Editing Textus Receptus (section)

===Erasmus===
{{Main|Novum Instrumentum omne}}
[[File:ErasmusText TitlePage.jpg|thumb|The title page of Erasmus' 1516 New Testament from Froben]]
[[Erasmus]] had been working for years making philological notes on scriptural and patristic texts. In 1512, he began his work on the Latin New Testament. He consulted all the [[Vulgate]] manuscripts that he could find to create an edition without scribal corruptions and with better Latin.  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."<ref>"Epistle 273" in Collected ''Works of Erasmus Vol. 2: Letters 142 to 297, 1501–1514'' (tr. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson; annotated Wallace K. Ferguson; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 253.</ref>

[[File:ErasmusText LastPage Rev22 8 21.jpg|thumb|180px|right|The last page of the Erasmian New Testament (Rev 22:8–21)]]
He included the Greek text to defend the superiority of his Latin version over the Vulgate. He wrote, "There remains the New Testament translated by me, with the Greek facing, and notes on it by me."<ref>"Epistle 305" in ''Collected Works of Erasmus. Vol. 3: Letters 298 to 445, 1514–1516'' (tr. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson; annotated by [[James Kelsey McConica|James K. McConica]]; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 32.</ref> 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."<ref>"Epistle 337" in ''Collected Works of Erasmus'' Vol. 3, 134.</ref>

Erasmus's new work was published by [[Johann Froben|Froben]] of [[Basel]] in 1516, becoming the first published Greek New Testament, the ''[[Novum Instrumentum omne]], diligenter ab Erasmo Rot. Recognitum et Emendatum''. For the Greek text, he used manuscripts: [[Codex Basilensis A. N. IV. 2|1]], [[Minuscule 2814|1<sup>rK</sup>]], [[Minuscule 2|2<sup>e</sup>]], [[Minuscule 2815|2<sup>ap</sup>]], [[Minuscule 2816|4<sup>ap</sup>]], [[Minuscule 7|7]], [[Minuscule 817 (Gregory-Aland)|817]].<ref name="W. Combs, 1996">W. W. Combs, ''Erasmus and the textus receptus'', DBSJ 1 (Spring 1996), 45.</ref> In his research in England and Brabant for annotations on particular words, he had already consulted several other manuscripts and was particularly interested in patristic quotations as evidence of early readings. For subsequent editions he used more manuscripts, and consulted with his vast network of correspondents.

Typographical errors, attributed to the rush to print the first edition, abounded in the published text. Erasmus also lacked a complete copy of the [[Book of Revelation]] and translated the last six verses back into Greek from the Latin [[Vulgate]] to finish his edition. Erasmus adjusted the text in many places {{citation needed|date=June 2023}} 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-type|Byzantine]] text, it differs in nearly 2,000 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 but not all of the typographical errors corrected.<ref>Bruce M. Metzger, Bart D. Ehrman, ''The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration'', [[Oxford University Press]], 2005, p. 145.</ref>

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.<ref name="W. Combs, 1996"/> 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 Greek text to be of dubious quality.<ref name="dubious">[[Bruce Metzger]] ''The Text of the New Testament'', p. 99</ref>

With the third edition of Erasmus's 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."<ref>H. J. de Jonge, [http://www.thescripturealone.com/De%20Jonge%20-%20Erasmus%20and%20the%20Comma%20Johanneum.pdf ''Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum'', Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses (1980), p. 385] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140903143333/http://www.thescripturealone.com/De%20Jonge%20-%20Erasmus%20and%20the%20Comma%20Johanneum.pdf |date=2014-09-03 }}</ref>

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 but typically also making a number of minor changes of their own.<ref>S. P. Tregelles, [https://archive.org/stream/a609739200treguoft#page/n43/mode/2up ''An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament''], London 1854, p. 29.</ref>