Abstract

Novum Instrumentum omne prepared by Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536) was the first published New Testament in Greek (1516). It was printed by Johann Froben (1460–1527) in Basel. Although the first printed Greek New Testament was the Complutensian Polyglot (1514), it was the second to be published (1522). Erasmus used seven late Greek manuscripts housed in Basel, but some passages he translated from the Latin Vulgate. Erasmus published five editions of his Greek New Testament. Luther used second edition for his own translation of the New Testament. The third edition (1522) is regarded by scholars as the most important. With the third edition, the Comma Johanneum was included. It was used by Tyndale for the first English New Testament (1526) and later by editors and translators of the Geneva Bible and the King James Version. The Erasmian edition was the basis for the majority of modern translations of New Testament from the 16th to the 19th centuries.