Tag Archives: Erasmus

Papyrus 141

Recently a new papyrus from Oxyrhynchus has been transcribed and published and been given a Gregory-Aland number. The Gregory-Aland number is Papyrus 141, as opposed to P. Oxy 5478 or its library shelf ID at the Sackler Library in Oxford. This new papyrus is dated from the III century, and contains fragments of the gospel of Luke chapters 2 and 24.

So this is to announce that I have added it to my “Table of NT Greek Manuscripts arranged by date” page. I have also added its reading in one footnote in my translation of the gospel of Luke, chapter 2 verse 33.

There is a textual variant in Luke 2:33 where the UBS/NA28 text has “And the child’s father and mother were marveling at the things being said by him.” The Textus Receptus and the Robinson-Pierpont texts say “And Joseph and his mother were marveling…” Our new Papyrus 141 supports the UBS/NA28 reading.

Erasmus has πατηρ “father” in all 5 of his editions. He said, “In some Greek manuscript I read ‘Joseph’ instead of ‘father’; in my opinion it has been changed by someone who feared that Joseph be called Jesus’ father” (“In Graecis aliquot codicibus lego pro pater, Ioseph; quod arbitror immutatum a quopiam, qui vereretur Ioseph vocare patrem Iesu…”; ‘aliquot’ added in 1519—ASD VI–5, p. 484 ll. 42–44; similarly in Resp. ad annot. Ed. Lei, ASD IX–4, p. 126 ll. 506–509). So we see that Erasmus figured that copyists changed the original “father” to Joseph, for the very same reasons that KJV Onlyists prefer the reading “Joseph.” But they forget that the KJV calls Joseph Jesus’ father in several other passages. Erasmus was correct, but the KJV does not follow him here.

You can download my updated gospel of Luke with Greek text here, and the Manuscripts listed by date page is here. I also updated the printed edition of Luke on Amazon.

Singular Textus Receptus Readings

There are twenty-four or so textual variants in the Textus Receptus text of the Revelation of John which have extremely slim or zero Greek manuscript support. Usually, two handwritten Greek manuscripts agree with these readings. These MSS are 296 and 2049. They used to be known as 57 and 141 respectively.

However, H. C. Hoskier, who did a two-volume investigation of all the manuscripts of the Apocalypse of John, says this about them in Text 2, p. 156, lines 26,27: “This MS 187 with 57 and 141 must not be accorded any weight whatsoever. They are brought into the record because of their very connection with the printed text.” See also Text 2, p. 156, lines 26,27, where he says “… 57 et 141 ex ed. typ. exscripti.” The Latin means “copied from printed edition(s).”

In their own pages which describe each, Hoskier had this to say. About 296 (old 57) he says in Text 1, p. 179, “I suppose I ought to eliminate 57 from the list altogether.” And on p. 180 Hoskier says, “So 57 becomes Colinaeus.”

About 2049, (old 141) he says in Text 1, p. 474, that MS 2049 is most like Erasmus’ 4th Edition, because the whole manuscript is word for word to it, except for one word, in 22:21, ἡμῶν for ὑμῶν. Which could easily have been an error made by the copyist when copying Erasmus. This exact variant is one of the most common mistakes scribes made throughout the Greek New Testament. There are a few uses of contractions, which differs from Erasmus not adding up to a word of difference, but that is to be expected from a scribe who was hand copying such a large document. It is reasonable to conclude that 2049 is a handwritten copy of Erasmus’ 4th edition (1527).

Below are snips from his book. I have also added these images to my Revelation with Greek document which you can download here.

Palmer and Ligatures

In my previous post, I showed why I believed Erasmus’ 3rd and 4th editions read παρ εστιν and not περ εστιν. I titled the previous post “Hoskier and Ligatures” and questioned his ability to read ligatures. So this time I will title it “Palmer and Ligatures” since I was the questionable one.

The problem with ligatures is that they can be blurry or tiny in one important detail that makes all the difference. Such is the case here. My ligature table and chart is correct, but I was limited to the font I had. In the font chart, the difference between παρ and περ is quite small:

Today Dr. Maurice Robinson emailed me to say I was incorrect on this. So I set about to find other examples of Erasmus’ ligatures for παρ and περ. It turns out that in Erasmus’ ligature for παρ, he has a relatively large alpha letter above, compared to my example in my ligature chart, which was limited by the font. The ligature for περ in my chart has a small half moon, convexed to the left. However, in Erasmus, this half moon is larger. I will give examples below.

In addition, Erasmus’ tail to his Rho letters is a large loop that circles back up diagonally to the left, compared to my chart which has a small, barely discernible loop, whereas in the ligature for παρ there is a large loop.

Compounding the difficulty with ligatures is that one same author may use 3 or 4 different ligatures for the same thing. And in fact Erasmus wrote these 3 different ways, even 2 different ways in one word, see below.

Erasmus’ superscript alpha is relatively large and far to the left.

Mat 4:18 παρὰ in Erasmus 3:

Matt 1:19 παραδειγματίσαι in Erasmus 3:

Matt 1:19 παραδειγματίσαι in Erasmus 2:

Here I will show Erasmus’ περπερεύεται in 1 Cor. 13:4 in all five editions, from 1 to 5:

Observe that he wrote the word περπερεύεται five different ways!

My table of Ligatures is still correct, and useful. Also, I have corrected my Revelation document. In addition, you can purchase a printed paperback edition of my ligature guide.

Hoskier and Ligatures

EDIT: My next post updates this one, as I was mistaken in this post. But I will leave it for the images and information / illustration of the difficulties of reading New Testament Greek Ligatures.

As I posted before, I am currently busy updating and improving the footnotes to my translation of the Revelation of John, “The Apocalypse of John.” One of the ways I am expanding the footnotes, is specifying which Vulgate manuscripts (not just editions) support what reading. Also, where the Textus Receptus is divided, specifying which editions read what.

In this process, I have found several places in which I disagree with H. C. Hoskier’s collation of the TR editions. I do not know if he was relying on someone else’s collations, or if he looked at the original documents themselves. But the problem lies in understanding the ligatures for letter combinations that are used in Greek cursive manuscripts, including the Greek New Testament editions made by Erasmus, Beza, Elzevir, and Stephens. Now, I possess PDF copies of the original cursive manuscripts of the following “Textus Receptus” editions. All 5 Erasmus editions, the 1550 Stephanus edition, the 1598 Beza edition, the 1624 Elzevir edition, plus the Complutensian Polyglot (1514).

Revelation 17:8 variant- καιπερ εστιν

There is a famous textual variant in Revelation chapter 17 verse 8 where the Textus Receptus disagrees with all Greek manuscripts and reads καιπερ εστιν. However, I found that I disagree with Hoskier regarding the readings of Erasmus’ editions 1, 3 and 4, as follows.

First, a snip showing what Hoskier says:

Erasmus Ed. 1 (1516): Hoskier says και περ is two words, I say one:

Erasmus Ed. 3 (1522) very clearly reads καί παρ, not καί περ:

Erasmus Ed. 4 (1527) very clearly reads καί παρ, not καί περ:

See here the difference- Erasmus Ed. 5 (1535) shows the ligature for περ:

I still offer my chart of Greek cursive ligatures for free (also thanks go to Vernon Eugene Kooy, PhD for his font). These above images and data are now included in my Revelation pdf, downloadable for free.

General Epistles Robinson-Pierpont

I have revised my translations of the General Epistles translated from the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform 2018 Greek text. The footnotes I augmented some, and improved the accuracy of the translation some. I have uploaded a new PDF of the document, as well as published a new printed edition on Amazon. The printed book has 194 pages, and was newly published June 26, 2022.

Textus Receptus Gospel of John

I completed and uploaded my edition of the Gospel of John containing verse by verse alternation between the Textus Receptus Greek text of John and my English translation. You can download that there, and also the whole Bible Textus Receptus edtion. Kindle edition as well. The Greek text I used was Scrivener’s 1894 TR edition. I don’t see the point of translating Erasmus’ or Stephens’ editions since that would not line up with the King James Version (KJV), with which people are already very familiar.

There are not a great many differences between the Textus Receptus and the Robinson-Pierpont text of John’s gospel, but I noticed that when the TR does differ, it is often following the Western text, i.e., Codex D and Latin. I also noticed a variant reading in the TR for which I know of no Greek manuscript attesting to it (there may be one or two; I have not looked at all MSS.) And that variant is in John 20:29, “Because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed.” That addition of the word Θωμᾶ, Thomas, is not attested in any of the Greek mss (as far as I know right now.)

Byzantine Gospel of John

I have completed and uploaded my translation of the Robinson-Pierpont majority text version of the gospel of John. You can download that as the separate pdf file, or as part of the Byz Holy Bible: https://bibletranslation.ws/trans/johnwgrkbyz.pdf https://bibletranslation.ws/trans/holybiblebyz.pdf ; A Microsoft Word edition of the whole bible is also available: https://bibletranslation.ws/trans/holybiblebyz.docx

Textus Receptus Revelation

I have completed and uploaded editions of the Revelation of John based on the Robinson-Pierpont Greek text, and also another one based on the Textus Receptus. In addition, my previous eclectic edition of Revelation has added to it many more footnotes. There are now 508 footnotes in these editions, showing the textual variants, and the ancient witness support for each.
Here you can download the Textus Receptus edition of the Apocalypse of John or the Robinson-Pierpont edition of the Apocalypse of John