McCuaig, 'Erasmus, The Collected Works of Erasmus, volume 44', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9409
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9409-mccuaig-erasmus

John J. Bateman (trans.), <i>Erasmus, The Collected Works of
Erasmus, volume 44.  New Testament Scholarship: Paraphrases on
the epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon; the epistles of
Peter and Jude; the epistle of James; the epistles of John; the
epistle to the Hebrews</i>.  Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1993.  Pp. xviii, 413.  ISBN 0-8020-0541-1.  
  Reviewed by William McCuaig -- Erindale College, University of
Toronto

  The New Testament scholarship of Erasmus comprises his Greek
and Latin texts of the NT with accompanying apparatus, his
paraphrases on all the books of the NT, and his separate
annotations on the same books.  The Toronto Erasmus (CWE) will
eventually include translations into English of all the
paraphrases and annotations--a considerable corpus in itself, but
only a subset of one much larger.  The volumes are coming out as
they are completed, therefore in no particular order; volume 44 
is the fourth to appear of the eventual nine volumes of
paraphrases.  There is not yet a modern edition of the Latin
text, so the Leclerc edition of Erasmus's <i>Opera Omnia</i>
published in the early eighteenth century (LB) is still standard. 
In the volume under review a running head guides the reader to
the corresponding columns in the LB edition (t. 7), but Bateman
has chosen as his base text not LB but the last edition published
with the authority of Erasmus, in 1532.  He records significant
variants in his notes, which thus serve as a textual apparatus in
addition to their function as commentary.  I found it convenient,
as will most readers, to study Bateman's translation alongside
the LB edition, because of the running head, and because Leclerc
also prints the text of the Vulgate and keys it to the
corresponding passages in the paraphrase of Erasmus.

  The scholarship displayed in the translation and notes (118
pages of them) is meticulous, and impeccable, as far as I am able
to judge.  The rendering into English was flawless in the
passages I compared.  The patristic (and later) sources upon
which Erasmus drew for the content of his paraphrase are
identified, and Bateman also draws upon the NT editions and
annotations of Erasmus in order to demonstrate the foundations of
the paraphrase.  The study of Erasmus was a workshop of Christian
philology, and so is the study of Bateman.  

  The paraphrases of Erasmus had an editorial success in the
early sixteenth century and thus are undoubtedly of historical
importance.  Their success reveals the religious earnestness of a
large section of the literate part of the population of Christian
Europe, some of whom were in the process of choosing the
Protestant option which others abhorred.  The earnestness they
shared overrides, in historical perspective, the differences
between them that were paramount at the time.  Erasmus was their
evangelist, and indeed I have never read a work by him on any
subject that was not at bottom a piece of evangelical literature. 
The early Christian message was his alpha and omega, as it was of
his contemporary readers, and their common desire to draw close
to the world of the first Christians is one of the principal
historical forces at work in the Reformation age. 

  The epistles paraphrased here are the surviving documents of a
Christian community which already feels the gulf of time
gradually widening between itself and the life on earth of its
master.  In these epistles there is neither the vivid
psychological and historical drama of the life of Jesus as
related in the four gospels, nor the phantasmagoria of the
apocalypse.  Instead we have a mixed group of letters exchanged
by scattered groups of the faithful; to these letters the names
of "Paul," "Peter," "James," and "John" have been attached,
perhaps at the time of composition or perhaps long
after--pseudepigraphic eidola which to Erasmus and his readers
are of course quite real.  Much of the content of the epistles is
unremarkable, consisting of exhortations to Christians to behave
properly, believe in their salvation by Jesus, submit to the
powers that be but live not as the world lives, keep quiet if
they are women, love and obey their masters if they are slaves,
and so on.  Erasmus expands all of it faithfully.  Where the
Latin of the Vulgate can be dense and difficult, not always clear
in meaning to the ordinary reader of normal Latin, Erasmus is
ample and expansive, his Latin perspicuous; and likewise this
translation of it into English.

  Some of these letters allude darkly to turbid events occurring
in the Christian churches, and anyone who has read accounts of
struggles for control (with their sequel of revolt, schism,
recrimination, and anathema) within closed groups of dedicated
believers--the clans of Freudians for instance--will recognize
the archetypal pattern here.  The letters contain many vengeful
promises of wrath to come, many bitter reproaches against
apostates, relapsers, false prophets, persons who have deviated
or disobeyed somehow, individuals who were once converts, or
potential converts, but who disappointingly turned out to be
scoffers . . . and there is a certain dreadful fascination about
reading the original in the Vulgate text, where the strangeness
and abruptness of the Latin matches the strangeness of the
atmosphere.  Per contra, there is something incongruous about
reading such passages in the expansive paraphrase of Erasmus,
with the strangeness of the style smoothed away and the
strangeness of the content retained.  But the first readers of
the paraphrases, those earnest Christians of the early sixteenth
century who took their evangel at face value, received these
paraphrases differently, and it is their response that counts
historically.  

  One modern Bible commentary suggests that this legion of the
damned is nothing more than a rhetorical fiction: the writers of
the letters created imaginary enemies for the sake of dramatic
contrast.  Surely this is reductive.  As we learn in Bateman's
commentary, an earlier exegesis had made a different
identification: for Chrysostomus and other eminent fathers and
doctors, the opponents were Judaizing Christians.  Erasmus
accepted this identification, and turned many non-specific
passages from the NT letters into vehement, specific
denunciations of the Jews and Jewish culture.  There is an excess
of zeal in these expressions of anti-Semitism on Erasmus's part
that I find disturbing, though no doubt his devotees will protest
that he was merely typical of his age, as Luther's followers do
when faced with the same predicament.  The personal zeal of
Erasmus also comes through, it seems to me, in his paraphrase of
passages where the NT authors have deprecated, in their gnomic
way, the wisdom of worldlings.  Erasmus enhances their import,
making them into anti-intellectual tirades perfectly similar to
ones that are voiced through various personae in his works.  They
seem to me to have their crude and sinister side, but that's only
a matter of perspective, for like any complex phenomenon
evangelism can be looked at from different angles.  I will
however defend the view that for the historian evangelism is the
category to which Erasmus should rightly be assigned, and to the
extent that that is true these paraphrases on the NT should have
an important place in any attempt to understand the man and his
age.