What did Eamon Duffy say about the manuscripts behind Erasmus's 1516 Greek New Testament?

Eamon Duffy calls the 1516 edition a shabby affair by modern standards of scholarship. Erasmus did most of the work in England with very few Greek manuscripts, some lent by John Colet from St Paul's. Lacking a complete Greek text of Revelation, he translated the end of the Latin Vulgate into Greek. Its importance was that a fresh, more accurate Latin translation sat opposite the Greek, so readers could compare them for the first time in a portable book.

• Duffy says the comparison showed that medieval translation had put a spin on important concepts.
• Jill Kraye sees the edition as the first major application of humanist textual methods to a sacred text.

▸In their words

“he probably used fewer than ten manuscripts, none of them earlier than the 11th century.” Eamon Duffy · at 22:38 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-10-19). Read the whole episode summary →

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