The First Published Greek New Testament

The Reformation brought a new interest in the Greek text of the New Testament, and Johannes Froben, a Swiss printer, wanted to be first to publish a Greek New Testament.

Froben had, most likely, heard that a Greek New Testament had been printed in Spain in 1514, but that it could not be released to the public until the pope gave his blessing. So he got in touch with the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus.

Erasmus had been creating a revised edition of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. He had collected all the manuscripts he could find, corrected what he felt were errors, and polished the Latin. He compared the Latin with Greek manuscripts available to him at the Basel University, and used the Greek to improve the Vulgate. “My mind is so excited at the thought of emending Jerome’s text,” he said, “that I seem . . . inspired by some god.”

Title page of the first published Greek New Testament, compiled by Desiderius Erasmus and published by Johannes Froben, courtesy of the American Bible SocietyNone of the Greek manuscripts Erasmus consulted was complete, and he tended to rely on the more recent ones rather than the older ones. And because he started the project with Latin, when the Greek manuscripts he consulted did not have a passage that was in the Vulgate, such as Acts 9:5-6 and Revelation 22:16-21, he translated the Latin text into Greek and added it to the Greek text.

Froben published the Greek and Latin versions together. The importance of this publication is usually seen as its being the first published Greek New Testament, but it is likely that Erasmus saw the primary importance as its being his revision of the Latin New Testament with the Greek added for comparison. 

Erasmus admitted that the book was “rushed into print rather than edited.” Over the next twenty years Erasmus issued four more editions, each correcting misprints and inserting improved readings into the Greek text.

Two other sixteenth-century publishers, Robert Stephanus and Theodore Beza, printed Greek texts similar to that of Erasmus’s fifth edition. These texts were based on the Byzantine family of manuscripts and became known as the “Received Text” (textus receptus), which was the Greek text that was used by the King James Version translators.  



The Devil’s Bible

Codex Gigas, the largest medieval Bible in the world, courtesy of the National Library of SwedenAccording to legend, in the early thirteenth century in a Benedictine monastery east of Prague, the monk Hermannus was sentenced to be buried alive for breaking his monastic vows. His punishment could be cancelled if he agreed to make the most magnificent book the world had ever seen, containing all human knowledge. But he had to do it in one night.

About midnight Hermannus realized he would not be able to finish his task and asked the devil to help him. In return, the monk included in the Bible a fanciful image of the devil, which is why the book is popularly called “The Devil’s Bible.”

Codex Gigas, the largest medieval Bible in the world, is 36” (that’s three feet!) by almost 20” and weighs nearly 165 pounds. One page has a full-page illustration of the devil. On the facing page is an illustration of what heaven might look like.

In addition to the Latin Bible, the book contains an encyclopedia, Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, a list of the monks in the monastery, mystical incantations for everything from curing illnesses to catching thieves, and more—a strange mix.

The image of the devil from Codex GigasThe book most likely was made by one scribe and probably took more than 25 years to complete. Hermannus was a recluse, and his living alone is probably how the legend of his sentenced to be buried alive—or walled up in a room—got started.

The codex belonged to various monasteries until 1594 when it was taken to Prague to become part of the collection of the emperor Rudolf. In 1648 the Swedish army stole the entire collection including the codex and took it to the Swedish Royal Library, which loaned it to the Czech National Library in 2007. You can see the entire manuscript here. The devil is on page 290r; heaven is on 289v.