INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. Ixvii
The Roman Catholic Church held, and still holds, with the same unreasonable tenacity to Jerome's Vulgate, which, as a translation, is still further removed from the fountain of inspiration, though based in part on an older text.
(1.) The first published (not printed) edition of the Greek Testament is that of ERASMUS (urged by the enterprising publisher Frobenius, who offered to pay him as much "as anybody "), at Basle, Switzerland, 1516, fol.
It was a most timely publication, just one year before the Reformation. Erasmus was the best classical scholar of his ago (a better Latinist than Hellenist), and one of the forerunners of the Reformation, although he afterwards withdrew from it and died on the division line betwn two ages and two churches (1536). He furnished Luther and Tyndale the text for their vernacular versions, which became the most powerful levers of the Reformation in Germany and England.
The first edition was taken chiefly from two late Basle MSS. of the Gospels and Epistles, which are still preserved in the University Library at Basle, and have the marks of the printer's pages (as I observed in 1879). They date from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Erasmus compared them with two others. For the Apocalypse he had only one MS., borrowed from Rcuchlin, then lost sight of, but recently found again in 1861 ;* defective on the last leaf (containing the last six verses, which he retranslated from the Vulgate into poor Greek). Made in great haste, in less than six months, and full of errors. Elegant Latin version. Dedicated to Pope Leo X. Erasmus himself,
- By Dr. Dclitzsch, in the library of the princely house of
Oettingen-Wallerstein. Sec his llandxhriftlicht Fundt, Heft i. and ii. 1861 and 1862.
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