Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I would add a couple of points for clarification to provide a stronger answer to your rhetorical question.

1. In Erasmus travels, in particular the years he lived with Aldus Manutius, and then following was secretary to the Pope, he appears to have actually come into contact and seen the Vaticanus itself. Manutius had gathered together several greek Christians from Constinople, that had escaped the Muslim overthrow, and brought manuscripts of the Scripture with them. They lived together for a number of years pledging to speak and write only in Greek while they did so for the purposes of becoming intimately and organically connected with the language of Scripture. It is here in this environment that Erasmus refined his Greek skills and began his work. Aldus Manutius is the founder of the Aldine Press and also, interestingly enough, inventor of the italic type face which is utilized by the Authorized Version to indicate translational emmendation so as not to impugn the ipsissima verba of the underlying original tongue!

I'm providing a quote below from one of my recent lectures concerning this.

I finished those lecture series this past Lord's Day with a lot of in depth research that debuncts the majority of the historical revisionism of the critical camp. Moreover, I've arrived at the conclusion that Erasmus has to be examined from an entirely different vantage point to properly understand him and his work. In other words, the apologetic that has been mounted to defend the Recieved Text against the modern critical smears, while many times are factually correct counterpoints, are nevertheless premised upon a false revision of the actual history by the modern critical schools.

For example, one of the critical school smears is how hastily Erasmus worked with Froben, but what they don't tell you is that his license from Maximillius extended him exclusive printing rights for four years. A license, though, is a license of the press - not the scholar. Yet, they insinuate that the haste was required to beat the Complutesian to press - who were, after all, prohibited from printing by the exclusive license. Nor do they tell you that this license and original arrangement for printing was with Erasmus' good friend Aldus Manutius who, however, died in February 1515. This necessitated an arrangement with a new printer, Froben, who wanted to print his Latin translation and annotations separate from the Greek text, but Erasmus wouldn't hear of it because he wanted his translation to be presented as standing upon authority of the original greek. The haste doesn't appear to be attempting to beat the Complutesian to press, as they allege, rather it seems to be over concerns of Froben's partner of printing the Greek text on its own which he did a few months later. Failure to grasp the importance of Erasmus' Latin Translation in relation to the original greek is a major misunderstanding of modern Christians and the basis in which they are so easily deceived by the modern critical schools historical revisionism.

Hence, Erasmus and Manutius were working on this project together, with Erasmus preparing his Latin translations and Annotations for publication while living in England from 1509 to 1515 at the request of King Henry VIII, and Manutius preparing the Greek in Italy. They also don't tell you that the manuscripts he worked from in England were seized by customs officials when he went to Basel. Hence, the necessity of haste where he says: "At last I have escaped from the workhouse in Basel, where I have got through six years work in eight months,” were necessitated because of Manutius death with the preparation of the Greek for printing now falling upon his shoulders amidst the disagreement of how they should be printed - together or separately. This answers so many questions and solves them, as well, like the last six verses of Revelation and more very important ones.

Hence, to properly present the truth, integrity must be built for Erasmus work, and it can be. It most certainly can be!

I've walked away from this study with a lot more respect for Erasmus. It's easy to look at history from one side, especially based upon the theological conflict derived from Luther's Bondage of the Will, and end up with a skewed impression that Erasmus' erred soteriological understanding brands him as a virtual Arminian heretic. However, who knows that Luther owes his very life to Erasmus? When the Elector of Saxony received word that the Pope wanted to see Luther in Rome, and everyone knew what that meant, he sent for Erasmus to advise him. His response was: "Luther has committed two sins: he has touched the pope's crown and the monks bellies." He then advised the Elector to protect Luther.

The truth is much deeper and much clearer than the historical revisionism fed to us in "cunningly devised fables" (2 Peter 1:16) by the modern critical schools.

Here is the quote:

If you remember, Erasmus collated many manuscripts dividing them into two classes, those that coincided with the Byzantine texts and those that coincided with the Vaticanus. Since the Latin Vulgate came into existence in 382 AD, he characterized Greek manuscripts of this era as being corrupted by Arians and Origenists. As he said defending his rejection of their readings in 1527: “We too came across a manuscript of this nature, and it is said that such a manuscript is still preserved in the papal library written in majuscule characters.” Dr. DeJonge says of this statement: “The manuscript to which Eramus refers at the end of this passage is the Codex Vaticanus…designated B, Erasmus regarded the text of this codex as…inferior.” In his textual work from 1522 to 1535 Paul Bombasius and Sepulveda would provide Erasmus several hundred readings from the Vaticanus.

Interior quote from H.J. De Jonge, Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum

It should be no surprise, then, that the Pope's library was open to the greatest scholar of the day while serving as the Pope's secretary! Further, it should be easier to understand that Erasmus's requests for transcriptions of certain passages are based upon his prior examination of the manuscript itself.

2. Now to answer your rhetorical question: "That the wording of the LXX Isaiah passage is close to the AV reading proves what?" Based upon my studies, I've arrived at this conclusion.

The LXX is held up as an "inspired translation" of the ancient Hebrew text, then it is asserted that Christ and the Apostles approved of this recension quoting it in the New Testament, whereby the LXX is then postulated to represent the true text and the Hebrew Masoretic text is discredited. Hence, the modern support of it is part of the Romanist Tridentine counterattack against Sola Scriptura to bolster the Latin Vulgate and was developed by Trent's apologists in the debate with the Protestants over the integrity of the vowel points of the Masoretic Hebrew text.

This, then, provides a fraudulent foundation for Hort's Lucian recension hypothesis, asserting the superiority of the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which so devastatingly demolished the Received Text at the beginning of the 20th century. The authority of which rests upon accepting the BC LXX as representing true quotes in the New Testament. To bring this forth it was then necessary to destroy Christian's faith in the integrity of the Received Text which required the deception of faithful Protestants like B.B. Warfield and many other of our shepherds. That is because the universal position of Protestant Christians was that the Received Text was the preserved word of God in every detail, and once our shepherds were deceived they led the flock of Christ astray. (Jeremiah 50:6) As the Aland's plainly say:

"We can appreciate the better the struggle for freedom from the dominance of the Textus Receptus when we remember that in this period it was regarded as preserving even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself." The Text of the New Testament, An Introduction to the Critical Editions, Kurt Aland, Barbara Aland, p 16

To carry this out Erasmus work and the integrity of those texts are chided as being late and worthless copies in comparison to their self-claimed "oldest and best manuscripts." Yet, they have no evidence that any BC "Septuagint" ever existed, and further because they hold that the term defining the Greek Old Testament is "the translation of the Seventy" or LXX, and that only comes from the Letter of Aristreas which claims that only the Torah was translated by them, then the question over Isaiah is moot. It can't be LXX and must be a post-Apostolic work because the only evidence of its existence is Origen's Hexapla from which the Vaticanus and Jerome's Latin Translation are derived.

Hence, it seems to me that this is nothing more than a continuation of the Tridentine counterattack against Sola Scriptura. The reason is very simple, they manufacture a cunningly devised fable to assign the authority of the Apostolic witness to the Latin Vulgate via the Greek. This is based upon an hypothetical BC translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek which then is used to establish a fraudulent hypothesis in favor of the Alexandrian text by saying Christ and Apostles quoted it, supporting a hypothetical recension of the Greek into the Byzantine text type from which to dismiss 95% of the manuscript evidence.

Let us never forget that Origen was condemned as a heretic with 15 anathema's against him at the Second Council of Constinople in 553 AD.

"If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their impious writings, as also all other heretics already condemned and anathematized by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and by the aforesaid four Holy Synods and [if anyone does not equally anathematize] all those who have held and hold or who in their impiety persist in holding to the end the same opinion as those heretics just mentioned: let him be anathema."

This is why this old codex Vaticanus and its text type was abandoned and disappears into obscurity surviving in the Pope's library and the Sinaiticus awaiting it's proper fate as kindling for the monks fires at St. Catherines.

The question, then, must be asked. If the written record existing in Origen's Hexapla of about 250 AD is received as a true translation of a BC Hebrew text upon no manuscript evidence whatsoever - then why can't the Byzantine text which is repeatedly vindicated as representing a text as far back as the second Century be the true text of the New Testament?

The problem is that both Rome and Protestants can't be right. Either Rome is right or Protestants are - either they are condemned or we are. Either the Second Council of Constinople's anathema against Origen condemns the modern critical schools or Trent's anathema's condemn us. Somebody has sown tares into the Church of God and they've done it using the Bible itself! Matthew 13:28 Whoever reads this, study to shew yourself approved of God and work out your own salvation in fear and trembling!

In closing, I am reminded of the words of Earnest Colwell. And who is Earnest Colwell you may ask? He was Dean of Chicago University School of Divinity under whom a young Westminster graduate and protege of J. Gresham Machen would come to study, Edward F. Hills - author of King James Version Defended.

"The genealogical method as defined by Westcott and Hort was not applied by them or by any of their followers to the manuscripts of the New Testament. Moreover, sixty years of study since Westcott and Hort indicate that it is doubtful if it can be applied to New Testament manuscripts…Hort utilized this principle solely to*depose the Textus Receptus, and not to establish a line of descent…Yet, in truth, all of Hort's main points were subjectively-based and were*deliberately contrived to overthrow the Byzantine-priority hypothesis. Earnest Colwell, "Hort Redivivus”

In Christ's Bonds,

Thomas

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Thomas Weddle
Member, Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church
Evansville, Indiana