Towards the end of his Apology against Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (English translation in Collected Works of Erasmus vol. 83; here if you have institutional access), Erasmus criticizes his friend for not understanding the need of doing textual criticism. What struck me more than anything is the example Erasmus gave for why textual criticism is necessary. Here is the relevant paragraph:
Another thing which is constant in your examinations is that whatever your Greek manuscript had in it, you ascribe unhesitatingly to Paul, as though Greek manuscripts do not sometimes vary, or are never corrupt, when I myself discovered in a particularly fine manuscript copy the following words written in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: δεόμενοι ἡμῶν τὴν Χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς διακονίας τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς· ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὕτως εὕρηται, καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν. What we have here, of course, is a case of several words being transferred by an illiterate scribe from the margin to the body of the text. In order to make this clearer to those who do not know Greek, I shall translate as follows: 'Asking that we receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints; in many manuscript copies appears the following: "and not as we hoped"' It is clear that the words 'in many manuscript copies appears the following' represent someone's marginal annotation. It is risky, therefore, to place immediate trust in your manuscript and to make pronouncements before examining all the manuscripts. (trans. Howard Jones; CWE 83, p. 105)
[Note: there's something there to be said about trusting God's Word as it is, ontologically, as opposed to trusting our access to it through our copies and translations (or trusting that our access is always and in every place equal to what it is, ontologically) but that's another discussion.]
I wondered if this manuscript was still known. A footnote (the annotations for this Apology were written by Guy Bedouelle) says that this manuscript is "MS Greek suppl 2 of the National Library in Vienna, loaned to Erasmus by the monastery of Corsendonck, near Turnhout," and it refers the reader to ASD IX-3 193:2567n. That refers to ordo 9 (=IX), tome 3 of the Amsterdam edition of Erasmus' works, page 193, and specifically, the note that corresponds to line 2567. Conveniently, that volume is available through open access, here. A little lower on p. 193 for the note corresponding to lines 2569-2572 (continuing on to p. 195) of ASD IX-3, we read:
The Greek manuscript to which Erasmus is referring is minuscule 3 of the Greek New Testament, now in Vienna, National Library, Gr. supp1. 52. It contains the four Gospels, Acts, the Catholic Epistles and Paul's Epistles. It belonged once to a convent at Corsendonck near Turnhout and was lent to Erasmus for his second edition in 1519, as he testifies on the first leaf; see F.H.A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Cambridge 1883, p. 179; C.R. Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testaments, Leipzig, 1900, p. 128. Cf. J.J. Wetstenius, ed., Nouum Testamentum Graecum, Amsterdam, 1751-2, II, p. 197 and H.J. de Jonge, ASD IX, 2, p. 191, n.l. 461.
It still exists! It's minuscule 3, dated to the 12th cent. The note is at 2 Cor. 8:5. The variant seems to be the presence or absence of δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς (I checked the NA28 and Swanson), which occurs before the words ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὕτως εὕρηται. Let's have a look:
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| https://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/community/modules/papyri/?site=INTF&image=30003/449299/8110/10/5673 |
Someone (Erasmus?) has underlined the words in the manuscript, but there it is: the marginal note that became the text. The Comma Johanneum (at 1 John 5:7–8) almost certainly came into the text this way, and it's always good to find specific examples of this type of thing happening. The more we know, the better equipped we are to catch scribal error.
For more on reader's notes, see:
