VIIL] GREEK TESTAMENT OF ERASMUS. 141 most anxious to free his work from all degrading associations, that it might go forth in its own unsullied might and grandeur. His unqualified disclaimer was the more necessary, for Sir Thomas More was inclined at first to impute the authorship of the offensive verses to the translator. Few helps in the shape of grammars and lexicons were within his reach. But some works of the kind had already appeared, as the Greek Grammar of Lascaris, at Milan, in 1476; Craston's Greek Dictionary, in 1478; and his Grammar, in 1497. The Dictionarium Græcum from the press of Aldus, issued in 1497, and in 1499 the Lexicon of Suidas had been published at Milan. Aleander's Lexicon Græco-Latinum came out at Paris in 1512; and in 1513 Aldus had printed the Institutiones Grammaticæ of Budæus. The publication of the Greek New Testament by Erasmus formed a great epoch in the history of Western Christendom. He laid the literary world under immense obligations to him by his editions of so many Greek and Latin classics, but his New Testament was a gift of incalculable value to the church. He unsealed the Book of Life, and brought numerous readers face to face with the divine volume. Though he had but few manuscripts, and was even obliged to translate some verses in the last chapter of the Apocalypse from the Latin text of the Vulgate, he did a work which, with all its defects, brought revival to true Biblical theology, and kindled a pure and living flame which "many waters cannot quench, neither can many floods drown." His humorous and satirical Tractates, like his Adages and Colloquies, could not of themselves have produced the profound and necessary changes which were essential to a national Reformation in creed and service. He may have been timid, neutral and indifferent as regards the Lutheran Revolution; his theological writings may not probe the depth of man's spiritual experience and struggles, and, unlike the utterances of a man in deep and earnest thought on the Bishop of Bath and Wells, in 1862, bound up An original copy of the translation of the Dyalogue, bound up with the Satire, has been recently discovered in the Imperial Library of Vienna. momentous issue, they may have about them the frosty elegance of a chill intellectual discussion; but any alleged shortcomings and inconsistencies as a reformer cannot detract from his unspeakable merit as a first editor of the Gospels and Epistles in their original tongue, nor lessen the value of that folio which, under his care, issued from the press of Froben at Basle in 1516. As the version so clearly demonstrates, Tyndale translated directly from the Greek text, using the second and the third editions of Erasmus, published in 1519 and 1522. He admitted the famous passage in 1 John v, 7 about the "three witnesses," which occurs first in the third edition of Erasmus-the two previous editions of 1516 and 1519 omitting it. Tyndale occasionally agrees with the second edition of Erasmus in preference to the first, as in Rom. xii, 11, where, like Luther, he has "applye yourselves to the tyme," instead of "serving the Lord,"1 and so in his second edition, and in the Great Bible. It was altered first in the Genevan version. The fourth edition (1527) he does not seem to have consulted at all. Erasmus had in his second edition changed "ye kill" into "ye envy" in James iv, 2, but he corrected it in his third edition. Tyndale, however, took it from the second edition, and kept it without amendment in his revised issue; and, like a vile weed which cannot be uprooted, it is found in all the subsequent English versions, in Coverdale, Matthew, the Great Bible, the Genevan, and the Bishops', but it was rightly changed in the Authorized Version.2 Tyndale omits in his first edition, without authority, a clause in John xiv, 3, "and if I go and prepare a place for you." No reading adopted by Tyndale betrays any acquaintance with the Complutensian Polyglott. 'Erasmus having kupi in his first edition, but kaup in his second. 2In his first edition Erasmus spoke of dovevere, "ye kill," as being written by a drowsy scribe-scriptor dormitans; the Vulgate, however, having occiditis. CHAPTER IX. BUT the two points to which attention may be called are the relation of Tyndale's New Testament on the one hand to the German Version of Luther, and its relation on the other hand to the Latin Vulgate. It was his duty to use both helps, and he did so. Yet though he carefully and continuously consulted them, he was quite independent in his treatment of them. In direct contradiction of Tyndale's own affirmation that he rendered from the Greek, and of the palpable evidence afforded by the translation itself, it has been asserted that he simply rendered Luther's Testament into English. The story had a natural origin in these early days, when every religious novelty was branded as Lutheran; but it has been often repeated since. Le Long, the learned bibliographer, calls the first edition "The New Testament in English from the German of Martin Luther." The assertion is baseless, though between Luther and Tyndale there are many points of similarity. The order of the books of the New Testament which Tyndale adopted is not that of Erasmus, whose Greek text he translated, but that of Luther, though he never mentions the Reformer's name. Thus, 'Luther's first intimation of his purpose to translate the New Testament is in a letter to Lange in 1521, and on January of the following year he wrote to Amsdorf, "I will translate the Bible, though I have undertaken a burden too great for my strength; "—"a very necessary work," as he calls it in his reply to King Henry. There had been earlier versions, but their circulation had been small. Luther's translation at once laid hold of the people-being what Hegel calls it in his Philosophy of History, "a people's book, a fundamental work for their instruction." It was published anonymously, and without date. too, the Epistle of James is put next to Jude, and that to the Hebrews next to the Third Epistle of John, first by Luther and then by Tyndale. He also follows Luther in making the last three verses of the fourth chapter of Hebrews the commencement of the fifth chapter. Many of Tyndale's notes in the first quarto are, as we have seen, translations more or less free of those of Luther. At the close of the long prologue to Matthew, he introduces Luther's opinion on the comparative value of the writings of the New Testament; but what Luther says about the Epistle of James is omitted, for he had called it "a downright strawy epistle," gegen sie, "in contrast with them "—the other epistles. Luther had no prologues to the Gospels, while Tyndale has them, though he gives none to the Acts and the Apocalypse. The other prologues rest on Luther's, especially those to 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Titus, and the Epistles of John. But the treatment of the appropriated matter is by no means slavish. The prologue to 1 Corinthians omits many allusions to passing events which the German leader introduced, and that to Philemon keeps out Luther's allegory, which is strained and unscriptural in its doctrine; for it says, "Christ overcame the Father with love and meekness," and thus tends to ignore that eternal and spontaneous love in which the Father gave His Son as Redeemer. The prologue to Hebrews controverts Luther on the apostolic authority of the Epistle, and tries to show that his objections are grounded on "misconceptions of the passages adduced," while it leaves the authorship undetermined—“ a man may doubt of the author, yet why should it not be authority, and taken for Holy Scripture?" The prologue to James is also directed against Luther, and maintains that though its canonical authority has been impugned, or "at the beginning refused of holy men," as its purport was misunderstood, "yet, as it is agreeable to all the rest of Scripture, why should it not be authority, and taken for Holy Scripture?" An explanation is added of the paragraph concerning faith and works. The prologue to Jude also vindicates its claim to a place in the canon, "though it seems to be drawn out of the Second Epistle of Peter, and thereto allegeth Scripture nowhere found," IX.] ALLEGED GERMANISMS. 145 In his pro and these are Luther's two main objections to it. logue to Romans, Tyndale made a scholarly and wise use of Luther's, both in its German and Latin forms. One peculiarity of Tyndale's Old English is sometimes adduced to show how dependent he was on Luther. The peculiarity so taken hold of is the position, after the verb, of the personal pronoun as a nominative, Matthew xiii, 13, Therefore speak I; Luke ii, 29, Now lettest thou; similarly in 1 Corinthians vii, 12, To the remnaunt speake I; 17, So orden I; ix, 22, Became I as weake; 1 John i, 3, Declare we unto you; and it is to be marked that the idiom is still retained from Tyndale in all these places in the Authorized Version. Bishop Marsh, in trying to prove that "Tyndale's translation was taken at least in part from Luther's" lays undue stress on these examples of what he calls "Germanisms," or direct imitations of German diction. But this order is common in all the old English writers of that age-in Sir Thomas More, and often in Tyndale's own prose. Besides, there are many places in which Tyndale has the idiom where Luther has it not; as in 1 Cor. ix, 26; xii, 31; 2 Cor. vii, 13; xi, 24; 1 Thess. ii, 13; Heb. v, 8; James i, 18. The old form in all these seven verses is still preserved in the Authorized Version, and is opposed to the rendering of Luther who in them places the nominative before the verb. Tyndale has another singularity, for he sometimes omits the nominative of the first person altogether, as in Galatians i, 10, seke nowe, for seek I now; and in 2 Cor. xii, 10, there is the same absence of the pronoun, "have delectation," "I" being left out. But while Tyndale did not merely "do into English" the German of Luther, he always translated with Luther's version before him, and many phrases are shaped or suggested by it. While such renderings as "Goddes love" (Romans viii, 35), “lest ye fall into hypocrisy" (James v, 12),2 "the worlde knoweth you |