Erasmus’s Revision of the New Testament and Its Influence on Dutch Bible Translations: The Dossier Revisited

Abstract

This article re-examines the influence of Erasmus’s Latin–Greek New Testament upon Dutch vernacular Bible translations. Whereas scholarship up until the present has focused on the translation of Erasmus’s New Testament published by Cornelis Hendricksz. Lettersnijder (Delft, 1524), this article stresses that the Dutch New Testament published earlier in 1524 by the Antwerp printer Adriaen van Berghen played a more crucial role in the development of an Erasmian translation than has been assumed until now. In the Dutch vernacular editions of the years 1525–1526, which the scholarly literature has often labelled as combined Erasmian-Lutheran editions, the influence of Erasmus’s text only decreased in favour of Luther’s translation. Erasmus’s influence was felt in particular in the Low Countries by way of the Catholicized or “Vulgatized” version published by Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten (Antwerp, 1527 and later editions).