A guide to the textual criticism of the New Testament - Holy Bible ...

THE INFANCY.
only the Greek. Each successive edition underwent correction,
but the last did not differ much from the fourth.
Erasmus died at Basle in 1536.
3. The editions of Robert Stephen, Theodore Beza, and
the Elzevirs, complete this period.
The two first of Stephen, published at Paris respectively
in 1546 and 1549, were most elegantly printed with type
cast at the expense of Francis L, and are known to connoisseurs
by the title O mirificam ' ' from the opening words expressing
an encomium upon that king's liberality.
The third,
in folio, came out in 1550, and for the first time in the history
of editions
of the Greek Testament contained various
readings. Reference was made to sixteen authorities, viz.,
the Complutensian Polyglott and fifteen manuscripts,
amongst which the Codex Bezae (D), now at Cambridge, is
thought to have been numbered.'
Erasmus is not mentioned,
although Stephen's two earliest editions were mainly grounded
upon Erasmus' readings ; and his third, according to Dr.
Scrivener's computation, differs from them conjointly in only
361 places."-^ Robert Stephen did not collate his authorities
himself, but employed the services of his son Henry.
His record of readings in the margin of his folio caused
great offence to the doctors of the Sorbonne, and Stephen
withdrew to Geneva to escape their enmity. Here he published
in 1 55
from the previous one, but with one remarkable
Greek text
1 his fourth edition, almost unchanged in the
alteration. The chapters, into which Cardinal Hugo, of
Santo Caro, had divided the books of the Bible in the
thirteenth century, were in this edition first subdivided into
'
Scrivener, "Plain Introduction," pp. 121, 438.
- " Plain Introduction," p. 436 ; i.e., 334 times in the text, and 27
in punctuation.