Novum Instrumentum omne
[1] They were the basis for the majority of Textus Receptus translations of the New Testament in the 16th–19th centuries, including those of Martin Luther, William Tyndale and the King James Version.
Historian Erika Rummel identifies four tasks for the publication: However, Erasmus did not believe that a single translation could ever be a definitive rendition of a different language.
Erasmus himself later summarized his approach as philological, forensic and pre-theological, and that the formal aim was not to produce a definitive Greek recension or Latin translation: he included Patristic quotations as evidence about the existence of different traditions.
Notably he did not warrant that his Greek manuscripts were necessarily more correct in every passage than the Latin sources: "Accordingly, I do not publish this edition as if I intended it to be completely free of errors.
Erasmus' philological efforts helped launch what has been described as a "golden century of Catholic biblical scholarship" in the hundred years following his death.
However the 1519—the edition used by Martin Luther's German translation—notably adopted Papal secretary Lorenzo Valla's suggestion of Latin: resipiscere (to repent, to become wise again, to recover from insanity or senility, or to regain consciousness) with historical justification from Lactantius, and with an intellective rather than affective connotation.
"[n 5] To some extent, Erasmus "synchronized" or "unified" the Greek (Byzantine) and the Latin textual traditions of the New Testament by producing an updated translation of both simultaneously.
)[31] In one case back-translating was necessary: the manuscript page containing the last six verses of Revelation had been lost (from Minuscule 1rK, as used for the first edition), so Erasmus translated the Vulgate's text back into Greek, noting what he had done.
[31]: 4 In Acts 9:6 the question that Paul asks at the time of his conversion on the Damascus road, Τρέμων τε καὶ θαμβὣν εἲπεν κύριε τί μέ θέλεις ποιῆσαι ("And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what will you have me to do?")
But it was the text that first revealed the fact that the Vulgate, the Holy Book of the Latin Church, was not only a second-hand document but, in places, quite erroneous.
"[33] The New Testaments included scholia: various prefaces on methodology, a list of problems in the Vulgate translation, and substantial annotations justifying the word choices.
One notable preface, Methodus,[34] was expanded in the second edition, then spun out as an independent work: the "System (or Method) of True Theology" (Latin: ratio seu compendium verae theologiae, RVT):[35] it promoted affective devotional reading where one inserts oneself into the Gospel situation as an observer of Christ's human actions and interactions, akin to the monastic Lectio Divina.
[36] Erasmus wrote that the “signs of profit from study” of the New Testament (RVT 1) using this method are, summarized: First, not an increased facility in argumentation but an interior change, and a willingness to engage not in “conflictatio” with others but in “collatio”– a mutual interchange; secondly, a willingness to interrupt study with prayer, both petition for insight and thanksgiving for benefits, “sicubi te senseris profecisse” (“however you feel moved”)His preface Paraclesis promoted scriptural knowledge for devotional use by even uneducated laymen, including the vernacular.
[39] Erasmus had been inspired back in 1504 by his discovery of Lorenzo Valla's Adnotationis Novum Testamentum, a work comparing the Latin Vulgate against Greek manuscripts.
[45]: 148 Over more than a decade, he assembled a large number of variants in Vulgate and patristic manuscripts, enabling him to choose those Latin readings which approached closest to the Greek texts in his judgement.
[citation needed] In the later versions of the New Testament and Annotations, Erasmus made use material from his Froben editions of the Western and African patristic and classical authors, notably Ambrose and Augustine.
[citation needed] Erasmus had, unusually, been taught basic classical Greek at school,[46] but did not actively learn it until his mid 30s under the influence and assistance of his English circle, notable Greek experts Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, and the writings of Lorenzo Valla, a Renaissance biblical scholar of the previous generation.
In the later versions of the New Testament and Annotations, Erasmus made use material from his Froben editions of the Eastern and African patristic and classical authors, notably Cyprian, Origen and John Chrysostom.
Erasmus was assisted by numerous scholars, both in Basel (such as Oecolampadius, for the first edition) and through his first-class network of correspondents (for example, he made enquiries of Papal Librarian Paulus Bombasius about Codex Vaticanus).
I have added annotations of my own, in order in the first place to show the reader what changes I have made, and why; second, to disentangle and explain anything that may be complicated, ambiguous, or obscure.
[42]: 373,374 In their own advocacy of the competing Alexandrian text-type and Critical Text against Erasmus' work, Victorian scholar S. P. Tregelles and modern critical scholar Bruce Metzger speculated that Froben might have heard about "the forthcoming Spanish Polyglot Bible," and tried to overtake the project of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros for commercial reasons.
[42] Instead of delaying the publication on account of the search for another manuscript, he decided to translate the missing verses from the Latin Vulgate into Greek, alerting readers to this in a note.
[32]: 145 [n 11] The reception of the first edition by some theologians was mixed, but the English bishops who had been Erasmus' primary sponsors and mentors on the project were enthusiastic at the result,[58] and within three years a second was made.
[39] López de Zúñiga, known as Stunica, one of the editors of Ximenes' Complutensian Polyglot, reproached Erasmus that his text lacked part of the 1 John 5:7-8 (Comma Johanneum).
[61] Erasmus replied that he had not found any Greek manuscript that contained these words, he answered that this was a case not of omission or removal, but simply of non-addition.
(Codex Montfortianus) The fourth edition (1527) was printed in a new format of three parallel columns, they contain the updated Greek, Erasmus' own Latin version, and a standard Vulgate.
Erasmus in Adnotationes to Acts 27:16 wrote that according to the Codex from the Library Pontifici (i.e. Codex Vaticanus) name of the island is καυδα (Cauda), not κλαυδα (Clauda) as in his Novum Testamentum (Tamet si quidam admonent in codice Graeco pontificiae bibliothecae scriptum haberi, καυδα, id est, cauda).
[66] 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.
Erasmus' editions started what became known as the Textus Receptus ("received text") Greek family which was the basis for most Western non-Catholic vernacular translations for the subsequent 350 years, until the new recensions of Westcott and Hort[67] (1881 and after) and Eberhard Nestle (1898 and after.)
However Protestant polemicists have made stronger interpretations: for example Jean Calvin claimed the Trent decrees are "condemning all translations except the Vulgate" including the Greek and Hebrew.
