The history of the New Testament text cannot be understood without addressing the work of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and the subsequent development of the Textus Receptus (Received Text). Erasmus’ contribution stands at a pivotal point in the history of biblical scholarship: the transition from a manuscript-based transmission of the text into the age of the printed editions that shaped the Protestant Reformation. However, to evaluate Erasmus and the Textus Receptus accurately, it is necessary to examine his life, his methodology, the manuscripts available to him, and the legacy of his printed Greek New Testament in contrast to the vast manuscript evidence available today.

Erasmus of Rotterdam: Life and Context

Desiderius Erasmus was born in Rotterdam in 1466 C.E. and died in Basel in 1536 C.E. He was a Dutch humanist scholar, educated in the classics, and fluent in Latin and Greek. His humanist orientation emphasized returning ad fontes—“to the sources”—a principle that drove him to pursue the earliest available texts rather than relying upon the medieval Latin tradition alone. During this period, Europe was awakening to classical learning, the Greek language was being studied anew, and the printing press had revolutionized the distribution of texts.

The Latin Vulgate of Jerome (produced around 405 C.E.) had dominated Western Christianity for a thousand years. By Erasmus’ time, the Vulgate was riddled with transcriptional errors and inconsistencies, having been copied repeatedly over many centuries. Erasmus believed that returning to the Greek text would correct these problems and restore the New Testament to greater accuracy. His ultimate goal was not the production of a critical Greek edition for scholars, but the revision of the Latin Vulgate. The Greek text, in his view, was a necessary tool for accomplishing this.

Erasmus’ First Edition of the Greek New Testament (1516)

In 1516 C.E., Erasmus published the first printed Greek New Testament, known as the Novum Instrumentum Omne. It was printed in Basel by Johann Froben. This edition was hastily prepared, with Erasmus working under intense pressure from the printer to bring the volume to press quickly. It included the Greek text alongside a new Latin translation by Erasmus and extensive annotations explaining textual and interpretive decisions.

The Greek text of Erasmus’ first edition was not based on the oldest or best manuscripts. Instead, it relied on a small handful of late medieval manuscripts, most of them belonging to the Byzantine tradition. His primary base text was a twelfth-century manuscript of the Gospels (Minuscule 2). For Acts and the Epistles, he used a fifteenth-century manuscript (Minuscule 2ap). For Revelation, he only had one manuscript (Minuscule 1r, a twelfth-century witness), which lacked the last six verses of the book. To fill this gap, Erasmus translated the Latin Vulgate back into Greek, introducing readings into the printed text that had no Greek manuscript basis whatsoever.

This back-translation is perhaps the most notorious feature of Erasmus’ text. For example, in Revelation 22:19, where Greek manuscripts read “the tree of life” (tou xylou tēs zōēs), Erasmus’ reconstructed text reads “the book of life” (tou bibliou tēs zōēs), a reading taken from the Latin tradition. As a result, some errors entered the printed text not from Greek tradition but from the Latin Vulgate.

The Later Editions of Erasmus

Erasmus published five editions of his Greek New Testament between 1516 and 1535 C.E. Each new edition made corrections and adjustments, though the basic textual foundation remained the same. The second edition of 1519 was particularly important because it became the basis for Martin Luther’s German translation of the New Testament (1522). The third edition of 1522 included the famous Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8), the Trinitarian formula found in later Latin manuscripts but absent from nearly all Greek witnesses. Erasmus initially refused to include the passage because no Greek manuscript contained it. Under heavy pressure, he reluctantly promised to add it if a Greek manuscript could be found that contained the words. A Greek manuscript (Codex 61, also called the Montfortianus) was produced, apparently created for this purpose in the early sixteenth century. Erasmus kept his word and inserted the passage in his third edition, even though he remained doubtful about its authenticity. This decision influenced later printed editions, giving the Comma Johanneum a prominence far beyond its manuscript support.

By the time of his fifth and final edition in 1535, Erasmus had improved some of his earlier errors, but his reliance on a narrow manuscript base meant that his text was not an accurate representation of the earliest New Testament writings.

The Emergence of the Textus Receptus

After Erasmus’ death, his Greek text went through multiple revisions by others. The most significant were those of Robert Estienne (Stephanus) in Paris and Theodore Beza in Geneva. Stephanus’ 1550 edition introduced verse numbers for the first time and became the standard in many Protestant circles. Beza’s editions (1565–1604) drew upon additional Greek manuscripts but largely preserved the Erasmian base text. In 1633, the Elzevir brothers of Leiden published an edition that included the advertising preface: “Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum” (“Therefore you have the text now received by all”). From this marketing phrase, the designation Textus Receptus (Received Text) was born.

The Textus Receptus was not the text of Erasmus alone but the combined tradition of these printed editions, largely dependent on Erasmus’ initial work. Because the Textus Receptus was the form of the Greek text underlying the King James Version (1611) and other early vernacular Bibles, it became deeply entrenched in Protestant tradition. For centuries, it was treated as the “standard” Greek text of the New Testament.

The Textus Receptus in Light of Manuscript Evidence

The key issue in evaluating the Textus Receptus is its relationship to the broader manuscript tradition. Erasmus had access to only a handful of manuscripts, all of them late, and his hurried editing process introduced errors. Modern textual criticism, by contrast, draws upon more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts, with papyri dating as early as the second century C.E. The Alexandrian textual tradition, represented by early witnesses such as P75 (c. 175–225 C.E.), Codex Vaticanus (B, 325–350 C.E.), and Codex Sinaiticus (א, 330–360 C.E.), offers a much older and more reliable form of the text than Erasmus’ sources. For example, where Erasmus had to back-translate portions of Revelation, Codex Sinaiticus and other ancient manuscripts preserve the authentic Greek text.

The Textus Receptus does contain many readings supported by Byzantine manuscripts, but in places where it diverges from both Alexandrian and Byzantine traditions, it often reflects errors introduced by Erasmus’ Latin reliance. The Comma Johanneum remains the clearest example of a passage preserved in the Textus Receptus that is absent from virtually all ancient witnesses.

The Enduring Significance of Erasmus and the Textus Receptus

Erasmus’ Greek New Testament and the subsequent Textus Receptus were monumental in the history of the Bible. They broke the stranglehold of the Latin Vulgate, reintroduced the Greek text to Western Europe, and fueled the Reformation’s emphasis on Scripture in the original languages. Yet, from the standpoint of textual criticism, Erasmus’ work was severely limited by the resources at his disposal. The Textus Receptus is not identical with the original writings of the New Testament, but it was a vital step toward the rediscovery of that text.

Today, the discipline of New Testament textual criticism, grounded in the documentary method, shows that the earliest Alexandrian manuscripts preserve a text much closer to the autographs than the Textus Receptus. While Erasmus deserves credit for reviving the Greek New Testament in print, his editions must be understood as provisional and imperfect, far surpassed by the evidence available in the papyri and early uncials.