Talk:Novum Instrumentum omne

Possibly DYK
This article looks like by a great feature for Wikipedia's Main Page's Did You Know section. Perhaps you want to check out WP:DYK. NuclearWarfare  contact me My work 00:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Difference with Textus Receptus
Very good article ! I suggest to explain a little more the difference with Textus Receptus, and to move some parts of Textus Receptus in this Article, leaving Textus Receptus as a list of the editions based mainly on Erasmus work (including Colineaeus 1534, and Elzevier of Leiden 1624-1678), and the criticism of such a text A ntv (talk) 15:21, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * You are right in Textus Receptus too much detailes about Erasmus, but Textus Receptus is not finished (realized in 30%). It needs more historical informations, more about textual variants, but who will do that? The subject is really difficult. It is much easier to write an article about one printed Bible. Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 22:49, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Comma Johanneum
User Leszek Jańczuk is again in an edit war for an unknown reason trying to insert that Erasmus inserted the Comma Johanneum because he felt bound by a promise. The scholar who investigated this found the story to be unfounded and this is so recorded in the Comma Johanneum and Textus Receptus article. Somehow Leszek wants this disproven story in here, for reasons that escape me. He even marks my edits as vandalism, though I have backed them up with up-to-date references. What to do? Appeal to an editor? 21:10, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Because you deleted this "Erasmus had expressed doubt as to the authenticity of the passage in his Annotations." and you destroyed references. Now we have red reference tag. Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 21:13, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * A reference to a bad source is no use at all. Fixed the red tags.
 * I saw your comment on the wrong page reference only after I had noticed that myself, and edited the article and inserted the old reference. Hopefully you will see the correction before you do more work.

The text saying that the Codex Vaticanus does not contain the Johannine comma was again removed; I suppose the reason is that it needs a better citation. As this fact is also mentioned in the Wiki pages for the Codex Vaticanis and implied by the page on the Johaninne comma, and implicit in the cited book, a better approach might have been to add a tag "citation needed"? Anyway, I have restored/improved the text on this, and provided an explicit citation plus a link to a picutre of the actual Greek text in question, from the Vatican digital library. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 04:22, 1 June 2023 (UTC)


 * The secondary source you provided was not reliable. Veverve (talk) 05:30, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Veverve should have added a citation required tag, not deleted this on the day he quit Wikipedia. It is one thing to claim (with no argument or evidence) that a secondary source is not reliable, another thing to just delete the text without discussion. The article Codex_Vaticanus states that the text was not found, and it one of the most well-known stories about Erasmus and was part of his discussions with several of his Spanish opponents (Stunica, Sepulveda): I have added some more citations to that as well.
 * So I have 1) restored the text 2) added a reference to an academic work on the subject 3) moved the citations that show the page and that locate the area on the page down to that reference, so they function as see-also links to related material not citations.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 05:17, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
 * KJVToday is a random WP:blog, not a WP:RS., so it has no business being on WP. Veverve (talk) 21:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

1512 Badius Ascensius ref
In 1512 Erasmus had been in negotiation with Badius Ascensius of Paris to publish the Vulgate of Jerome

No, those negotiations were for an edition of Jerome's writings and an edition of the Adagia. The work on the Latin Vulgate only began in 1512 and did not involve Badius. Considering the topic of the article, the section should be removed and the intro rewritten.

StevenAvery.ny (talk) 11:15, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I believe you are correct. I also often read of the Adagia project, but not of the vulgate one. I adapted the phrase accordingly. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 00:26, 27 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I have removed the paragraph as unrelated to the topic. I suppose the idea is that Erasmus tried Badius first for the Adagia, then when that failed went to Froben in Basel, who then got interested in the Annotations project and ramped it up into having a Latin and then Greek NT. I am not sure why this would be useful or interesting to anyone.  But if it is, then the removed paragraph needs a few more dots joined, not just reverting. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:27, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

GA assessment?
There is some uncited text and I also saw a citation needed tag. Its a well known work, a very influential one for christianity and there are sure citations for it. If no-one fixes them, GA reassessment might encourage some editors to get involved.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 00:22, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

First Edition: Greek intention
I am not sure that the current page can be substantiated historically when it says While some speculate that at that time Erasmus did not think about a Greek New Testament, the historical record demonstrates Erasmus had been inspired back in 1504 by his discovery of Lorenzo Valla’s Adnotationis Novum Testamentum, a work comparing the Latin Vulgate against Greek manuscripts with variant readings noted. and (repeating this)  What is clear from the historical record, is that Erasmus was inspired in 1504 by Valla’s work (not Cisneros) to create a new translation from the Greek and his translation would later be met with approval in March 1516.

On the contrary, from Erasmus' words, as far as he had a plan, he originally intended to put out his own Annotations, and then Froben pushed him to put out the Greek and Latin. (The current page also misses out the difference between the Novum Instrumentum and the Novum Testamentum: the Testamentum had his new Latin translation, while the Instrumentum had a corrected Vulgate.)

What Erasmus did from 1505 to 1515 was first print and publish Valla's Adnotationis, then go to every major university, abbey and prelate's library in his travels (Paris, Louvain, Cambridge, Rome, etc etc), study manuscripts and versions and write down whatever he found of interest in his commonplaces collection (a trunk of notes organized by theme). Similarly he did the same for patristic writers. This is how he managed to produce so many books: it was a matter of "precipitating" them from his vast collection of notes. (Henri de Lubac used the same method: he had a big sack of notes.)

Consequently, all the statements along the lines of "For this translation, Erasmus used X editions" do not tell the whole story: the editions he used, and the choices he made, were already based on ten years of studies of words and versions in England, France, Brabant, Venice, and Rome. Not to mention all the help he progressively roped in from his scholarly correspondents, friends and enemies.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 03:34, 31 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I have removed the beginning of this part, as I did not find it in the source. The rest can be found in said source. Veverve (talk) 04:37, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for making this change.
 * I think the text "(not Cisneros)" is speculative and not born out by cited reference hc.edu which even mentions Hearing of the printing of this Greek New Testament probably encouraged the Basel printer Johann Froben to rush a printing and publication of the Greek New Testament. The parenthetical comment could be removed without tears or loss.
 * Sorry to labour this: I think "What is clear from the historical record ..." is not clear at all, and anyway is not what the HC.edu citation actually says. It is kinda a NPOV violation, though of the mildest and most unavoidable kind, where some people's religious inclinations may prefer to see Erasmus as jettisoning the Latin in favour of the Greek rather than wanting the Latin version to be better (whereas he was such a champion of the Latin tongue that he refused to speak anything else, even his own Dutch.)
 * I note the scholarly article in Journal of Theological Studies discusses this, saying p400 In short, it an scarcely be argued that Erasmus pretended to give an edition of the Greek text in his Novum Instrumentum.... The Latin translation is the main point and the Greek is added as accompanying and supporting documentation. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 06:49, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
 * What is clear from the historical record ...": this part was unsourced, so I removed it. Thanks for pointing it out. Veverve (talk) 07:01, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I have adjusted the front section to mention Latin as much as the Greek. I also added a translation of the first edition's title, which I think makes it clear that Erasmus is emending the text using the Greek (i.e. emending the Latin text).. and indeed using the Church Fathers (one of Erasmus' and Valla's evidences that the Vulgate was patchy was how the quote of the Vugate by later Church Fathers did not match what was in some contemporary Vulgates.) The first edition's title, I think, makes it clear that the Annotations form an integral part. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Fifth Edition
There was text "Editions four and five were not so important as the third edition in the history of the Text of the New Testament." which quote an excellent William Combs paper. However, when I read that paper, I could not see that he said anything like that. So I have removed that paragraph, and put in more detail about how the fifth edition was pretty influential.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 12:56, 23 July 2023 (UTC)