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1550 FOLIO TEXTUS RECEPTUS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT BY ROBERT STEPHANUS (ESTIENNE)

BIBLE [Greek] NOVUM IESU CHRIST D.N. TESTAMENTUM (Robert Estienne / Stephanus ed) Paris: Robert Estienne, 15 June, 1550. Folio, 12" x 8 ½" , [16ff], 268 (numbered 272), 202pp, Estienne device B1 on Title Page & on A1. Device 10 on last leaf. Eusebian cannons set in frames decorated with cherubs and ornaments. Recent Full Calf Leather bound with 5 raised bands and blind tooling. Title Page Intact and Dated 1550, Colophon Dated 1550 Also Intact. BIBLE IS 100% COMPLETE! ALL PAGES ARE CLEAN, WHITE, CRISP AND FRESH!

The sumptuous "Editio Regia," the third and most Important Estienne edition of the Greek Testament. First Folio Edition. This is the first edition of the Greek New Testament to contain a critical apparatus, recording variant readings from 15 manuscripts, including the famous Codex Bezae, first used here. The text of this edition became standard for over two centuries, especially in England; it served as the basis for the English translation prepared by William Whittingham and his fellow Protestant refugees from England, the first English version to include variant readings in the margins.

This is universally recognized as the Best-Kown and the Most Influential of Robert Estienne's works. Renouard went so far as to say that this volume alone would have sufficed to establish Robert Estienne (Stephanus) reputation as a Scholar and Printer. However, of all Robert Stephanus's (Estienne's) publications, it is also the one most directly responsible for his departure to Geneva, following his final clash with the Theologians of the Sorbonne, who saw in Estienne's marginal variant readings an instance of the most brazen heresy. This Volume is of great typographical importance as well, since it marks the first use of all three fonts of "grecs u roi", the third and largest size was used here for the first time.

Although printing with movable type was invented in the 1450's, it was many years before a Greek New Testament was printed. This is not as surprising as it sounds, as the Greek minuscule hand of the late fifteenth century was extremely complicated with many diverse ligatures and custom symbols. Cutting a Greek typeface required much scholarship and the creation of hundreds of unique characters. Greek printing therefore did not begin at all until the late fifteenth century. Western Europe had completely lost contact with this half of the Christian, Greco-Roman tradition by the fourteenth century. But, the importation of the first Greek teacher of the Renaissance, Manuel Chrysoloras, from the East in 1397 permitted a few Florentines to become familiar with some Greek literature again. This group later hosted the Orthodox hierarchy at the 'Union Council' in the second quarter of the fifteenth century and thereby opened new horizons for the Greek language. The Turkish threat to Constantinople which prompted that Council soon sent great numbers of Greeks westward. By the time the city fell in 1453 sizable Greek colonies were established in most Italian urban areas. The largest by far was in Venice, which had itself maintained a colony of several thousand persons in Constantinople for many years. The first Greek text of Scripture was eventually undertaken by Catholic scholars in the early years of the 1500's. That work was to be used primarily by Church theologians. It's noteworthy that the 'Complutensian Polyglot', as it was named, invented a new type of Greek print for its edition when Cardinal Ximenes decided to embark upon a comprehensive Greek and Latin edition. New Testament pages of this work was printed as early as 1514 though it was not published until 1520. By then, its scholarship would not be acceptable to the northern reformers who considered it weighted too much upon Roman Church traditions. There was thus known to be an opportunity for an enterprising printer who could quickly produce an alternative and more popular edition.

Printer John Froben of Basle contacted Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) to prepare a more genuine Greek New Testament manuscript for printing. Erasmus was also a Roman Catholic, though one who was highly critical of the corruption of his Church. He combined his natural genius with classical and Biblical learning, and was perhaps the most admired educator of northern scholastic Europe. He obtained approximately six copies of the Greek Byzantine manuscripts as his source for the text and rejected copies of the Alexandrian text available through the Church. Having little time to prepare his edition, he could only examine manuscripts which came directly into hand. His haste was so critical that he did not bother to rewrite new copies for the printer, but rather took existing manuscripts, corrected them, and submitted those to Froben for press. Nor were the manuscripts which came to hand particularly superior in their text, as he was forced in many cases to consulted the Catholic Vulgate. Of the Greek manuscripts used by Erasmus only one is said to have contained the book of Revelation, and at that, was missing its last pages. He is believed to have translated the last part of that text directly from the Vulgate. The first printing of the Greek New Testament was published in February 1516 and contained Greek text parallel to his own Latin version. The work was in great demand in northern Europe even though the hurried translation left many textual and typographical errors. The work also came under criticism because of differences not found in a majority of the Greek Byzantine manuscripts. Subsequent editions by Erasmus were much improve yet lacked the source scholarship to be considered a truly acceptable and complete text.

In 1550 Robert Stephanus produced the first great edition of what became known as the Greek 'Textus Receptus'. Robert Estienne, also known in Latin as Robert 'Stephanus', took over his father's (Henri Estienne's) Paris print shop in the 1520's. A remarkable scholar, Robert devoted himself to printing only scholarly works, many of which he himself edited. He published editions of classical authors, dictionaries and lexicons, and, especially, critical editions of the Bible, most notably, the monument which has come to us as the 1550 'Textus Receptus'. He'd enjoyed the favor of Francis I and became king's printer for Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. The printer's mark he employed was the Olive Tree representing his alliance with the Reformation. He had produced two small editions of Erasmus' Greek text in the 1540's before his own final corrections were complete which first appeared in the famous 'Editio Regia' folio of 1550. Though Stephanus closely followed much of the wording in Erasmus' later editions, his was soon regarded as the monument of all of the Greek editions. His scholarship would be recognized as that which was most thouroughly translated as best representing the origianl Greek. Incidentally, the actual term 'Textus Receptus' was not employed until the 1630's, though Stephanus's famous 'Editio Regia' edition was uniformly recognized as the authoritative text.

Long continued attacks upon Stephanus by the Catholic faculty of the University of Paris and political opponents of scholarly reform caused him to flee to Geneva shortly after publication of the 1550 Greek Testament. There he set up a press and continued to publish until his death in 1559. In an additional Greek edition of 1551 Stephanus added his own verse numbers which are still used in all modern editions. Both of these editions are therefore now labeled 'Textus Receptus'. Stephanus's work was the basis of the famous English translation know as the 'Geneva' Bibles of 1560 and beyond. The 'Geneva' was thus the first English edition to employ Stephanus's verse divisions.

The Papal Inquisition was reorganized by Pope Paul II in the 1540's as 'The Congregation of the Holy Office'. With relentless zeal, it sought to stamp out works which questioned or challenged supreme Catholic authority. The formidable task of suppressing writings considered heretical by the Roman Church was fully embraced by Pope Paul IV in 1559. His Index of prohibited books condemned all non-Catholic translations of the Bible including the works of Erasmus and Stephanus. After the Council of Trent, Pope Pius IV published a new index of prohibited writings and much of Stephanus's literature was then collected and burned.

Protestant King James I of England (reigning 1603 -1625) was requested by Dr. John Reynolds (of the Puritans) in the famous Hampton Court Conference to authorize new English Bible. King James agreed if such an endeavor meant the elimination of the Geneva Bible's marginal notes. Translation therefore began in 1604 with a team of fifty-four theologians and scholars, and the 'Authorized' translation (King James Bible) was published in 1611. The Authorized Bible was to be a translation consistent with the original New Testament's Greek. The Bible was prepared primarily from Stephanus's 'Textus Receptus' with reference to earlier printed editions in English which included the popular 'Genevan'. The 'King James' text has thus come to us, both directly by way of translating Stephanus's 'Textus' in the original Greek, as well as by way of its secondary influence (and verse divisions) employed by the prior 'Geneva' English Version'. And thus, Stephanus's 1550 'Textus Receptus' represents both the monument of Christian Greek literature as well as the primary source for the greatest Book ever published in the history of English literature, the King James Bible!

NOTE: This is a Major Foundational Bible, the Cornerstone of our English Bible Translations! This is the Actual Greek Text, "TEXTUS RECEPTUS" (Received Text) by Robert Stephanus, the same text that the King James New Testament was translated from! THE CORNERSTONE OF ANY SERIOUS BIBLE COLLECTION!


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