Greek+Manuscripts

The Dutch humanist Erasmus had been working for years on two projects: a collation of Greek texts and a fresh Latin New Testament. In 1512, he began his work on a fresh Latin New Testament. He collected all the [|Vulgate] manuscripts he could find to create a critical edition. Then he polished the Latin. He declared, "It is only fair that Paul should address the Romans in somewhat better Latin."[|[][|1][|]] In the earlier phases of the project, he never mentioned a Greek text: "My mind is so excited at the thought of emending Jerome’s text, with notes, that I seem to myself inspired by some god. I have already almost finished emending him by collating a large number of ancient manuscripts, and this I am doing at enormous personal expense."[|[][|2][|]] While his intentions for publishing a fresh Latin translation are clear, it is less clear why he included the Greek text. Though some speculate that he intended on producing a critical Greek text or that he wanted to beat the [|Complutensian Polyglot] into print, there is no evidence to support this. Rather his motivation seems to be simpler: he included the Greek text to prove the superiority of his Latin version. He wrote, "There remains the New Testament translated by me, with the Greek facing, and notes on it by me."[|[][|3][|]] He further demonstrated the reason for the inclusion of the Greek text when defending his work: "But one thing the facts cry out, and it can be clear, as they say, even to a blind man, that often through the translator’s clumsiness or inattention the Greek has been wrongly rendered; often the true and genuine reading has been corrupted by ignorant scribes, which we see happen every day, or altered by scribes who are half-taught and half-asleep."[|[][|4][|]] Erasmus's new work was published by [|Froben] of [|Basel] in 1516 and thence became the first published Greek New Testament, the //[|Novum Instrumentum omne], diligenter ab Erasmo Rot. Recognitum et Emendatum//. He used manuscripts: [|1], [|1rK], [|2e], [|2ap], [|4ap], [|7], [|817].[|[][|5][|]] The second edition used the more familiar term //Testamentum// instead of //Instrumentum,// and eventually became a major source for Luther's [|German] translation. In second edition (1519) Erasmus used also [|Minuscule 3]. Typographical errors (attributed to the rush to complete the work) abounded in the published text. Erasmus also lacked a complete copy of the book of [|Revelation] and was forced to translate the last six verses back into Greek from the Latin [|Vulgate] in order to finish his edition. Erasmus adjusted the text in many places to correspond with readings found in the Vulgate, or as quoted in the [|Church Fathers]; consequently, although the Textus Receptus is classified by scholars as a late [|Byzantine] text, it differs in nearly two thousand readings from the standard form of that text-type, as represented by the "[|Majority Text]" of Hodges and Farstad (Wallace 1989). The edition was a sell-out commercial success and was reprinted in 1519, with most—though not all—the typographical errors corrected.[|[][|6][|]] Erasmus had been studying Greek New Testament manuscripts for many years, in the Netherlands, France, England and Switzerland, noting their many variants, but had only six Greek manuscripts immediately accessible to him in Basel.[|[][|5][|]] They all dated from the 12th Century or later, and only one came from outside the mainstream [|Byzantine] tradition. Consequently, most modern scholars consider his text to be of dubious quality.[|[][|7][|]] With the third edition of Erasmus' Greek text (1522) the [|Comma Johanneum] was included, because "Erasmus chose to avoid any occasion for slander rather than persisting in philological accuracy", even though he remained "convinced that it did not belong to the original text of l John."[|[][|8][|]] Popular demand for Greek New Testaments led to a flurry of further authorized and unauthorized editions in the early sixteenth century, almost all of which were based on Erasmus's work and incorporated his particular readings, although typically also making a number of minor changes of their own.[|[][|9][|]] The overwhelming success of Erasmus' Greek New Testament completely overshadowed the Latin text upon which he had focused. Many other publishers produced their own versions of the Greek New Testament over the next several centuries. Rather than doing their own critical work, most just relied on the well-known Erasmian text.

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