The Book of Baruch in the Manuscripts of the Latin Bible: Disappearance and Reinstatement, Part 1

The place of Baruch in ancient Bibles can be a confusing topic. In modern times, Baruch is considered a separate book of 5 or 6 chapters, with the sixth chapter actually being the Epistle of Jeremiah, originally a distinct work. But often in antiquity Baruch was considered a part of the book of Jeremiah, as was Lamentations (sometimes) and the Epistle of Jeremiah. So an ancient Christian might list the books of the Bible, and simply mention Jeremiah, but this title might include Lamentations, Baruch, and the EpJer, or it might not. 

For the Latin tradition, thankfully we have the work of Pierre-Maurice Bogaert. Any article by Bogaert is worth reading. He's one of those scholars who actually deals with evidence, cites that evidence, and thinks carefully about it. In 2005 he published a long article dealing with the Latin evidence for the transmission of Baruch. 

Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, “Le livre de Baruch dans les manuscrits de la Bible latine. Disparition et réintégration,” Revue bénédictine 115 (2005): 286–342. 

This post surveys the first two sections of Bogaert's article. I include below all of his section headings, in French, followed by my comments in English in blue type, almost always simply a summary of Bogaert's argument and evidence. In a future post I plan to conclude summarizing Bogaert's article. 

I. Les Antécédents en grec: Baruch comme deutero-Jérémie

A. Les livres 'jérémiens' dans la Bible hébraïque

In Jewish tradition (as we know it from the Rabbis and the Masoretic codices), although Jeremiah is considered the author of Lamentations, the two books are distinct, in fact located in different divisions of the Tanak. Jerome brings them together, thus against the hebraica veritas. 

B. Les livres 'jérémiens' dans la Septante

LXX mss usually maintain the order Jermeiah-Baruch-Lamentations-EpJer. Examples: Vaticanus (check it here: Baruch starts at image 1127, Lam at image 1133, Ep.Jer. at image 1140); Alexandrinus, Theodoret's commentary (PG 81), and the majority of manuscripts. Exceptions: Sinaiticus, which follows Jeremiah with Lamentations, and then there's a lacuna so that we can't be certain what came next (check it here); 106 has the order Jer-Lam-Bar-EpJer; 538 has Jer-Lam-EpJer-Bar. According to Bogaert, these exceptions point to the desire to group together the books available in Hebrew. All witnesses attest the original independence of EpJer (which now forms Baruch ch. 6). Bogaert also notes some Coptic evidence for the sequence Jer-Bar. 

C. Baruch supplément à Jérémie sans titre propre (critique interne)

"Just as Baruch, in the place of imprisoned Jeremiah, read before the king Jehoiakim the scroll that he had written by the dictation of Jeremiah, with negative results--the king burned the scroll (Jer 36 = Jer 43 LXX)--so now Baruch reads before the king Jehoiachin in Babylonian exile all or part of the book which precedes--and not the book which follows--, this time with positive results: the people repent. The οὗτοι οἱ λόγοι at the beginning of the book of Baruch naturally point back to what precedes, as Theodoret already affirmed [PG 81.760c]." So, what Bogaert means, is that with Jeremiah ending and the book of Baruch immediately following it, he thinks readers would have taken the very beginning of Baruch as simply the next episode of the book of Jeremiah. He further says that Baruch 1:1–15 looks like the conclusion of a narrative and not its beginning, and he points out that in the LXX sequence of Jeremiah, the salvific oracle to Baruch (Jer 45 = Jer 51:31–35 LXX) appears near the end of Jeremiah (thus right before Baruch). Thackerary and Tov have shown that the Greek vocabulary demonstrates the close relation between the second part of LXX Jeremiah and the Greek of Bar 1:1–3:8. All of this leads Bogaert to believe that Baruch was originally a Greek supplement to Jeremiah without a proper title of its own. That is, in this scenario, Baruch would have been composed in Greek as a supplement to Greek Jeremiah, and there would never have been a Hebrew of Baruch. The idea that Baruch originated in Greek and not Hebrew has gained some popularity in recent scholarship (see Adams, for instance), though the opposite has been the traditional view. 

D. Baruch cité sous le nom de Jérémie chez les Pères grecs les plus anciens 

Greek Fathers from the fourth century and later tend to cite Baruch under the name of Baruch (Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Apostolic Constitutions, the Asceticon of Isaiah, Severus of Antioch, and earlier Origen and Dionysius of Alexandria), whereas earlier Fathers had cited Baruch under the name of Jeremiah (e.g. Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Methodius of Olympus), a practice that is also sometimes found in later Fathers (e.g. Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria). Bogaert briefly suggests that Origen is the one who recognized that the supplement in the Greek version was not found in the Hebrew text of Jeremiah, so he separated it and gave it the name Baruch, since he found that name at the beginning of the work. 

E. Quand Baruch devient-il auteur? 

If Origen is the first one to separate Baruch from Jeremiah and to make Baruch its author, then the first datable text that is attributed to Baruch becomes the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, which Bogaert dates to 95 CE. 

II. Les Pères latins et les liturgies latines

A. Le nom de Baruch ne renvoie qu'à des pseudépigraphes 

Among Latin Fathers, the name Baruch does not refer to our book of Baruch but to other pseudepigrapha (examples in Cyprian, Evagrius, Sedulius Scottus). 

B. Ba 1–5 est toujours cité sous le nom de Jérémie 

Whenever Baruch is cited in Latin patristic literature, it is cited under the name of Jeremiah. The first appendix gives the details. The big example is Augustine, who remarks at City of God 18.33 (citing Bar 3:36–38) that some attribute the quotation to Baruch, but it is more likely from Jeremiah. 

C. Jérôme récuse Baruch; Isidore, Grégoire le Grand, Bède 

In the preface to his Vulgate translation of Jeremiah and in the preface to his commentary on Jeremiah, Jerome rejected Baruch as authentic, accepting only Lamentations as a supplement to Jeremiah. Some Vulgate manuscripts contain no title at the end of Jeremiah or beginning of Lamentations. Bogaert lists a few examples (p. 295), one of which is Amiatinus, the images for which are available online here. Lamentations starts at fol. 586r, and you can see that there is no title, not even a break after Jeremiah: the text is continuous within the same column. [You can contrast this practice with that of the Greek Codex Vaticanus, online here. The text of Baruch starts at image 1127, and you'll notice that Jeremiah has a closing title, and Baruch starts on a new column.] The first line of Lamentations in Amiatinus is in red, but this technique does not necessarily signal the start of a new book, since we have red lines sometimes within a book, such as within Jeremiah (e.g., fol. 580v, 584v). Bogaert guesses that this practice of not distinguishing Lamentations from Jeremiah goes back to Jerome, who wanted to preserve the number 22 as the proper number for the OT and therefore needed Lamentations to not be its own book. 

Eventually Jerome's translation overtook the Old Latin Jeremiah, which had included Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, so that these latter two works virtually disappear in Latin literature for a while. Gregory the Great, Isidore, and Bede never--or hardly ever--cite or mention Baruch. Jerome's omission of Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah became a more decisive rejection of these works than, for example, his rejection of the Additions to Daniel and Esther, which he condemned in his prefaces but included in his translations. 

D. Les liturgies latines (type K) utilisent Baruch sous le nom de Jérémie 

The Roman liturgy features Bar 3:9–38 in the Easter Vigil, while other traditions read the same passage on the Saturday before Pentecost. According to Bogaert, "all ancient books cite this reading under the name of Jeremiah," and he then lists 16 examples, up to the fifteenth century. This liturgical use will contribute toward the reintegration of Baruch into Latin Bibles, though it had disappeared from many (due to Jerome's influence), such as the Amiatinus. 

E. Les listes latines de livres canoniques 

Some lists mention only Jeremiah: Melito (in Rufinus' translation of Eusebius), Mommsen catalogue, Rufinus' own list, Augustine, Breviarium hipponense, Innocent I, the Latin version of the Council of Laodicea, the Apostolic Constitutions book 8, Claromontanus, Ordo 14 (see here), and the list of the Bobbio Missal. Also Cassiodorus, Isidore. Hilary of Poitiers has Hieremias cum Lamentatione et Epistula, just like Origen's list in Greek (and Bogaert thinks both Hilary and Origen in this instance must assume Baruch as a part of Jeremiah, since the Epistle is listed). But Rufinus' Latin translation of Origen's list has only Hieremias, just as in Rufinus' own canon list. The Decretum Gelasianum has Hieremias cum Cinoth, in dependence on Jerome. Bogaert suspects that the original text of the decree had merely Hieremias (as in some witnesses) and that this short reference included Bar-Lam-EpJr. The Council of Trent said Ieremias cum Baruch, and the title Ieremias would have included Lam, and since the 13th cent. the EpJr had counted as Baruch ch. 6. 

F. Témoignages épigraphiques

Bogaert surveys four inscriptions (from centuries XI to XIV), each citing Bar 3:36 under the name of Jeremiah. 



That's all for now. Hopefully I will soon be able to finish summarizing Bogaert's article. The last two sections (before his eight appendices) have the following titles: "III. Les bibles latines avant 800" and "IV. Les bibles latines à partir de 800." 

Philaster of Brescia on the NT Canon

I've been working on a book on the canon lists from early Christianity: it's going to be a collection of lists of biblical books for both the Old and New Testaments. Recently I came across a list that I hadn't known about, even though it's mentioned (briefly) in Bruce Metzger's book on the subject. I thought I would give the basic evidence here.

Philaster of Brescia was a fourth-century Italian bishop. He wrote a work, Diverasarum hereseon liber, in about 384 that contains a partial list of biblical books. Here's the passage (copied from the Library of Latin Texts, Brepols):

(88) Alia est heresis, quae apocryfa, id est secreta, habet solum prophetarum et apostolorum, non accipit scripturas canonicas, id est legem et prophetas, uetus et nouum scilicet testamentum. Et cum uolunt solum illa apocryfa legere studiose, contraria scripturis canonicis sentiunt, atque paulatim dogmatizant, contra eas dantes sententias, contra legem et prophetas contra que dispositiones beatissimorum apostolorum consulta ponentes: e quibus sunt maxime manichei, gnostici, nicolaitae, valentiniani, et alii quam plurimi, qui apocrifa prophetarum et apostolorum, id est actus separatos habentes, canonicas legere scripturas contemnunt. Propter quod statutum est ab apostolis beatis et eorum successoribus non aliud legi in ecclesia debere catholica nisi legem et prophetas et euangelia, et actus apostolorum et pauli tredecim epistolas, et septem alias, petri duas, iohannis tres, iudae unam, et unam iacobi, quae septem actibus apostolorum coniunctae sunt. Scripturae autem absconditae, id est apocryfa, etsi legi debent morum causa a perfectis, non ab omnibus legi debent, quia non intellegentes multa addiderunt et tulerunt quae uoluerunt heretici. Nam manichei apocryfa beati andreae apostoli, id est actus quos fecit ueniens de ponto in greciam quos conscripserunt tunc discipuli sequentes beatum apostolum, unde et habent manichei et alii tales andreae beati et iohannis actus euangelistae beati, et petri similiter beatissimi apostoli, et pauli pariter beati apostoli: in quibus quia signa fecerunt magna et prodigia, ut et pecudes et canes et bestiae loquerentur, etiam et animas hominum tales uelut canum et pecudum similes inputauerunt esse heretici perditi. 

(89) Sunt alii, qui epistolam beati pauli ad hebreos non adserunt esse ipsius, sed dicunt aut barnabae esse beati apostoli aut clementis de urbe romae episcopi, alii autem lucae beatissimi euangelistae aiunt; epistolam etiam ad laodicenses scriptam beati apostoli quidam uolunt legere. Et quia addiderunt in ea quaedam non bene sentientes, inde non legitur in ecclesia, et si legitur a quibusdam, non tamen in ecclesia legitur populo nisi tredecim epistolae ipsius et ad hebreos interdum.

And an attempt at a translation:

(88) There is another heresy that has apocrypha--that is, secrete things--alone of the prophets and apostles, it does not accept the canonical scriptures, that is the law and the prophets, or the Old and New Testament. And since they want to read studiously only those apocrypha, they think things contrary to the canonical scriptures, and they gradually develop doctrines, giving opinions against them, against the law and the prophets and setting decrees against the dispositions of the blessed apostles: from whom there are especially the Manicheans, Gnostics, Nicolaitans, Valentinians, and very many others, who have apocrypha of the prophets and apostles--that is, separated acts--and spurn the reading of the canonical scriptures. 

Therefore it has been established by the blessed apostles and their successors that we ought to read nothing else in the catholic church except the Law and the Prophets and the Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles and thirteen letters of Paul, and seven others: two of Peter, three of John, one of Jude, one of James, which seven are conjoined to the Acts of the Apostles. 

But hidden scriptures--that is, the apocrypha--even if they ought to be read by the perfect on account of morals, ought not be read by all, because heretics without understanding have added and produced many things that they wanted. For the Manicheans (have) apocrypha of the blessed apostle Andrew--that is, acts whcih he did going from Pontus to Greece, which his disciples then wrote following the blessed apostle, whence also the Manicheans  and other similar groups have acts of the blessed Andrew and of John the blessed evangelist, and similarly of Peter the most blessed apostle, and equally of Paul the blessed apostle, in which, because they have put great signs and wonders, so that sheep and dogs and beasts talk, and the reckless heretics even assert that the spirits of people are just like those of dogs and sheep. 

(89) There are others who assert the epistle of the blessed Paul to the Hebrew is not his, but they say it is by Barnabas the blessed apostle or Clement, bishop of the city of Rome, but others say it is by Luke the most blessed evangelist; some want to say also an epistle to the Laodiceans was written by the blessed apostle. And because they, not understanding well, have added to it some things, it is not read in the church, and if it is read by some, still there it is not read in the church to the people except his thirteen epistles and sometimes the one to the Hebrews. 

He goes on to explain that some people find the content of Hebrews problematic, and Philaster offers orthodox interpretations of the problematic passages.

Metzger (p. 233) writes that Philaster

...composed between 385 and 391 a treatise of 156 chapters designed to refute 28 Jewish and 128 Christian heresies. [Metzger's note: Besides condemning such notable heretics as Simon Magus, Philaster also stigmatizes (chap. 133) those whose sole aberration was to believe that the stars occupied a fixed place in the sky instead of being set in position every evening by God!] This work, entitled Liber de haeresibus, sweeps together an ill-digested assortment of comments compiled from Greek and Latin authors without much regard for logic or even internal consistency. As a sample of his confused and confusing compilation, in chap. 88 he names in the list of 'Scriptures' of the New Testament, authenticated by the blessed apostles and their followers, the Gospels, thirteen Epistles of Paul, and seven Catholic Epistles, passing over the Epistle to the Hebrews and even the Apocalypse in silence--but elsewhere he recognizes Hebrews as Pauline and the Apocalypse as apostolic [no citation except to a secondary work, pp. 14–21.] At the same time, Philaster stands almost alone in his opinion (expressed in the same chapter) that, though apocryphal books like the Acts of Andrew, John, Peter, and Paul should not indeed be read by all believers (because heretics had added many things to the text of these books), they 'ought to be read by the "perfect" for moral edification'. 

Interesting that John's Apocalypse doesn't even receive a mention. I'm not sure what to make of that. The Apocalypse had a bit of trouble being accepted in the East, but the West was generally more welcoming toward the book, so I'm not sure what to make of this complete absence. It's as if Philaster just forgot about it.

Article on Jerome's Translations of Tobit and Judith

I'm glad to see that my article "Why Did Jerome Translate Tobit and Judith?" is now available in Harvard Theological Review. I submitted the final version of the article more than two years ago, so it's nice to see it finally published. You can read the article at my academia.edu page.

The Old Testament Canon in the Early Sixteenth Century

The sixteenth century was a big one for the Old Testament canon. You had Luther declaring 2 Maccabees noncanonical in the Leipzig Debate, Karlstadt writing a treatise on the canon (available here, p. 291ff.) in which he affirmed Jerome's position as standard (deuterocanonical literature excluded from canonical status), and the Council of Trent proclaiming the full canonicity of all the books in Augustine's canon (i.e., inclusive of deuterocanonicals; see here, and here, second bullet point from the bottom).

The positions of Erasmus and Cardinal Ximénes are somewhat less well-known, though also interesting. They both excluded the deuterocanonical literature from the canon. You can learn this in something like John Hayes' article on the "Historical Criticism of the Old Testament Canon" in vol. 2 of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament (2008), but tracking down the sources becomes a little more tedious because Hayes doesn't do a real good job of citing specific original sources. So, here you go. 

Cardinal Ximénes is most well known as the director of the Complutensian Polyglot project, published in 1522 though printed in the previous decade. The full-text of this work appears to be available at archive.org. There aren't page numbers, but if you download it and look at p. 3 of your pdf, you'll find the second preface to the work, one entitled "To the Reader." (Of course, this is all in Latin, very small and hard to read. BTW, the first preface, addressed to the pope, is translated here.) About halfway down the first column, you'll find this passage: 

At vero libri extra canonem: quos Ecclesia potius ad aedificationem populi quam ad autoritatem ecclesiasticorum dogmatum confirmandam recipit. Graecam tamen habent scripturam: sed cum duplici latina interpretatione: altera beati Hieronymi: altera interlineari de verbo ad verbum: eo modo quo in caeteris. 

A translation might run:

But there are books outside the canon which the Church has received more for the edification of the people than for the authoritative confirmation of ecclesiastical dogmas. [this line is a quotation from Jerome's Preface to the Books of Solomon, discussed here, p. 102.] But they have Greek writing, but with a double Latin translation, one of blessed Jerome, the other a word-for-word interlinear, just as in the others. 

I think what Cardinal Ximémes is getting at with that last bit is that you, the reader, will be able to recognize which books I'm talking about because they wont have a Hebrew column, just Greek and Latin (though it's a double Latin translation, because the LXX features an interlinear Latin translation, as throughout the OT). I don't find that he actually names the books that he thus excludes from the canon, nor do I find that he names the books that he accepts, only classifying the canonical OT as Pentateuch, Prophets, Hagiographa.

[By the way, Hayes had cited prologue III.b. I assume this is a citation of the second prologue in vol. 3 of the Complutensian Polyglot, which corresponds to this same preface, which I guess is reprinted at the beginning of each OT volume. Hayes seems to have depended on Westcott, p. 478.]

Now for Erasmus. There are two chief passages, one being a preface to the fourth volume of Erasmus' 1525 edition of Jerome, the other found in Erasmus' Explanation of the Apostle's Creed.

I'm not sure of a convenient place to locate Erasmus' 1525 edition of Jerome, but the relevant comments in the preface were extracted by Humphrey Hody in this work, p. 661 col. 120.

Caeterum quo animo nunc Ecclesia habet in usu publico, quae veteres magno consensu numerabant inter Apocrypha, nondum satis constat. Nos sane quicquid Ecclesiastica comprobarit autoritas, simpliciter, ut Christiano dignum est amplectimur. -- Magnis certe refert, quid quo animo comprobet Ecclesia. Ut enim parem autoritatem tribuas Hebraeorum voluminibus, et 4 Evangeliis: certe non vult idem esse pondus Judith, Tobiae, et Sap. libris, quos Moysi Pentateucho. 

But in what spirit the Church now has them in public use which older writers by great consensus numbered among the apocrypha, is not sufficiently clear. We will embraces as worthy of Christian use whatever ecclesiastical authority approves.  By what spirit the Church approves certainly matters. For you would attribute equal authority to the volumes of the Hebrews and the four Gospels; she certainly does not want the same weight to belong to the books of Judith, Tobit, and Wisdom, as for the Pentateuch of Moses. (another translation available in Westcott, p. 252)

The Explanation of the Apostle's Creed (1533) is available in the nice Amersterdam edition for free download here (pp. 278–79). It is also available in the English translation published by Toronto, though it is not online. But you can see a little bit of the relevant passage on Google Books (p. 333). He first lists the OT books thus: Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kingdoms, Paralipomenon, two books of Ezra (which the Hebrews count as one), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Twelve Minor Prophets (not individually named), Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs.

Intra hunc numerum conclusit priscorum autoritas Veteris Testamenti volumina, de quorum fide nephas esset dubitare. Nunc vero receptus est in usum ecclesiasticum et Sapientiae liber, quem quidam suspicantur esse Philonis Iudaei, et alius qui dicitur Ecclesiasticus, quem putant esse Iesu filii Sirach. Receptus est et liber Thobiae, et Iudith, et Hester, et Macchabeorum libri duo. Receptae sunt et duae historiae quae Danieli adnexae sunt, altera de Susanna, altera de Belo et Dracone, quas Hebraei non habebant. Sed Hieronymus testatur se vertisse ex aeditione Theodotionis. Caeterum an ecclesia receperit hos libros eadem autoritate que caeteros, novit ecclesiae spiritus. (lines 158–67)

That last line, in the Toronto translation, goes: "Only the Spirit of the church knows whether or not the church has accepted these books as of equal authority with the others." By the way, you'll notice that Erasmus omitted Esther from the canon and included it in this dubious category. That's sort of surprising, since Jerome includes Esther in the canon, and Erasmus was such a devotee of Jerome's. Athanasius (and some other Fathers) omit Esther form the canon and includes it in a list of books to be read by catechumens.

It's interesting to think about Erasmus composing this passage in 1533, after Karlstadt had published his book on the canon, when these issues were very much in the air. Erasmus had already been censured in the mid-1520s by the theological faculty of Paris for his reckless (in their view) statements on the NT books of Hebrews, James, and 2Peter. This later passage from 1533 seems to be treading pretty carefully, leaving the matter open to the church to decide, which Erasmus apparently thinks hasn't happened yet. For those loyal to Rome in the early sixteenth century, the status of the deuterocanonical literature remained an open question. Only in 1546 did the Council of Trent declare them all fully canonical. Even then, there seems to have been substantial debate at the Council and the delegates apparently did not intend their pronouncement to settle the matter (according to O'Malley, pp. 91–92). It looks like what had been intended as a working position became established law.

(By the way, other Catholics at that time also questioned the status of the deuterocanonicals--see Hayes for details.)

The Inspiration of the Vulgate

I'm more familiar with arguments for the inspiration of the LXX against the authority of the Vulgate, but of course those arguments--at least, in the form that they are familiar to me--are from the patristic era, when the status of the LXX was being threatened by Jerome's new translation from the Hebrew Bible.

Fast forward a thousand years, and the Vulgate has now become the Bible of the western church and attained the status of "inspired scripture." When Erasmus published the editio princeps of the Greek New Testament along with his revised Latin translation, he received the same kind of criticism Jerome received, and some of the same arguments were used. The critics of Erasmus--especially the Complutensian circle--were convinced that the Greek manuscripts of the NT had been corrupted by those schismatic Greeks, and so the Vulgate manuscripts were actually more authentic. So also in the patristic period some Fathers had argued that the Jews had corrupted the Hebrew text, and so the LXX was more authentic. The Complutensian Polyglot--with its three-column Old Testament consisting of Hebrew, Vulgate, and LXX--famously explains in a preface the order of its columns, like Jesus in between the two thieves; that is, the sacred Vulgate resided between the corrupt Hebrew text and the corrupt LXX.

One of Erasmus' critics was a Parisian scholar named Petrus Sutor, who published an attack in 1525 (available here). Jerry Bentley summarizes the argument thus:

the Vulgate is true, authoritative scripture; St. Jerome translated the entire Vulgate under direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and in fact was carried off to the third heaven in preparation for his task; abandoning the Vulgate in favor of new versions, whether Latin or vernacular, constitutes heresy and blasphemy. (p. 205)

On the next page, Bentley says that "Erasmus agreed that the Holy Spirit was in some way present when Jerome executed his work, but he flatly denied that the Spirit shielded the Vulgate from all errors" (p. 206, citing Apologia aduersus debacchationes Petri Sutoris, LB 9:737–812).

Lies about Erasmus' Greek New Testament, or: The Wonders of Wikipedia.

You may have heard that Wikipedia is not to be trusted. This is generally true. The most recent post on this from the blogs I usually read is by Peter Head at the ETC blog from a couple months ago. Of course, that post deals with Wikipedia's shortcomings in regard to a NT text critical issue.

But it is also clear that Wikipedia provides a very helpful entry point to research on a number of topics. I was surprised at how helpful the article on Erasmus' New Testament is, containing details on the seven manuscripts used by Erasmus, and several paragraphs on each of the editions of the work. (On the other hand, the article on the Complutensian Polyglot is not so great.) This entry on Erasmus' New Testament is, in fact, more helpful in a number of areas, and apparently more accurate, than some of the standard or popular works on the NT text published by major scholars.

The two main points I remember learning, reading, and (alas!) teaching in regard to Erasmus' New Testament is that (1) he was in a race against the editors of the Complutensian Polyglot to produce the first published Greek New Testament, and (2) he endured great criticism for omitting the Comma Johanneum in his first two editions, which prompted him to make the rash bet that should anyone show him a Greek manuscript containing the passage, he would insert it in a subsequent edition; when a manuscript was produced for the purpose, Erasmus begrudgingly kept his word. The Wikipedia entry indicates that the second of these points is groundless, and it points the way toward learning that the first point also merits careful scrutiny.

The corrections to these traditional stories about Eramsus' edition are based on the work of Henk Jan de Jonge, especially this article on the Comma Johanneum (ETL, 1980) and this article on Erasmus' aims with his edition (JTS, 1984). You read that correctly: these articles were published in major journals over thirty years ago, but somehow their findings have not filtered in to the standard accounts of the history of the printed text of the NT. [I have not seen Andrew J. Brown's recent edition of Erasmus' New Testament, but judging by Jerry Lund's RBL review, it would add considerably to my understanding of all of these issues.]

For now, I'll just point out how Wikipedia is so much more valuable than the standard books in regard to the story about the Comma Johanneum.

Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum

De Jonge's article from 1980 cites the second edition (1968) of Metzger's handbook on NT text criticism as representative, but he shows that the story about the bet is standard fare for such books. The problem is that de Jonge could not find the story anywhere in Erasmus, nor in any book on Erasmus' New Testament until T.H. Horne's 1818 volume (see this edition from 1825, p. 127 with n. 2). Thence it became the standard story.

De Jonge's supposes this story to arise from a misinterpretation of two passages in Erasmus' defense (1520) of his New Testament against the criticisms of Edward Lee. The following are the two passages as translated by de Jonge in his article (pp. 385, 386):

If a single manuscript had come into my hands in which stood what we read (sc. in the Latin Vulgate) then I would certainly have used it to fill in what was missing in the other manuscripts I had. Because that did not happen, I have taken the only course which was permissible, that is, I have indicated (sc. in the Annotationes) what was missing from the Greek manuscripts.

What sort of indolence is that, if I did not consult the manuscripts which I could not manage to have? At least, I collected as many as I could. Let Lee produce a Greek manuscript in which is written the words lacking in my edition, and let him prove that I had access to this manuscript, and then let him accuse me of indolence.

Neither of these passages speaks of a bet, or even promises to include the disputed passage if a manuscript can be found which includes it. De Jonge emphasizes that there is no story about the bet for several hundred more years.

This article by de Jonge led Metzger to a more cautious approach in the third edition of his handbook (1992). The fourth edition (2005), in which Bart Ehrman's name appears with Metzger's on the title page, contains this account:

In an unguarded moment, Erasmus may have promised that he would insert the Comma Johanneum, as it is called, in future editions if a single Greek manuscript could be found that contained the passage. (p. 146)

At this point, Metzger/Erhman include a footnote: "It should, however, be noted that Henk Jan de Jonge, a specialist in Erasmian studies, could find no explicit evidence that supports this frequently made assertion concerning a specific promise made by Erasmus," and then they cite his 1980 article. This caution is commendable, even if it did not quite make it into the text but is reserved for the note. But then the text continues:

At length, such a copy was found--or was made to order! As it now appears, the Greek manuscript had probably been written in Oxford about 1520 by a Franciscan friar named Froy (or Roy), who took the disputed words from the Latin Vulgate. Erasmus inserted the passage in his third edition (1522), but in a lengthy footnote that was included in his volume of annotations, he intimated his suspicion that the manuscript had been prepared expressly in order to confute him. (pp. 146–47)

Most of these ideas are doubtful. For the assertion that the manuscript was copied in 1520 by a Franciscan friar named Froy or Roy, Metzger/Ehrman rely on Harris' 1887 argument to this effect (pp. 46–53), an argument approved also by de Jonge (art. cit., 386), but now (apparently) called into question by Brown's edition of Erasmus (basing myself on Lund's review, as I don't have access to Brown's edition right now). Incidentally, the manuscript is minuscule 61. As to whether Erasmus suspected forgery, de Jonge's article again argues that this opinion is groundless in the works of Erasmus (386–89). What Erasmus does say in his comment on the passage--in regard to his inclusion of the passage based on what he could see to be a recent manuscript--is this: "Although I suspect this manuscript, too, to have been revised after the manuscripts of the Latin world" (trans. de Jonge p. 387).

[De Jonge says that Erasmus probably doubted the authenticity of the Comma Johanneum even after including it, but was willing to make the philological compromise for the sake of his larger aim.

The goal of Erasmus’ undertaking to imbue all Europe with a clear and simple gospel threatened to fail if Erasmus himself were tinged with any suspicion of unorthodoxy. For the sake of his ideal Erasmus chose to avoid any occasion for slander rather than persisting in philological accuracy and thus condemning himself to impotence. That was the reason why Erasmus included the Comma Johanneum even though he remained convinced that it did not belong to the original text of 1 John. (p. 385)]

Despite the caution shown in Metzger/Ehrman's handbook (in a footnote) in regard to the story of the bet, the same year (2005) Bart Ehrman published his popular account of NT TC, Misquoting Jesus. Ehrman includes the story--which he knows has no basis in the sources--without any hint that the story might be doubted:

As the story goes, Erasmus--possibly in an unguarded moment--agreed that he would insert the verse in a future edition of his Greek New Testament on one condition: that his opponents produce a Greek manuscript in which the verse could be found (finding it in Latin manuscripts was not enough). And so a Greek manuscript was produced. In fact, it was produced for the occasion. It appears that someone copied out the Greek text of the Epistles, and when he came tot he passage in question, he translated the Latin text into Greek, giving the Johannine Comma in its familiar, theologically useful form. The manuscript provided to Erasmus, in other words, was a sixteenth-century production, made to order. 

Despite his misgivings, Erasmus was true to his word and included the Johannine Comma in his next edition, and in all his subsequent editions. (pp. 81–82)

Another example (from across the theological spectrum from Ehrman): Stanley Porter has recently published a little book, How We Got the New Testament (2013). Throughout his chapter on the text of the NT, Porter seems to be relying on (among other sources) Metzger's second edition from 1968 (see 16n22), as he routinely cites this edition first, and then gives the corresponding page reference to the fourth edition (see, e.g., 36n85, n86, etc.). In his discussion of Erasmus, Porter relates the usual story about the bet in regard to the Comma Johanneum:

Erasmus--precipitously and unwisely, we now see--said that he would include these words (the so-called Johannine Comma) if they could be found in a single Greek manuscript. Lo and behold, such a manuscript appeared, now known as Gregory 61, held in the Trinity College Dublin library. It appears to have been written in 1520 in Oxford by someone named "Froy" or "Roy." Erasmus fulfilled his obligation and put the Johannine passage in his third edition of 1522, but with a footnote that indicated his doubts regarding its authenticity. 

Porter begins the story with a reference to Metzger (2d ed. and 4th ed., as per Porter's custom), and his account has obvious similarities to the story in Metzger. He apparently did not notice the footnote in Metzger's fourth edition, as he gives no hint that this story cannot be verified.

One last comment: it is strange for Porter to say that Erasmus included a footnote expressing doubts about minuscule 61. You can easily see Erasmus' third edition now, thanks to Google (see p. 522 for the Johannine Comma), and you can verify that there are no footnotes anywhere in the edition. Metzger expressly says that the footnote appears in the separate volume of Annotations.