Subject: Erasmus's Latin translation

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 20:07:41 -0400 (EDT)

Helge Evensen wrote:

>The changes he *did* introduce into Codex 2 (and the other MSS) may, in
>fact, have been based primarily on the MSS he studied in connection with
>his Latin translation. If that is the case, it is not even necessary to
>assume that he gathered notes on his travels or his visits to libraries,
>but only that he gathered information from the Greek MSS he worked with
>when preparing his Latin text. He certainly must have had the time and
>opportunity to do so, whether he actually did it or not.

This view that Erasmus produced a Latin translation before his 1516
Latin-Greek NT has been shown to be invalid. Andrew J. Brown has demonstrated
that the early dates of certain manuscripts (two in 1509 and one in 1506)
which contain the Vulgate and Erasmus's Latin translation apply only to the
Vulgate. Erasmus's own Latin translation was added in the 1520s ("Date of
Erasmus' Latin Translation of the New Testament," Transactions of the
Cambridge Biographical Society 8-4 (1984): 351-80). I discuss all this in my
article on Erasmus.  See William W. Combs, "Erasmus and the Textus Receptus,"
Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 1 (Spring 1966).

Bill Combs
Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary