Collected Works of Erasmus

Collected Works of Erasmus
Author: Desiderius Erasmus
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2017-05-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1487512007

Volume 58 in the Collected Works of Erasmus series contains, for the first time, the English translation of Erasmus’ Annotations on Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians and Ephesians. Erasmus’ Annotations began as marginal comments in his own copy of the New Testament and were subsequently published in 1516 as a supplement to the Novum Instrumentum. His annotations were intended to justify his changes based on the Greek text. In each successive edition, published between 1516 and 1535, the Annotations grew in size and scope providing Erasmus with the opportunity to defend his translations in the face of growing criticism from orthodox Catholic theologians. This volume notes the editorial changes made in the five editions and also provides the reader with information about the patristic, medieval and contemporary sources consulted by Erasmus, and about the evolving relations with contemporary critics. The Annotations played a pivotal role in the development of sixteenth-century biblical exegesis and mark a significant stage in the evolution of humanist biblical scholarship.

Erasmus on the New Testament

Erasmus on the New Testament
Author: Robert D. Sider
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2020-04-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1487533306

When Erasmus, at Cambridge in 1512, began to mark up his copy of the Vulgate Bible with a few alternative Latin translations and a biting comment here and there in Latin, he could not have guessed that his work would grow over the next twenty-three years into the twenty volumes currently being produced as annotated translations in The Collected Works of Erasmus. His Paraphrases vastly expanded the text of the New Testament books, and brought dynamic and controversial interpretations to the traditional reading of the Latin texts. A new translation based on the Greek text, the first ever to be published by a printing firm, became the basis for ever-expanding notes that explained the Greek, measured the contemporary church against the truth revealed by the Greek, taunted critics and opponents, and revealed the mind of a humanist at work on the Scriptures. The sheer vastness of the work that finally accumulated is almost beyond the reach of a single individual. Through excerpts chosen over the entire extent of Erasmus’ New Testament work, this book hopes to reduce that immensity to manageable size, and bring the rich, virtually unlimited treasure of the Erasmian mind on the Scriptures within the comfortable reach of every interested individual.

Collected Works of Erasmus

Collected Works of Erasmus
Author: Desiderius Erasmus
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 1090
Release: 2019-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1487510217

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.

Annotations on Romans

Annotations on Romans
Author: Desiderius Erasmus
Publisher: Springer Science & Business
Total Pages: 518
Release: 1994
Genre: Bible
ISBN: 9780802028037

The Annotations of Erasmus are designed for those who wish to take the study of the Bible seriously. Erasmus himself declared as much: his Annotations were not written, he implied, to provide pleasant diversions or popular entertainment. They were a work of genuine biblical scholarship. They brought to bear on theological issues of the day the light of Scripture interpreted from its own historical and literary contexts -- often with disturbing clarity. They are, moreover, replete with that Erasmian irony that so effectively exposed the personal and institutional follies of all parties in the early years of the Reformation. Erasmus wrote annotations on all the New Testament books, but among them all the annotations on Romans must hold a special place. The Epistle to the Romans has been understood as the classic theological statement by the Apostle to the gentiles of the terms on which Divine grace embraced all human beings. Besides, centuries of reflection have made Romans a focus of debate on central theological issues -- for example, the relation of the Divine Persons, the predestination of the saints, the doctrine of justification. To such problems the sometimes tortured syntax of the Greek has often obscured the clarity sought from the divine Apostle. Erasmus understood that all discussion of Romans must rest upon a sure grasp of the author's intent. His task, therefore, in the Annotations on Romans was to clarify the text of the Epistle, and so to illuminate the vision of Paul. This translation reveals the annotations as a rich storehouse of methodological discussion and semantic analysis, and a fascinating witness to the theological debates of the early sixteenth century. Volume 56 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

The Communion of the Book

The Communion of the Book
Author: David Williams
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2022-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0228015863

The modern world was not created by the civilization of Renaissance Italy, the advent of the printing press, or the marriage restrictions imposed by the medieval church. Rather, it was widespread reading that brought about most of the cognitive, psychological, and social changes that we recognize as peculiarly modern. David Williams combines book and communications history with readings of major works by Petrarch, Bruni, Valla, Reuchlin, Erasmus, Foxe, and Milton to argue that expanding literacy in the Renaissance was the impetus for modern civilization, turning a culture of arid logic and religious ceremonialism into a world of individual readers who discovered a new form of communion in the act of reading. It was not the theologians Luther and Calvin who first taught readers to become what they read, but the biblical philologist Erasmus, who encountered the divine presence on every page of the gospels. From this sacramental form of reading came other modes of humanist reading, particularly in law, history, and classics, leading to the birth of the nation-state. As literacy rates rose, readers of all backgrounds gained and embodied the distinctly modern values of liberty, free speech, toleration, individualism, self-determination, and democratic institutions. Communion and community were linked, performed in novel ways through revolutionary forms of reading. In this conclusion to a quartet of books on media change, Williams makes a compelling case for readers and acts of reading as the true drivers of social, political, and cultural modernity – and for digital media as its looming nemesis.

Erasmus in the Footsteps of Paul

Erasmus in the Footsteps of Paul
Author: Greta Grace Kroeker
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0802092667

Greta Grace Kroeker examines Erasmus' Annotations, Paraphrases, and the texts of his Erasmus in the Footsteps of Paul is the first book to investigate Erasmus' negotiations of Romans in the Reformation world.