Erasmus and Bible Study. Walter and Koine.

Erasmus is known for the first publication of a New Testament in Greek, the first edition in 1516.  (This followed, of course, the invention of the printing press around 1439.)  Bainton writes, however, that “we are not to exaggerate the significance of mere publication.  .  .  .  The contribution of Erasmus to Biblical studies lies even more in the questions which he raised, the controversies which he precipitated, and the awareness which he created as to the problems of text, translation, and interpretation.”  Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom, (Crossroads Paperback 1982) at page 134.

After Erasmus put together the Greek text, he translated the text into Latin.  Bainton writes about the translation task in part as follows:

At this point Erasmus noted that Greek was not the mother tongue of the evangelists and their use of it was affected by their native idioms.  They did not write the Greek of Demosthenes.  “Do you mean to say,” demanded John Eck in Germany [later one of Luther’s adversaries], “that the best Greek was not written by the apostles on whom the Holy Spirit conferred the gift of tongues?”  “My dear fellow,” answered Erasmus, “if you will look at the list of languages of which the Holy Spirit gave command to the apostles on the day of Pentecost you will discover that Greek was not one of them.  Besides the gift lasted for only one day.”  Ibid., p. 139. 

When Walter was a freshman at Davidson College, he decided to major in Classics so that he could study Greek.  He wanted to be able to read the New Testament in the original text.  First Davidson required him to take Classical Greek, and only then “New Testament Greek," known as Koine.  Finally, he got to the New Testament.  He told me that he was surprised to see the variation in the quality of the Greek, especially among the four Gospels (I recall that he said that the Gospel of Mark was the roughest and John the most elegant).

(Bainton, in his notes to his chapter on Erasmus' "publication, translation, and elucidation" of the NT cites Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (Oxford, 1964).  That title is also in Bainton's bibliography.  As I have mentioned several times, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Metzger during the 1970s when he visited our church to give a series of lectures on the Sermon on the Mount. They were splendid lectures.)  

Dave Seivright, Lemon Peels, and Web Bible Resources

Dave Seivright is a missionary to professionals and business men, and works under the auspices of Campus Crusade. He is a PCA minister and "planted" Kendall Presbyterian Church. For many years since then he has conducted a ministry that targets lawyers, doctors and businessmen. He is involved not just in conversions but also very heavily in discipleship. He also has an important work in Germany. You can read more about him here.

My friend Austin is within Dave's orbit. On Dave's website, among the Miami photos, you can see a group picture with Austin cutting up. He's the only one in the entire group of mature men who is doing the lemon peel in the mouth gag. I'm glad that Dave is working with Austin. (You have just a hint of what we have to put up with at our Friday morning breakfasts.) (You can also tell from the photo that there are not a lot of Baptists at the table.)



I'm on Dave's email list, and a recent one linked to various internet Bible study websites. I am going to use this post to list them and to list others as well, as I come across them if they seem to be useful. So I will be coming back to this post from time to time, even if it has the lemon peel problem with it:

The Bible online. (This is BibleGateway, and I use this all the time, not only to check readings and do searches but also to print-out handouts of scripture readings for Bible discussion.)

Bible Study Tools. This is Crosswalk.com. I haven't used it, except to try it out just a little when I got Dave's email. I need to work with it further.

Audio Bible. This is another feature of BibleGateway.com. I haven't tried it out yet.

Bible in a Year: Listen or Read. This is a feature of Crosswalk.com. I have become a strong believer in reading through the Bible in a year.

Another read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year site. This one is at a site called OnePlace.com.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible. This is still another feature of BibleGateway, which has numerous resources worth exploring.

Here begin my additions:

Don't forget the Net Bible site at Bible.org! Not only is the Net Bible available there, but also Bible studies, including at least one by Micki Maris, our friend and Morgan's mother! Micki helped edit the Net Bible. (See my earlier post on the Net Bible.)

Robert Austell's Blog. This is full of wisdom and resources. Just work the search feature. That site also links to Robert's sermons.