Commemorating 500 Years of the Greek New Testament in Print: Erasmus and his Legacy

Abstract

Desiderius Erasmus was the first to make the Greek New Testament available in printed form. By doing so he established the form the Greek New Testament would take for almost four hundred years. Consequently, vernacular translations based on the Greek reflected that form. In the English-speaking world, where the King James Version dominated until the 1980s, his influence persisted for over 450 years. Some aspects of it persist in the majority of English versions in use today.