“The state of the holy books is really deplorable, if their authority depends on unlearned copyists (as they mostly are) or intoxicated typesetters” —Erasmus

Quoted in Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written: Erasmus and Beza As Conjectural Critics of the New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 7.

Erasmus’ editions were clearly intended as a counterpoint to the then current text of the Bible, the Latin Vulgate. According to him, the Vulgate needed to be revised. Besides believing that any translation, the Vulgate included, could always be reassessed by collating it with its source, he considered the post-twelfth century form of the Vulgate to be in a deplorable condition compared to its earlier state. Prior to the publication of the first edition, his working method was to make a careful comparison (‘collation’) of the Vulgate text with the Greek text he found in manuscripts. His editions thus cannot be properly understood without the Vulgate as the third element besides the Greek text and his own Latin translation. Though his editions, except the fourth (1527), did not contain a Vulgate text, no contemporary reader could fail to notice that Erasmus’ enterprise is centred around the correction or ‘emendation’ of the Vulgate; it is a kind of shadowboxing with it.

Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written, 13.

The fact that the Vulgate was the point of departure for Erasmus’ project implies a basic text-critical problem, which in general Erasmus failed to notice. His comparison was based mostly on Byzantine (or ‘majority’) readings, but in numerous examples the Vulgate reflects a different Greek text, which often coincides with the modern critical text. According to de Jonge, Erasmus was in fact ‘comparing incompatible witnesses’. Indeed, the Vulgate and the Byzantine text represent two different text forms, but this did not dawn on Erasmus for several reasons. First, much in Lorenzo Valla’s style, Erasmus compared the Greek and Latin ‘witnesses’ variant by variant. This remained his method during the rest of his life. Therefore, while he saw many trees, the forest remained hidden from his eyes. Second, in the comparison, the roles were unevenly assigned from the start: the Vulgate was seen as part of the polluted stream, while the exclusively Greek manuscripts to which Erasmus had access represented the pristine source. Third, Erasmus never showed any interest in recensio, the evaluation and classification of manuscripts and families of manuscripts. In his time, the beginnings of such an approach existed, as the work of Angelo Poliziano or Beatus Rhenanus indicates, but Erasmus steered clear of it. Finally, the idea that the Vulgate might go back to a Greek original which in many respects represents a text superior to the common Byzantine Greek manuscripts would have been simply too mind-boggling in this period. The entire project would have been endangered, and there would have been no possibility left for Erasmus to answer his critics who were in many cases fierce defenders of the Vulgate.

Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written, 15-17.