The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

died. 87 The Exegetical Library--not to speak of the Fathers, and of other
indirect sources--had grown around him as he advanced.
Growth of N. T. Literature.
The Complutensian Polyglott, (1514-18,) and the editions of the
New Testament which followed its text, had become accessible. Erasmus
had carried his Greek New Testaments, with their translation and
annotations, through five editions, (1516-1535.) The fifth remains to this
hour the general basis of the received text. The Aldine of 1518 had been
reprinted frequently. Colinaeus had issued his exquisitely beautiful 88
edition, (Paris, 1534,) which anticipated many of the readings fixed by
modern criticism. Robert Stephens, the royal and regal printer, issued the
wonderfully accurate 89 O mirificam edition of 1546, the text based upon
the Complutensian, but with a collation of sixteen manuscripts, only a little
too late for Luther to look upon it. Great efforts, and not unsuccessful, had
been made, especially by Robert Stephens, to amend the current and
greatly corrupted text of the Vulgate, (1528-1540.) Flacius had issued his
Clavis, the immortal work in which he developed, as had never been done
before, the principles of Hermeneutics, (1537.) Pagninus had done the
same work from a relatively free Roman Catholic position, in his
Introduction to Sacred Letters, (1536.) The era of Luther was an era of
translations, in whose results there has been specific improvement in
detached renderings, but no general advance whatever. Germany has
produced no translation of the New Testament equal, as a whole, to
Luther's. Our authorized English Version is but a revision of Tyndale, to
whom it owes all its generic excellencies and beauties. Among the Latin
translators, Pagninus (1528) took a high rank, by his minute verbal
accuracy, which caused his translation, in after times, to be used as an
interlinear. A Latin version of the New Testament appeared in 1529, with
the imprint of Wittenberg, an imprint which is probably spurious. It has
been believed, by many scholars, to have been the work of Luther; others
attribute it to Melanchthon; but
87 See Panzer's Entwurf, pp. 370-376.
88 Perquam nitida. Le Long. (Boehmer-Masch.), i, 206.
89 Nitidissima-duodecini sphalmata duntaxat accurunt. Le Long., i, 208.