works which exposed the ignorance of the monks, the superstitions of the priesthood, and the general bigotry and wickedness within the Roman church.

He classified the Greek manuscripts and read the "Fathers" (letters etc. written by the early Church pastors which taken as a whole contain almost the entire New Testament). Today, many who deprecate the pure teachings of the Received Text sneer at Erasmus and pervert the facts in order to belittle his work. All this by men who could never have intellectually tied Erasmus' boot straps. While he lived, Europe was at his feet. Several times the King of England offered him any position in the kingdom, at his own price! The Emperor of Germany likewise. Indeed, the Pope offered him the position of Cardinal. Erasmus resolutely declined not being willing to compromise his beliefs or conscience. France and Spain beckoned him to their realm while Holland proudly claimed him as her most distinguished son.

Book after book came from his labors. The demand for them was overwhelming. His crowning work was the New Testament in Greek. At last, after one thousand years, the New Testament was printed in its original tongue (A.D.1516). Astonished and confounded, Europe the intellectual, civilized cradle of the world deluged by superstitions, coarse traditions, and monkeries, read the pure story of the Gospel. In a letter dated 13 August, 1521 to Peter Barbirius, Erasmus wrote:

"I did my best with the New Testament, but it provoked endless quarrels. Edward Lee pretended to have discovered 300 errors. They appointed a commission, which professed to have found bushels of them. Every dinner-table rang with the blunders of Erasmus. I required particulars, and could not have them."1 (Edward Lee afterwards became Archbishop of York)

 Consider and reflect upon this – the foremost scholar in the entire civilized world said the work was his "best". Such men have both egos and detractors. Erasmus would never have put his name on an undertaking which would have left him exposed and defenseless before his enemies and critics.

When Erasmus came to Basle in A.D. 1515 for the purpose of assembling a complete Greek New Testament, he had only five Greek cursive minuscules of the New Testament at his disposal.2 For the most part, he utilized a 15th century manuscript for the Gospels but used an 11th or 12th century manuscript on occasion. He used a 12th or 13th century manuscript for the Acts and the Epistles. Erasmus had a 15th century manuscript of the Acts and the Epistles which he also used occasionally, and he had a 12th century manuscript of Revelation. The last six verses of the Revelation manuscript were missing so he used the Latin Vulgate version to complete the chapter.

Erasmus' Greek New Testament has been often criticized on the grounds that he had so little data at his command from which to draw and that they were "late" copies. However, Erasmus did not go to the task unprepared. Although he had only five late minuscules, he had already translated a Latin New Testament and in preparation for this labor had collected and gathered variant readings from many Greek manuscripts. He journeyed all over Europe to libraries and to anyone from whom he could gather readings from manuscripts.3 Erasmus organized his findings and made notes for himself concerning the different readings. These travels brought him into contact with several hundred manuscripts and Erasmus divided them into two camps, i.e., those he considered spurious and those he deemed genuine and trustworthy.4 The spurious group was a small percentage of the

1 James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus, (London: Longman's, Green and Co., 1906; rpt. of 1894 orig.), p. 294.

2 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., p. 198. Dr. E.F. Hills, a distinguished Latin major and Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Yale, completed his Th.D program in New Testament text criticism at Harvard. A conservative Presbyterian Christian scholar, he was called home by the Lord in 1981.

3 Ibid.

4 Frederick Nolan, An Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate or Received Text of the New Testament6, (London, England: F.C. and J. Rivington Pub., 1815), p. 413.

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