Erasmus produced his five editions of the New Testament in Greek and Latin and his Paraphrases on the Gospels and Epistles almost contemporaneously with the tumultuous events that accompanied the beginnings of the Reformation in Europe. At the same time, his scholarship was a signal illustration of the Christian Humanism of northern Europe. His remarkable scholarship is translated and annotated in the Collected Works of Erasmus, volumes 42-60, published by the University of Toronto Press. This volume, CWE 41, seeks to set in perspective in a major introductory essay the full range of that scholarship. It traces the origin of Erasmus' work and its development over the course of the last two decades of his life, placing the work on the New Testament in the context of his life and the political and religious events of his age, revealing the endeavour as a process, and thus giving the reader illuminating points of reference for the many cryptic allusions in his annotations and paraphrases. The book includes an annotated translation of three of Erasmus' major writings on Scripture and its interpretation -- the Paraclesis, the Ratio verae theologiae ('System of True Theology'), and the Apologia (defense of his work). It includes as well some of his further attempts to clarify his endeavour -- relevant letters and a vitriolic response to his 'crabby critics' (Contra morosos). The volume offers a unique insight into the production of Erasmus' scholarship in book form, illustrating abundantly the special features that made his editions of the New Testament and his Paraphrases both esthetically pleasing and effectively marketable products.

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and the life of individuals in the turbulent world the sixteenth century. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text vastly expanded to embrace the reforming 'philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond expectation and were quickly translated from Latin into French, German, English, and other languages. This volume is the third Paraphrase to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the CWE. In it Erasmus explores questions that have always been central to Christian self-understanding. Why is the cross folly to the wise of this world? In the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus hints broadly that the cause of human blindness lies in the arrogance of intellectual pretensions, the love of vain-glory, the lust for possessions, the fear of losing the supports that secure a comfortable way of life. Perhaps nothing will please the reader more the portraits of the chief characters in John's Gospels. We enjoy the simplicity of the lowly woman at the well, we understand the complexity of the distinguished Nicodemus. Above all, we are captured by the portrait of Christ himself. Upon the stage Erasmus has here designed, Christ appears first in the humility of a lowly artisan from a despised country; only to the discerning does his glory flash forth from his mortality, a mortality vividly etched in the scene on the cross. But in the last pages of the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus sets before us in sharp dramatic contrast the resurrected Christ glorious with a radiant holiness. Like Augustine in the City of God, Erasmus attempts to define the relationship between the two worlds in which the Christian lives - the heavenly and the spiritual, and the earthly and physical. Volume 46 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Through well-chosen excerpts from Erasmus' writings, this book provides a clear picture of his extensive work on the New Testament.

Erasmus' annotations on the New Testament with the variants all dated. Short or long, all are interesting and challenging. They bring us to the centre of Erasmus' religious thought and form a vital companion to his correspondence.

This volume examines the image-based methods of interpretation that pictorial and literary landscapists employed between 1500 and 1700.

Focusing on the work of Lorenzo Valla, the Spanish Complutensian scholars, and Erasmus of Rotterdam, this book examines the New Testament studies of the Renaissance humanists rather than their more frequently studied religious, moral, and political thought. Jerry H. Bentley shows that the humanists brought about a thorough reorientation in the Western tradition of New Testament studies. He finds that the humanists' methods both anticipated and influenced later New Testament scholarship. The humanists rejected the medieval practice of studying the New Testament only in Latin translation and interpreting it in accordance with preconceived theological criteria. Instead, they insisted that New Testament studies be based on the original Greek text, and they employed linguistic, historical, and philological criteria in explaining the scriptures. This study rests on an analysis of the New Testament manuscripts that the humanists consulted and of the New Testament editions, translations, annotations, an commentaries that they prepared.

Written more than half a century before Sir Philip Sidney's well-known Apology for Poetry, Erasmus' Ratio or 'System' is an almost lost masterpiece of Renaissance literary theory and interpretive practice, now available for the first time in English in a convenient student edition.