Book Review: Grantley McDonald, Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma and Trinitarian Debate, in Puritan Reformed Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2 (July 2020): 238-241. (original) (raw)
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In 1516, Desiderius Erasmus published the first Greek New Testament. Almost immediately, it became embroiled in controversy and Erasmus was accused of heresy because of critical decisions he made about the text. The most controversial was his decision to not include 1John 5.7, the so-called Comma Johanneum, which was used as a defense of the Trinity. This essay examines the ways in which Erasmus attempted to protect himself and his New Testament from heresy charges as he revised it for its second edition. Then, it offers a further contextualization for why those attempts failed. Erasmus reinserted 1John 5.7 in his third edition.
J. K. Elliott, Review of Grantley McDonald, Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma and Trinitarian Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), Reformation, 22:1 (2017), 58–60.
Erasmus and the Johannine Comma (1 John 5.7–8)
The Bible Translator, 2016
Erasmus's 1516 Latin–Greek New Testament edition differed from the Latin Vulgate in several ways. A small number of textual variants with doctrinal implications involved Erasmus in considerable controversy. Medieval Western theologians had often relied on the " Johannine Comma " (the long reading of 1 John 5.7-8), established in the Latin Vulgate during the late Middle Ages, as an important scriptural foundation for the doctrine of the Trinity. However, when Erasmus showed that this variant was not present in the Greek manuscript tradition, he was accused of promoting Arianism. Eras-mus's debates with the cleric Edward Lee and the textual critic Jacobus Stunica exposed tensions between theologians, jealous of their authority in scriptural interpretation, and humanists, who claimed to understand the Bible better than theologians by virtue of their philological skills. This article concludes by exploring the Inquisition's failed attempt to find a consensus on this issue in 1527.
Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 73: Controversies: Apologia de 'In Principio Erat Sermo' , Apologia de Loco 'Omnes quidem' , De Esu Carnium, De Delectu Ciborum Scholia, Responsio ad Collationes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). xlvi + 293 pp. isbn 9781442648944.
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2018
marketplace, dock, shop, palazzo and private home, however, Esch makes no reference to Brentano and his ground-breaking work. This is especially noteworthy as Esch very often deploys the same impressionistic, paratactic style to tease out the details of daily life and common belief from the same type of materials. Like Brentano, he cautions (pp. -) that these records are incomplete and therefore less statistical than representational sources, an intellectual debt to Brentano that anglophone scholars of Rome must both continuously acknowledge and attempt to escape.
Irreverent reading: Martin Luther as Annotator of Erasmus (Sixteenth Century Journal 48.1, 2017)
“Erasmus laid the egg, Luther hatched it.” Already in the early Reformation this popular quip suggested a direct, causal link between humanism and the Protestant Reformation. Yet Luther’s precise debt to Erasmus has remained an elusive problem. This article reconsiders the issue by investigating how Luther read Erasmus’s scholarship, focusing on two remarkable, little-studied examples: Erasmus’s edition of Jerome and his Annotations to the New Testament. Luther’s annotated copies reveal a deep ambivalence toward the humanist and a distinctly uncharitable reading style. Although Luther diligently collected welcome information, he excoriated what he regarded as Erasmus’s desacralizing philological perspective and his malicious use of humor. Luther’s perception of Erasmian humor in fact operated as an interpretative tool that enabled him to project his suspicions about Erasmus’s skepticism and unbelief into the text. Documenting Luther’s continued preoccupation with Erasmus, this article offers a reevaluation of Erasmus’s intellectual significance for Luther’s theological development.