Rotterdam, (New York: The Viking Press, 1956), p. 32.
2. Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), p. 293, and Margaret Mann Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1950), p. 6.
3. W. E. Campbell, Erasmus, Tyndale and More. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949), p. 272.
4. George Faludy, Erasmus, (New York Stein & Day, 1970), p. 180.
5. John Joseph Mangan, Life, Character, and Influence of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, 2 vols, (New York The MacMillan Company, 1927), volume 1, p. 346.
6. Preserved Smith, Erasmus: A Study of His Life, Ideals, and Place in History, (NewYork Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1962), p. 184.
7. Smith, Erasmus, pp. 184-185.
8. Roland Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom, (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1969), p. 134
9. Mangan, Life, 1:347.
10. Johann Reuchlin was a scholar of the highest rank, remembered not only for his great ability in Greek, but most notably for his De Rudimentis Hebraicis, a Hebrew grammar and lexicon. For his troubles he was drawn into unwanted controversy. Interestingly enough, Reuchlin had a grandnephew that was to figure prominently amongst the Reformers - Philip Melanchthon.
11. Mangan, Life vol. 1. pp. 374-375
12. Faludy, Erasmus, p. 159.
13. Phillips, Erasmus, p. 75.
14. P.S. Allen, The Age of Erasmus, (New York Russell and Russell, 1963), p. 144.
15. R. Devonshire Jones, Erasmus and Luther, (New York Stein and Day, 1910), p. 52.
16. Bruce Manning Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 99.
17. Faludy, Erasmus, p. 159.
18. Phillips, Erasmus, p. 76, and Bainton, Erasmus, p. 133.
19. Phillips, Erasmus, p. 73.
20. F. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain lntroduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th ed ,(London, 1894), p. 185 as quoted by Metzger, Text it the New Testament, p. 99.
21. Smith, Erasmus, p. 163.
22. Faludy, Erasmus, p. 159.
23. Metzger, Text in the New Testament, p 100
24. Metzger, Text it the New Testament, p. 101.
25. Smith, Erasmus, p. 166.
26. Decree of January 13, 1897. Smith, Erasmus, p. 166 footnote 4.
27. Smith, Erasmus, p. 165.
28. Metzger, Text it the New Testament, p. 100.
29. Faludy, Erasmus, pp. 165-166.
30. Mangan, Life, vol. 1 p. 382.
31. Bainton, Erasmus, p. 135.
32. Faludy, Erasmus, p. 162.
33. Bainton, Erasmus, p. 139.
34. Smith, Erasmus, p. 176.
35. Smith, Erasmus, p. 182.
36. Faludy, Erasmus, p. 166.
37. Smith, Erasmus, p. 183.
38. Bainton, Erasmus, p. 140.

Bibliography
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