Bible Matters--Adding to the Bible

There are many Bible teachers who much to do about the verse in the book of Revelation that warns about plagues coming upon anyone’s head who adds or takes away from the book. Many Bible teachers, theologians, church leaders, Biblical scholars have used this verse in such a manner as if John was referring to the entire Bible. However, he specifically mentions “this book,” one book, singular. At the time of his writings the writings which would commonly but falsely come under the heading of the New Testament were not yet canonized. The warning referred to the book of Revelation, not the entire Bible.

It is quite ironic that the very verse which warns about tampering with the Bible or parts thereof is a verse that has been, in fact, tampered with, and quite significantly. As we can see below, the King James Version of the Bible states that God will take away one’s part out of the “book of life” while the New International Version takes away one’s share in the “tree of life.”

Revelation 22:18-19 18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (KJV, Rev. 22:18-19)

Revelation 22:19 19 And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. (NIV, Rev. 22:19)

Which version is true? And which version has been tampered with? And have the plaques come upon those who made the error? Did the one who introduced the error have the plaques come upon him? And has his name been blotted out of the “book of life” or has his part been taken away in the tree of life? Who is this character?

In this particular case, the King James Version, the “Authorized Version” which many Fundamentalists and Evangelical dub an “Inerrant Bible” is the culprit, the translation with a plain old error right in the very text many use to warn people about adding or taking away from the Bible. Here’s the rest of the story:

In 1452 The Ottoman Turks conquered the city of Constantinople driving many Greek scholars with their ancient Greek manuscripts to Western Europe. This event brought about a renewed interest in the ancient languages of the Bible, that is, Hebrew and Greek. These languages had become totally foreign to the Roman Catholic world whose theological scholars were steeped in Latin. Greek became so popular, many academic types gave themselves Greek named. One of these men, was a Roman Catholic humanist named Gerrit (or Gert) Gerritszoon, Dutch for Gerard Gerardson. He (mistakenly) believed that the root Geert derived from begeren (to desire) and translated this into both Latin (Desiderius) and Greek (Erasmus). His father was a priest so it is almost certain he was illegitimate.

In the early 1500’s, a Roman Catholic scholar and monk by the assumed name of Desiderius Erasmus decided to create a critical Greek text of what we call today the “New Testament” writings which were in written originally in Greek. (His real name was Gerrit Gerritszoon, Dutch for Gerard Gerardson. It was fashionable in those days to take on Greek names. The original languages of the Bible were just being revived during that time. Prior to that time under Roman Catholicism, it was forbidden to read the Bible in any language other than Latin.)

Textus Receptus (Latin: "Received Text") is the name given to the first Greek text of the New Testament to be printed with movable type. It was compiled by Desiderius Erasmus for his translation of the Bible into Latin, and later used as the basis for the translation of the New Testament in the King James Version of the Bible, for the original Luther Bible, and for most other Reformation era translations throughout Western and Central Europe. This is the text that was in use by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Erasmus' time (ca. 1500). The Textus Receptus is classified by scholars as a late Byzantine text.

Erasmus' original 1516 edition of the Greek New Testament was prepared in haste, and typographical errors abounded in the text as published. Additionally, the selection of manuscripts available to Erasmus was quite limited, being confined to a few late medieval texts most modern scholars consider to be of dubious veracity. Erasmus was often forced to make his own interpretations—back-translating from the Vulgate at best and fully fabricating material at worst.

The first edition was not used for any subsequent works, except as the basis for the second edition. With the third edition (1522) the Comma Johanneum saw inclusion, in response to Trinitarian pressures from the contemporary Church—a circumstance now subject to great debate. This was the edition used for the KJV translations.

Popular demand for "complete" Greek versions of the Bible led to a flurry of authorized and unauthorized editions in the early 16th century; the name "Textus Receptus" can refer to any of these, or any Greek edition printed from 1519 to ca. 1650. The name itself derives from the publisher's preface to a 1633 edition, containing the phrase "textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum", roughly translated as "thus you have the text now received by all".

Printer John Froben of Basle (who stole a march on Cardinal Ximenes) engaged Desiderius Erasmus who produced a dual Greek/Latin version.
The edition was full of errors, and not traceable to particular Greek originals. It was an instant success, reprinted with corrections several times, and led to nearly 200 successors, all suffering from errors to a certain degree between 1516 and 1550. The damage was done, the world was flooded with erroneous Greek text.

1550 AD saw the publication of Robert Stephanus's TR, whose third edition became the standard text, as it started to introduce rigour sadly lacking in previous work. He is credited with devising the chapter and verse delineations used to this day. 1633 AD saw further refinement by Elzevir, and the "final" major edition is the 1873 Oxford edition.

The Textus Receptus is thus very far from it's Latin name, received text, it is a vast range of the Greek, of variable quality. Whilst making the Greek available to a wide range of scholars through printing, it also introduced many errors to this audience.

New Testament editions in the 18th century did not question the Textus Receptus (TR), despite new manuscript evidence and study, but its limitations became apparent. E. Wells, a British mathematician and theological writer (1719), was the first to edit a complete New Testament that abandoned the TR in favour of more ancient manuscripts; and English scholar Richard Bentley (1720) also tried to go back to early manuscripts to restore an ancient text, but their work was ignored. In 1734 J.A. Bengel, a German Lutheran biblical theologian, stressed the idea that not only manuscripts but also families of manuscript traditions must be differentiated, and he initiated the formulation of criteria for text criticism.

ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS (C. 1466–1536)
Dutch scholar; first editor of the Greek New Testament

Born a priest’s son out of wedlock, Erasmus knew nothing of normal family life and was in that sense a deprived child. His schooling was largely at Deventer (Netherlands) under the auspices of the Brethren of the Common Life. Those followers of what was called the “Modern Devotion” movement sought a deepening of spiritual life. Under the Brethren, who produced some of the fifteenth century’s best teachers, Erasmus acquired an enthusiasm for Bible study. In 1486, evidently under pressure from his guardians, he became an Augustinian canon at Steyn (Netherlands). In spite of his reluctance to enter the monastery, his six or seven years of study there produced in him a love for classical literature and thought.

About 1493 Erasmus was ordained and became Latin secretary to the bishop of Cambrai (France). The bishop’s continuing interest allowed Erasmus in 1495 to pursue theological studies at Paris. Erasmus took a lasting dislike to the dogmatic theologians there, with their partisanship, intolerance, and hostility to new ways of thinking.

In 1496, after a brief visit to Steyn, Erasmus returned to Paris, reinforced in his resolve to leave the monastic life. He continued his theological studies but majored in the new biblical courses rather than in Scholastic theology. Meanwhile, he helped to support himself (and advanced his career) by tutoring the sons of leading European families. During that time he wrote his Colloquies, a series of imaginary dialogues. They originated as exercises for his students but were edited and supplemented over the years. Erasmus used a gallery of characters to critique the religious life of his day, in particular satirizing the forms of Scholasticism and monkish superstition he regarded as damaging to true piety and devotion. At times, however, the spirituality in his Colloquies is indistinguishable from Stoic morality.

In 1499 Erasmus paid his first visit to England. Prominent churchmen he met there included Bishop Warham of London (soon to be archbishop of Canterbury), John Fisher, William Latimer, John Colet, and Thomas More. The last two exercised a profound influence upon Erasmus.

In England Erasmus also found a battle in progress. Obscurantists were attempting to prevent the growth of Christian knowledge. Under the influence of the Italian Renaissance many Europeans had been rediscovering the classical learning of the Greeks and Romans. Erasmus wanted such learning to develop a truly Christian character instead of causing a return to pagan values. He found support for that wish in England, especially from people like John Colet, who encouraged Erasmus in the study of the New Testament.

In 1500 Erasmus left England, though his friends wanted him to stay. He went to Paris and then to Louvain (Belgium), where he declined a professorship. About that time he began to expose the ignorance and corruption of the age. In 1503 he published the Handbook of the Christian Knight, which purported to recall a nobleman to Christian faith and practice. “It has long been my cherished wish,” he wrote in it, “to cleanse the Lord’s temple of barbarous ignorance and to adorn it with treasures from afar, such as may kindle in generous hearts a warm love for the Scriptures.” He advocated a middle course between extremes “so that we neither act too securely because we rely on divine grace, nor cast away our mind without arms because we are dispirited by the difficulties of war.”

In 1505 and 1506 Erasmus revisited England, then went to Italy and received his doctorate at Turin (1506). He was in Italy three years without finding there the stimulus for which he had hoped. He did see much that was corrupt about the papacy. In 1508 the publication of Adages, in which he gathered more than three thousand proverbs from classical authors, confirmed his reputation as the foremost scholar in northern Europe.

In a wave of optimism that accompanied the accession of Henry VIII to the English throne, Erasmus went back to England in 1509 for five years. He stayed for a time with Thomas More, and that year wrote the Encomium Moriae, later translated into English as The Praise of Folly. The book was a biting satire on monastic and ecclesiastical corruption, on the many supposed miracles wrought by images, on the scandal of indulgences, on useless rites, and on the papal hierarchy. That work significantly helped to prepare the way for the Reformation.

Erasmus criticized Scholasticism for its inordinate preoccupation with details and its ignorance of true religion. He pointed to the early church and to the church fathers as his ideal of reform rather than to the complex argumentations of later Scholastics. He wrote, “He is truly a theologian who teaches not with syllogisms and contorted arguments, but with compassion in his eyes and his whole countenance, who teaches indeed by the examples of his own life that riches are to be despised, that the Christian man must not put his faith in the defenses of this world, but depend entirely upon heaven.” The test of theology, Erasmus claimed, was whether it was reflected in Christian living.

From 1514 to 1529 Erasmus was often in Basel (Switzerland), where he went to collaborate with the publishing house of Froben. In 1514 he declined the call of the prior of Steyn to return to monastic life, defending his vocation of scholarship. In 1517 Leo X (pope, 1513–1521) granted two dispensations to permit Erasmus to live outside a monastery and to let him discard his order’s dress.

For a return to first-century Christianity to occur, Erasmus thought, people must know what kind of Christianity that was. So in 1516 appeared the great work of his life: an edition of the Greek New Testament text. Beside it he placed his own elegant Latin version with critical notes, some as insightful as anything that came later from the Reformers. His Latin revealed mistakes in the Vulgate text (the Catholic church’s official Latin Bible), though it was not itself free of errors. Nevertheless his pioneering work constituted a landmark from which successive generations of scholars took their bearings.

The book’s prefatory essay itself was a masterly achievement, as Erasmus set down his aims and hopes. “I could wish,” he declared in lines that became famous, “that every woman might read the Gospel and the Epistles of St. Paul. Would that these were translated into each and every language so that they might be read and understood not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens . . . Would that the farmer might sing snatches of Scripture at his plough and that the weaver might hum phrases of Scripture to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveler might lighten with stories from Scripture the weariness of his journey.”

Ironically, the work was dedicated to Pope Leo X (who gladly accepted the honor), and also was hailed with delight by Martin Luther. That was only one year before Luther defied the pope by posting his Ninety-five Theses on the church door in Wittenberg.

In 1516 Erasmus became a royal counselor in the Brussels (Belgium) court of the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Between that year and 1518 Erasmus also published a nine-volume edition of the works of Jerome, Erasmus’s favorite church father. Less ambitious editions of other fathers including Irenaeus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and Origen followed in the succeeding eighteen years.

From 1517 to 1521, the most critical period for the Reformation in Germany, Erasmus was at Louvain, a famous center of learning in the Low Countries. There he was a key figure among the humanists, maintaining an enormous correspondence. Although both sides of the Reformation solicited his help, Erasmus never met Martin Luther.

In 1521 Erasmus settled at Basel, a city he found most satisfying for his work. There, aided by his friend John Froben, he published many books and continued his “back-to-the-fathers” movement. Although friends in high places in a number of countries offered him various posts, Erasmus declined them all in order to maintain his literary freedom. Any limits on Erasmus were to a large extent self-imposed by his temperament. A scholar who could assail long-entrenched evils in the church, Erasmus nonetheless toned down his attack just when papal defenses were beginning to crumble. Despite appeals from both sides, he was reluctant to become embroiled in the controversy between Luther and the papacy. His neutrality worked to the benefit of the Reformation.

At last, however, in 1524 Erasmus yielded to pressure and attacked Luther in Diatribe on Free Will, to which Luther replied with Bondage of the Will (1526). Erasmus came back with Hyperaspistes Diatribes. Thus for the last twelve years of his life he was associated with the conservative faction, remaining firmly if sometimes uneasily in the old church.

In 1529, after the Reformation under John Oecolampadius had come to Basel comparatively peacefully, Erasmus was among the humanists who left the city. He went to Freiburg, a German city with a young university. Six years later he returned to Basel, although ill, to supervise the printing of his edition of the works of Origen. Erasmus died in Basel the next year. No priest was present. “Most holy was his living,” said one who was with him, “most holy his dying.”

Erasmus was a man of moderation in an age of extremes; his reputation was therefore attacked by both sides of the Reformation controversy. He refused to be caught up in the turbulence of the times. So, despite the deft aim of his literary missiles, the shy, sensitive bachelor found his scholarly detachment misunderstood, sometimes by friend and foe alike. His words were taken out of context and made to serve undesired ends. His views were used to criticize the papacy, and in Henry VIII’s England to liberalize divorce.

In that age, “bridge-building” was not an acceptable occupation. Many did not share Erasmus’s enthusiasm for pagan literature nor even for the writings of the fathers. The range of his learning was enough to make him suspect; he knew classical antiquity (reading both Latin and Greek), the Bible, early church writings, and the philosophical and theological scholasticism of the Middle Ages.

None saw more keenly than Erasmus the need for reformation, but for him that need was bound up with the need for education. His edition of the Greek New Testament was evidence of his concern for scholarship. For Erasmus, the cause of reform required using the tools of scholarship to learn crucial lessons from the Christian past. Those lessons included humanity and piety.

Europe, having fallen out of the habit of scholarly studies, tended to allow the papacy to tell it what to do and think on religious matters. It seems paradoxical that Erasmus described himself as ceasing to be a skeptic where the church had defined things. The same Erasmus had compared Julius II (pope, 1503–1513) unfavorably with Julius Caesar, though considering the analogy incomplete because it lacked another Brutus. Such language, however, was the common currency of his day. Erasmus basically wished to preserve the church’s unity, and so urged the abolition of practices, such as giving indulgences, that nurtured superstition and gave offense (and ammunition) to the Reformers.

In Martin Luther, Erasmus saw some of the dogmatism that had repelled him in his early days, only now serving a different cause. Even if scandals had become inevitable, Erasmus was not the one to precipitate crises. Indulgences were indefensible, yet he never unconditionally condemned them. He detested compulsion in religion. Erasmus would have agreed with Archbishop Robert Leighton that persecution was like “scaling heaven with ladders fetched out of hell.” Erasmus believed that faith persuades rather than compels. Yet even he agreed that “an extremely contumacious heretic might be burned.”

Erasmus was a pacifist, but not an unqualified one. He doubted that the concept of the “just war” could be precisely defined. Like many pacifists, however, he was willing to wage “verbal warfare.” Regarding himself as a cosmopolitan who belonged to no one country, Erasmus could embrace pacifism unimpeded by narrow nationalistic interest.

Critics have often said that Erasmus was little more than a “humanist with Christian overtones.” They sometimes accuse him of neglecting the work of Christ as example and teacher. Yet Erasmus believed in salvation by grace. His work on the New Testament allowed the Word of God to speak for itself and so come alive for both simple people and scholars. A multitude of faults is more than offset by that kind of testimony.

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