Erasmus and the lies Whateverists tell about him
Erasmus and the lies Whateverists tell about him
Johnthebaptist said:
Peter Av
Ignorance is Bliss! The manuscripts he used are a known fact. Yes everybody is wrong except KJV Only according to you.
Hi jt, then you must be very happy, indeed. (Sorry, couldn't resist;-)
Here are a few facts about Erasmus and the texts he used. Besides this, I find it ironic that you of all people, jt, would criticize Erasmus when it was his Greek text that Luther used to translate that Bible of yours you say you like so much. More self inflicted throat cutting?
Additionally, the KJB translators did not even use Erasmus' Greek text as their primary source. They used Beza's Greek text, and some from Stephanus, and they had many other Greek copies, as well as several foreign language Bibles.
You all are stil ignoring the Providence of God in guiding the KJB translators because He knew what He would do with the King James Bible.
Anyway, here are some facts about Erasmus and the texts he used. You really need to learn more about this issue.
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/isthereceived.htm
IS THE RECEIVED TEXT BASED ON A FEW LATE MANUSCRIPTS?
March 16, 2000 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, Michigan 48061,
fbns@wayoflife.org) -- For over a hundred years modern version defenders have promoted a deception that the Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament (and its 20th century successors, such as the United Bible Societies’ Greek N.T.) is founded upon the "oldest and best manuscripts," whereas the Greek text underlying the King James Bible is an inferior one that is based on a mere handful of late Greek manuscripts. Consider the following statement by D.A. Carson, author of the influential and popular book The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism:
"Although Erasmus published a fourth and fifth edition, we need say no more about them here. Erasmus’s Greek Testament stands in line behind the King James Version; yet it rests upon a half dozen minuscule manuscripts, none of which is earlier than the tenth century. ... THE TEXTUAL BASIS OF THE TR IS A SMALL NUMBER OF HAPHAZARDLY AND RELATIVELY LATE MINUSCULE MANUSCRIPTS" (D.A. Carson, The King James Version Debate, Baker Book House, 1979, pp. 35-36).
Another example of this error is found in the book The Bible Version Debate: The Perspective of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (1997). Chapter four is "Defining the Terms" by W. Edward Glenny, professor of New Testament at Central --
"… the TR is only based on seven late manuscripts" (Glenny, p. 51).
This incredibly erroneous statement has been repeated so frequently by textual critics and modern version defenders that it is commonly accepted as truth. While it is not exactly surprising to see New Evangelicals like D.A. Carson fall for such things, we have seen that some fundamental Baptists are repeating the same tired errors. If scholarly fundamental Baptists of our day would spend at least as much time studying the writings of Bible-believing textual scholars such as John Burgon, Edward Miller, and E. F. Hills, who believe in infallible inspiration and divine preservation, as they do studying the writings of Modernists and New Evangelicals such as Bruce Metzger, F.F. Bruce, and Kurt Aland, who deny both inspiration and preservation, they might not be so quick to pass along fallacies to unsuspecting readers.
Be that as it may, it is not difficult to dispel the myth that the Received Greek Text underlying the King James Bible and other Reformation Bibles is merely "based on seven late manuscripts." It is true that Erasmus had in his actual possession only a few Greek manuscripts when he composed the first edition of his Greek New Testament, but he had examined a large number of other manuscripts, both Latin and Greek, and he had compared these with many ancient Bible translations and with a large number of quotations from ancient church leaders. He also was aware of the alternative readings contained in manuscripts such as the Vaticanus and Codex D. Thus he was in a position to know that those few manuscripts he had at hand represented the witness of vast numbers of other manuscripts. The fact is that the Received Text underlying the esteemed and mightily used Reformation Bibles is represented in the majority of existing Greek manuscripts, quotations from ancient church leaders, and ancient Bible translations. This is why the Received Text has commonly been called the "majority text" (though that term has been usurped in recent years by the Hodges-Farstad-Thomas Nelson Greek New Testament of 1982). Textual authorities admit that of the more than 5,200 existing Greek manuscripts, 99% contain the common traditional ecclesiastical or Received Text. Thus, on the very face of the evidence, it is nonsense to say that the Received Text is "is only based on seven late manuscripts."
THE TESTIMONY OF J.H. MERLE D’AUBIGNE DISPELS THIS MYTH
The following quotation from historian J. H. Merle D’Aubigne demonstrates that Erasmus had access to more textual evidence than his modern detractors admit:
"Nothing was more important at the dawn of the Reformation than the publication of the Testament of Jesus Christ in the original language. Never had Erasmus worked so carefully. ‘If I told what sweat it cost me, no one would believe me.’ HE HAD COLLATED MANY GREEK MSS. of the New Testament, and WAS SURROUNDED BY ALL THE COMMENTARIES AND TRANSLATIONS, by the writings of Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose, Basil, Chrysostom, Cyril, Jerome, and Augustine. ... HE HAD INVESTIGATED THE TEXTS ACCORDING TO THE PRINCIPLES OF SACRED CRITICISM. When a knowledge of Hebrew was necessary, he had consulted Capito, and more particularly Ecolampadius. Nothing without Theseus, said he of the latter, making use of a Greek proverb" (J.H. Merle D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, New York: Hurst & Company, 1835, Vol. 5, p. 157).
The popular notion that Erasmus and other 16th-century editors of the Greek New Testament worked with paltry resources is simply nonsense. The notes that Erasmus placed in his editions of the Greek New Testament prove that he was informed of the variant readings that have found their way into the modern translations since 1881. Even though Erasmus did not have access to all of the manuscripts translators can use today, there can be no doubt that he did have access to the variant readings in other ways.
"Through his study of the writings of Jerome and other Church Fathers Erasmus became very well informed concerning the variant readings of the New Testament text. Indeed almost all the important variant readings known to scholars today were already known to Erasmus more than 460 years ago and discussed in the notes (previously prepared) which he placed after the text in his editions of the Greek New Testament. Here, for example, Erasmus dealt with such problem passages as the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13), the interview of the rich young man with Jesus (Matt. 19:17-22), the ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), the angelic song (Luke 2:14), the angel, agony, and bloody seat omitted (Luke 22:43-44), the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11), and the mystery of godliness (1 Tim. 3:16)" (Dr. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 1956, 1979, pp. 198-199).
Not only did Erasmus consult many Greek and Latin manuscripts and ancient Bible translations to determine the proper text, he examined quotations from ancient Christian writings.
"Erasmus uses the Fathers of the Church as independent witnesses for the early text of the Vulgate. In his dedicatory letter to the pope he mentions that the special care due to the sacred writings caused him not only to compare ‘the oldest and most correct manuscripts’ but also to ‘run through all the writings of the old theologians and to trace from their quotations and expositions what each one of them had read and changed’" (W. Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation, p. 145).
THE TESTIMONY OF BISHOP ELLICOTT DISPELS THIS MYTH
As for the Received Text being based on "seven late manuscripts," consider further the testimony of Bishop Ellicott, the chairman of the committee that produced the English Revised Version of 1881 (the committee also included Westcott and Hort), the predecessor of all modern versions:
"THE MANUSCRIPTS WHICH ERASMUS USED DIFFER, FOR THE MOST PART, ONLY IN SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT DETAILS, FROM THE GREAT BULK OF THE CURSIVE MSS. The general character of their text is the same. By this observation the pedigree of the Received Text is carried up beyond the individual manuscripts used by Erasmus ... That pedigree stretches back to remote antiquity. THE FIRST ANCESTOR OF THE RECEIVED TEXT WAS AT LEAST CONTEMPORARY WITH THE OLDEST OF OUR EXTANT MSS, IF NOT OLDER THAN ANY ONE OF THEM" (Ellicott, The Revisers and the Greek Text of the N.T. by two members of the N.T. Company, pp. 11-12).
Dr. Ellicott was familiar with all of the textual scholarship of his day, and he had no hesitation whatsoever to say that the Received Text is based upon textual authority which is at least as old as that upon which the Westcott-Hort text rested. Dr. Ellicott was saying that the textual authority underlying the Received Text is at least as old as the famed Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts.
The following testimony by the Trinitarian Bible Society explodes the myth that the Received Greek Text is a "late text" whereas the eclectic Greek text is a "old text."
"It must be emphasised that THE ARGUMENT IS NOT BETWEEN AN ANCIENT TEXT AND A RECENT ONE, BUT BETWEEN TWO ANCIENT FORMS OF THE TEXT, one of which was rejected and the other adopted and preserved by the Church as a whole and remaining in common use for more than fifteen centuries. The assumptions of modern textual criticism are based upon the discordant testimony of a few specimens of the rejected text recently disinterred from the oblivion to which they had been deliberately and wisely consigned in the 4th century" (The Divine Original, TBS article No. 13, nd, p. 7).
Concerning the preservation of the Scriptures, our faith is not in man, but in God. Even if the Reformation editors had fewer resources than those of more recent times, we know that the God who controls the times and the seasons was in control of His Holy Word. The infallible Scriptures were not hidden away in some monastic dungeon at the foot of Mt. Sinai or in a dusty corner of the Pope’s library. The infallible Scriptures were being published, read, and taught by God’s people.
The vast majority of Greek manuscripts, ancient versions, and the writings of church "fathers" support the Received Text. This was a fact known by the Reformation editors. Whereas the textual critics of our day see this as a mere accident of history, the Bible-believing Reformation editors of old saw the hand of God in it. So do we.
David Cloud
Brother Marty Shew found this in his research about Erasmus:
"Beatus Rhenanus, an employee of Froben, described Erasmus‚ arrival with these words, "Erasmus of Rotterdam, a great scholar, has arrived in Basel most recently, weighed down with good books, among which are the following: Jerome revised, the complete works of Seneca revised, copious notes on the New Testament, a book of similes, a large number of translations from Plutarch, the adages"
I draw attention to Rhenanus‚ comment "copious notes on the New Testament". Though much is made of what mss. Erasmus had or didn‚t have little is said of the additional notes he brought with him. That these notes were very vast can be seen in a letter Erasmus wrote on July 8, 1514 (this would‚ve been just before he arrived in Basel), to a friend. In the letter Erasmus states, "After collation of Greek and other ancient manuscripts, I have emended the whole New Testament, and I have annotated over a thousand passages, not without benefit to theologians." Here we have in the testimony of Erasmus himself that he had just finished collating "Greek and other ancient manuscripts" and had corrected (i.e. Œemended‚) the entire New Testament (Latin). Additionally, he had made notes on "over a thousand passages".
ne can only say so much,for the readers to follow along,you know.Just because I addressed only the typo errors and spelling changes,only in passing,one would come to the conclusion that I was only concerned with this part,Amen?
