Two Defining Moments:

Gutenberg and Erasmus

The 1450’s saw two great events in the story of the English Bible. The first of these, Gutenberg’s publication of the Vulgate, which brought about the dawn of the age of printing, stands out as a defining moment in our story. However, a second, seemingly unrelated event in Asia Minor affects our story as much as the printing press itself does.

The city of Constantinople was captured by the Turks in 1453. As refugees poured into to Europe, they brought many things with them, including their libraries. Many Greek manuscripts that previously had been unknown were now available to European scholars. Many of these collected manuscripts were more ancient and better preserved than the isolated manuscripts used to prepare previous translations such as the Vulgate and Wycliffe’s translation of it.

Five centuries earlier, a group of devout Jewish scholars called the Masoretes had carefully examined their collection of Hebrew manuscripts in order to develop a text of the Hebrew Scriptures that was as faithful to the original autographs as possible. European scholars were now able to do the same with the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

Desiderius Erasmus published the first edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516. It underwent many revisions by Erasmus and other scholars, and a statement in the preface of a later edition described it as “the text which is now received by all.” From this statement, scholars have come to know it as the Textus Receptus.