Novum Instrumentum Omne

In 1516, in the first edition of his new translation of the New Testament, Erasmus chose the programmatic title Novum Instrumentum Omne* because he intended it to serve the entire scholarly world as a scientific tool.
*Novum Instrumentum omne, Diligenter ab Erasmo Roterdamo recognitum & emendatum, non solum ad graecam veritatem, verumetiam ad multorum utrisque linguae codicum... emendationem & interpretationem, praecipue, Origines, Chrysostomie, Cyrilli...

Erasmus's masterpiece, celebrated by humanists* of the time as an outstanding achievement, earned him the accusation of heresy from the Old Church. 

*Such as Johann Reuchlin and Willibald Pirkheimer

Erasmus received dozens of reprimands for alleged errors regarding the infallibility of the Holy Spirit, the infallibility of the Vulgata, and the infallibility of Augustine. He had to defend himself against accusations that he had gone astray in his faith, although he explicitly placed all his literary work under the Church's authority.

The reformers, on the other hand, accused him of not taking their side. Erasmus became stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Many scholars of both faiths took issue less with the new text than with Erasmus's explanations of his translation. The Novum Instrumentum reconstructs the original ideas of simple apostles like Paul, documented just twenty years after Christ's death: "The evangelists and apostles make it clear in every sentence that they are human beings who can succeed in word creations and make language mistakes. That, however, is not a problem because the essence of the Bible is not in the words but in the message. Words and letters did not come down from heaven, but are pillars made of clay by human beings to support the heavenly vault of the good news".


Holy Spirit

With this argumentation, Erasmus challenged the learned Dominican theologian and vice-chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt, Johann Eck, who had already taken up a position against Luther.

The following passage about Eck from Sandra Langereis's Erasmus biography Bärbel Jänicke translated from Dutch into German while Red Baron translated it from German into English. This means that the text is subject to double fuzziness. I only hope that very little of the lively style of the original is lost in translation:

"Why did Erasmus note in Novum Instrumentum that the evangelists sometimes made mistakes when they quoted the Old Testament prophets by heart? This is not possible, "A Christian could not think that." Because evangelists cannot err.

The evangelists do not draw from memory; they are inspired by the Holy Spirit. They do not look up the Bible, either; the Spirit ensured they did not have to. They did not think at all; the Spirit thought for them. As if the evangelists had pored and labored over the Scripture like ordinary people! When the evangelists are wrong, the Holy Spirit is wrong. If one followed Erasmus, the authority of the entire Holy Scripture would be undermined.

And why did Erasmus ironize that the Evangelists did not learn their clumsy Greek from Demosthenes? The Evangelists spoke in all tongues. The Evangelists did not need to learn their Greek from Demosthenes or anyone else; the Holy Spirit breathed the Greek language into them. As if the Evangelists had spoken and written like ordinary people! When the evangelists made linguistic mistakes in Greek, then the Holy Spirit is wrong."

Interestingly, both Eck and Luther, fierce opponents, invoke the Holy Spirit to defend their cause in their theological arguments.

Erasmus's answer was clear: "There are no infallible texts. There are no infallible gospels, no infallible church fathers. Perhaps it is not for you or me, or even for Augustine, to claim human knowledge about the exact workings of the Holy Spirit."

Here, I present three translations from the Greek Originals that provoked theological discussions and still do today. The first one concerns the original sin.


Original Sin

In the Latin Vulgata, Luther read like every other Bible reader that according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 5:12, "Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people because all sinned."

Froben's magnificent edition of Paul's letter to the Romans in Greek and Latin

But Erasmus realized that the simply educated apostle had clumsily expressed his train of thought. So, in his explanatory notes of his Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus suggested that Paul, using a crooked subordinate clause introduced by two difficult-to-translate Greek words, probably meant "inasmuch as all people have sinned," i.e., the apostle had not said a word about original sin inherent in all people.

However, Erasmus did not adopt his hypothesis in the Novum Instrumentum of 1516; instead, he translated Paul's words as literally as possible so that his Bible readers would not fail to notice that the apostle had tinkered and chosen wooden wording. As it stood, it did not allude to original sin. Erasmus's Bible readers were left to form their own opinions by critically considering his arguments for and against the proposed translation of "inasmuch" in the notes.

It was only in 1519 that Erasmus replaced the literal translation of Paul's cumbersome choice of words with "inasmuch." Given the many letters from readers, Erasmus had reason to trust that they would read the arguments for and against his translation decision, which implied that Paul could not have alluded to original sin.

Luther was convinced that Paul was indeed alluding to original sin and introduced his truth into the German Bible. Readers of the Luther Bible learn that sin and death came upon all people "while they had all sinned." This was not a translation of the original Greek text but an interpretation of Augustine's doctrine of original sin.

Luther's dogmatically motivated translation is not an isolated case. Each conveys the reformatory's message based on Augustine. Luther filled his copy of the Bible with dogmatic commentaries to emphasize his personal message.

While Erasmus emancipated his Bible readers, Luther made them docile again in his German translation.


Trinity

The second controversy concerns the so-called Johannine Comma (Latin: Comma Johanneum), an interpolated phrase in verses 5:7–8 of the First Epistle of John.

Here is the passage. The Comma in square brackets and italicized is not part of the oldest Greek and Latin manuscripts. The words that introduce the Trinity - a central belief of the Church - are later additions.

7 For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.] [8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one.

As Erasmus wrote in his Novum Instrumentum, the original version, "For there are three that bear record, the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one," he was accused of Arianism. By banning the only biblical testimony to the Trinity doctrine from Scripture, Erasmus was accused of leading the reader into the heretical doctrine that the Son of God is not divine.


Λογος

The third discussion concerns Erasmus's interpretation of the beginning of the Gospel of John. It is about the translation of the Greek word λογος. In the Novum Instrumentum of 1516, we find the well-known text: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In the Novum Testamentum of 1519, however, Erasmus's readers read, "In the beginning was the message, and the message was with God, and this message was God." There was great enthusiasm but also fierce criticism.

Did Goethe know about this controversy when he tried his hand at translating λογος in his drama Faust:

'Tis written: "In the Beginning was the Word."
Here am I balked: who, now can help afford?
The Word?—impossible so high to rate it;
And otherwise must I translate it.
If by the Spirit I am truly taught.
Then thus: "In the Beginning was the Thought"
This first line let me weigh completely,
Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.
Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?
"In the Beginning was the Power," I read.
Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested,
That I the sense may not have fairly tested.
The Spirit aids me: now I see the light!
"In the Beginning was the Act," I write.

The criticism of Erasmus's new translation of the New Testament did not stop. He complained, "In Rome, they call me Errasmus. As if Italians were never wrong!"

Erasmus sent letters to his supporters that the Cologne Dominican theologians, in particular, posed a real danger to humanities and were not worth a shot of powder as inquisitors. He wrote to Reuchlin, "Let us turn our thoughts to Christ, my dear Reuchlin, and devote ourselves to honorable scholarship while ignoring that rabble in Cologne."

Volume I: Novum Testamentum

Almost out of defiance, Erasmus threw himself zealously into a radically revised edition of the Novum Instrumentum, which he unhesitatingly called the Novum Testamentum. "A thankless task," he wrote to his friends. "while rejuvenating the Bible, I am aging twice as fast, with all the brooding and staring in the dark winter months."

Volume II: The Annotations

In March 1522, the Novum Testamentum was available hot off the press at the Frankfurt Spring Fair in two expensive volumes in folio format and – without the annotations – in a cheaper volume in a portable pocket format: an attempt by Froben to attract a broader readership.
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