New Testament in Greek & Latin, ed. Erasmus

Median folio (337 × 224 mm). Collation: A-C⁶ D-E⁸ (title-page, dedications, Paraclesis and Apologia of Erasmus, “Capita argumentorum contra morosos”, Soloecismi, canon tables); a-z A-Z &⁶ (New Testament, colophon. &6r blank, device on verso): 316 leaves. a1v-&5v paginated 2-562. Greek and Roman types, woodcut headpieces, borderpieces and initials, woodcut columns for the canon tables. Leaves slightly frayed at beginning and end, marginal waterstains; a long tear in Q6 roughly repaired with slight damage to letters. Contemporary Netherlandish blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, vellum pastedowns, two fore-edge brass catchplates and brass reinforcing strips on edges of boards, edges plain, rebacked (the unidentified “representative” Netherlandish binding reproduced as pl. IV of J. Basil Oldham, English Blind-Stamped Bindings, Cambridge, 1952, is very close in layout and tools, and the catchplates are identical). Extensive annotations in Luke ch. 2, dated August [15]41. A very tall copy.

Christopher Nelson — Samuel Marsden (pastedown inscription, c. 1800: “Chris: Nelson of Burton upon Humber [Lincolnshire] to Samuell Marsden.”) [Burton upon Humber, Lincs.; two men in records named Chr. Nelson of Burton upon Humber, uncle and nephew, late C18 / early C19.] — Sotheby's London, 24 May 1965, lot 44

Formatting the Word of God 5.2c; Darlow& Moule 4599; Adams B1681. The Johannine Comma controvery is comprehensively studied by Grantley McDonald, Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2016)

Third edition of Erasmus’s New Testament. The preliminaries omit Erasmus’s Ratio verae theologiae, widely distributed by various printers as a self-standing tractate, but add a “Capita argumentorum” in which Erasmus responds, under 110 headings, to various criticisms, concluding with a long list of his distinguished patrons and supporters across Europe. The main change to the text is that Erasmus added to the text of 1 John 5:7-8 the “Johannine comma”, an inauthentic Trinitarian clause that had become standard in the medieval Vulgate text, but was missing from the Greek sources. Its absence in the first two editions had been criticized by Jacobus Stunica, one of the editors of the Complutensian Polyglot’s New Testament (including the Comma), with whom Erasmus had become engaged in a pamphlet war. Although the Comma was allowed by Erasmus, on the basis of a single late Greek manuscript which had been brought to his attention, it is doubtful that he truly accepted its authenticity.