Thinking to Believe

Many people are under the impression that the Textus Receptus (TR) printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society was the Greek text used by the KJV translators to translate the NT.  Not so.  The TR was not the Greek text used by the KJV translators.  Instead, it is a Greek text based on the KJV, created 270 years after the KJV was published!  To understand why, let’s explore the history of the TR in a little detail.

The story begins in 16^th century Europe.  Catholicism was the religion of Europe, and Jerome’s Latin Vulgate was the Bible of the church—and had been for over 500 years.[1] In 1504, however, the Catholic humanist scholar by the name of Desiderius Erasmus came across a manuscript by the Italian humanist Lorena Valla (1407-57)—an event that would forever change Erasmus’ life, as well as the future of Bible translations.  Valla’s manuscript contained a host of annotations to the Vulgate, noting those places where it was not faithful to the Greek text.  Erasmus became enamored with Valla’s approach, and determined to carry on his work.

In 1516 Erasmus published his Novum Instrumentum.[2] This work was nearly 1000 pages in length.[3] It contained several articles regarding the work, Erasmus’ annotations on the Vulgate, a Greek text, and Erasmus’ own Latin translation.  It might be more accurate to call it an emendation of the Vulgate rather than a new Latin translation since Erasmus used the Vulgate as his base text, correcting it wherever he thought it departed from the Greek text.  Even in its final 1535 form (5^th edition), it was still ~60% identical to the Vulgate.[4]

Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum is historically significant because it challenged the Vulgate translation, and it contained the first published Greek text.  I emphasize that it was the first published Greek text because the distinction of the first printed Greek text belongs to the bishop of Toledo, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, and his mammoth work: the Polyglotta Complutensis.[5] It was printed on January 10, 1514, nearly two years before Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum, but was awaiting papal approval.[6] Pope Leo X did not give his permission to publish it until 1520—approximately four years after Erasmus published his Greek text—and even then Complutensis did not hit the streets until 1522, approximately five years after Cardinal Ximenes had died.[7] Due to its size (6 volumes) and its late arrival in the market, only 600 copies were ever produced.  Contrast this to Erasmus’ work which sold approximately 300,000 copies in 20 years![8]

Erasmus prepared his manuscript in approximately eight months.  By his own admission he was rushed.  He said it was “hurried out headlong,” and “precipitated rather than edited.”  It is popularly believed that Erasmus was working feverishly on the project because he wanted to beat Cardinal Ximenes to market with the very first published Greek text.  While this may have been the motive of Erasmus’ printer who encouraged him to publish a Greek text in his Instrumentum, there is no good reason to believe Erasmus was similarly motivated.  His interest was not in publishing a Greek text, but in publishing his annotations to the Vulgate.  A Greek text was included merely to justify his own Latin translation against the Vulgate.  The evidence we have seems to indicate that Erasmus was prodded by Froben et al to substitute a new Latin translation for the Vulgate, and to include the Greek text.[9] In the introduction to the Instrumentum Erasmus wrote that the “Greek text has been ‘added’ so that the reader can convince himself that the Latin translation does not contain any rash innovations, but is solidly based.”  As Erika Rummel writes:

The theory that Erasmus had begun work on a translation before 1506 was, however, at odds with his own testimony, for he consistently claimed that the idea of adding a translation to his New Testament edition occurred to him only when the project was already well advanced. In polemics against Edward Lee, Johannes Sutor, and Frans Titelmans, Erasmus declared that the plan was conceived by friends when the publication was already in progress. He claimed that it had not been his own intention to add a new translation—scholarly friends had urged him to do so—and insisted that nothing had been further from his mind at first. He described the circumstances surrounding the publication of the translation in similar terms in a letter to Budé: “When the work was already due to be published, certain people encouraged me to change the Vulgate text’ (Ep 421:50–2). In 1533 he repeated this version of events: “When I had first come to Basel I had not even thought about translating the New Testament—I had merely noted down some brief explanatory notes and had decided to be content with that” (Allen Ep 2758:12–14).[10]

Evidence that Erasmus’ interest in the Greek text was only secondary to his interest in his Latin translation is found in the fact that title of his work never advertised the Greek text,[11] he never consented to publish the Greek text by itself, and he arrived in Basle, Switzerland without any Greek manuscripts with which to produce a Greek text.[12]

It’s not entirely certain which Greek manuscripts Erasmus used to produce his Greek text.  He had as many as 10 manuscripts: six of these manuscripts were from the Dominican Library in Basle, dated between the 11^th and 15^th centuries (one 11^th century text, four 12^th century texts, and one 15^th century text).[13] Erasmus’ friend, John Reuchlin, had borrowed two of these manuscripts, who lent them to Erasmus in turn.[14] One was borrowed from the family of Johann Amerbach in Basel,[15] and at least three others were from England.  One of Reuchlin’s manuscripts, Codex 1^rk, was the best of the bunch, but Erasmus did not trust it, and thus only used its text of Revelation (he was forced to since he had no other manuscript of Revelation).[16]

We have been able to ascertain that Erasmus had access to at least the following manuscripts (key: e=Gospels; a=Acts and Catholic letters; p=Pauline letters, including Hebrews; r=Revelation:

• Codex 1^eap (12^th century minuscule manuscript containing all of the NT except Revelation that Erasmus borrowed from Reuchlin)
• Codex 1^rK (12^th century minuscule commentary Erasmus borrowed from Reuchlin, containing all of the book of Revelation except for the last six verses)
• Codex 2^e (12^th century minuscule containing the gospels)
• Codex 2^ap (12^th century minuscule containing Acts, Catholic epistles, and Pauline epistles, borrowed by Erasmus from Johann Amerbach in Basel)
• Codex 4^ap (15^th century minuscule containing Acts, Catholic epistles, and Pauline epistles)
• Codex 7 (11^th century minuscule containing the epistles of Paul)
• Codex 817 (15^th century minuscule containing the gospels).

We also know from Erasmus’ annotations that he had knowledge of Codex 69 (15^th century manuscript of the entire NT with some lacunae[17]), and used certain readings from this manuscript in his text (probably from notes he had taken on this manuscript prior to his arrival in Basel), but he did not have access to the full manuscript in Basel.[18] In all, Erasmus only had three manuscripts of the Gospels and Acts, four manuscripts of Paul’s epistles, and one manuscript of Revelation to produce his Greek text.[19]^,[20]

Erasmus used Codex 2^e and 2^ap extensively.  In fact, they served as his base text.  He made text-critical notes directly onto these codices, and then gave these edited codices to Froben for publishing (Froben did not incorporate all of Erasmus’ edits)![21] Since the Greek text for Revelation was contained within a commentary, and because it was a borrowed manuscript, Erasmus had a scribe copy the Greek text into a new manuscript for the printer.  The scribe made several copyist mistakes in the process that still appear in the Textus Receptus.  For example, in Revelation 17:4 the scribe wrote ajkaqavrthto instead of ajkavqarta (“impure”).  This is not even a Greek word!  In Revelation 17:8 kai parevstai (“and is to come”) was copied as kaivper estin (“and yet is”).[22] These errors are still found in the TR to this day!

The most egregious errors are found in Revelation 22:16-21 because Erasmus had no Greek text for this passage.  The lone manuscript Erasmus borrowed for Revelation was missing the last leaf which contained these verses.  While he was able to find 22:20 in Lorenzo Valla’s Notes on the New Testament, he had no Greek text for the other five verses.[23] To get around this problem Erasmus back-translated the Latin Vulgate into Greek.[24] This introduced a spate of textual variants not found in any extant Greek manuscript.  For example, the following words appear in Erasmus’ text of 22:16-21 that do not appear anywhere else in the manuscript tradition: “orthrinos at Revelation 22:16, elthe twice in verse 17 (its actually erchou), eltheto for erckestho in the same verse, suntusrturoumai gar for martnro and epitithe pros tauta for epithe ep auta in verse 18 and so on.”[25] In 1522 Erasmus obtained a copy of Cardinal Ximenes’ Complutensian Diaglott, and utilized his text of Revelation to make corrections to the fourth edition (1527) of his own text.[26] Erasmus made 90 changes in Revelation alone.[27]

In 1519 Erasmus issued a second edition, changing the title to the more familiar Novum Testamentum, increasing the number of annotations to nearly double that of the first edition, and including a response to critics of his first edition (with the great title of “Summary Arguments Against Certain Contentious and Boorish People”).[28] Given the number of errors in the first edition, one would have expected extensive text changes to appear in the first revision, but Erasmus only made approximately 400 changes.  This was followed by three other editions—1522[29], 1527, and 1535[30]^,[31]—for a total of five editions.  John Mill estimated that there were 118 changes between the 2^nd and 3^rd editions,[32] 113 changes between the 3^rd and 4^th, and only five changes between the 4^th and 5^th (though Frederic Scrivener thought these were underestimates).[33]

Robert Estienne, a Parisian printer known as “Stephanus” (1503-1559) possibly used Erasmus’ 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th editions[34] as the basis for four more editions of the Greek text: 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1551.[35]^,[36] Stephanus used the Polyglotta Complutensis as well as 15 Greek manuscripts to edit Erasmus’ text, including D, Codex Reginus, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 2817.[37]^,[38] John Mill estimated that Stephanus’ 2^nd edition differed in 67 places from the 1^st, and the 3^rd edition differed in 284 places from the 2^nd.[39] His 3^rd edition contained various readings in the margin, and hence was the first published Greek text with a critical apparatus.[40]^,[41] The 3^rd and 4^th editions differ only in the fact that the 4^th edition added verse divisions.[42] It also contained the Vulgate, Erasmus’ Latin translation.[43]

Theodore Beza (1519-1605) used Stephanus’ 3^rd edition to publish nine more editions: two in 1565, 1567, 1580, 1582, 1588, 1590, 1598, and 1604.  Only four of these were independent editions.  The rest were smaller sized reprints.[44]

Sidenote: The name “Textual Receptus” is a Latin phrase created as an advertising blurb by Daniel Heinsius[45] in the Elzevir’s (Bonaventure and his nephew[46] Abraham[47]) 1633 printed edition of Beza’s first edition Greek text.

Here is where the story of the KJV and the TR comes into view.  The KJV translators did not use a single Greek text for their translation, but multiple.  Their primary textual sources were Beza’s 1598 edition and Stephanus’ 1550 edition.  While these editions were very similar, they differed from one another.  If the KJV translators used multiple Greek texts, and none of them was identical to the modern TR, then where did the modern TR come from?

The TR as we know it today is the work of Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener in 1881.[48] Scrivener was aware that the KJV translators had 7 different printed versions of the Greek NT at their disposal: the 5 editions of Erasmus, the 1550 Stephanus edition, and the 1598 Beza edition.  Where these texts differed, the KJV translators had to make a choice as to which reading they would translate.  In effect, they produced a new, eclectic Greek text, but never committed that text to writing.  Which readings did they choose to translate?  To identify the translators’ textual choices Scrivener identified every place in which the seven Greek texts differed from one another, and then compared those textual options to the KJV.  Whatever Greek reading most closely matched the KJV translation Scrivener included in his Greek text (he found that they relied most heavily on Beza’s 1598 version.[49]).[50] When all was said and done, Scrivener had produced a new Greek text based on the KJV that reflected the translators’ eclectic text—270 years after the KJV was translated.  This means the modern TR an English-based Greek text, reverse-engineered from the KJV!

This is not good news for TR/KJV-only advocates who hold up the TR as the ideal/standard text and dismiss other Greek texts (such as the Nestle-Aland Greek text) on the basis that they are eclectic.  The kettle is calling the pot black.  Not only were the seven Greek texts used by the KJV translators eclectic texts, but the KJV translators themselves used an eclectic approach to determine which Greek words they would translate.  There is not a single Greek manuscript or published Greek text prior to the creation of the KJV that contains the precise Greek words the KJV translators translated.  Textual criticism and eclecticism is present at every level.  It is unavoidable.  The question is not whether textual criticism and eclecticism is a valid way of determining the original text of the NT, but how best to apply these methods to accomplish that goal.