Stunica, the Complutensian Polyglot and the Rhodian manuscript

[Steven Avery]

Facebook - Textus Receptus Academy
https://www.facebook.com/groups/467...727339906463&reply_comment_id=842802783232252

Nick Sayers - one difficulty of claiming that the Complutensian heavenly witnesses was based on a now unknown Greek manuscript is that this came up rather forcefully in the Erasmus-Stunica correspondence, where Erasmus asked about the Rhodian manuscript and Stunica did not give a cohesive answer.

Erasmus and the Problem of the Johannine Comma
Joseph M. Levine
Journal of the History of Ideas
Vol. 58, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), pp. 573-596 (24 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/365396...c4376e7bdb5c89c&seq=21#page_scan_tab_contents

Inevitably, Stunica objected to the absence of the comma. It is well known, he says, that the Greek manuscripts were often corrupt. And in this case, Jerome’s preface to the Canonical Epistles makes it clear that the comma was in the original. The old Latin manuscripts also confirm the passage, and there is no ambiguity or inconsistency between the comma and the rest of John’s epistle, which corroborates the true catholic faith in the Trinity. Stunica had employed an ancient Rhodian manuscript throughout his work to rebut Erasmus. His opponent naturally suspected that it had been revised to accord with the Vulgate. But now Erasmus saw a better chance, for Stunica had failed to cite it—or any other Greek manuscript—as evidence for the comma.

Grantley likely has similar.

 

[Steven Avery]

Raising the Ghost of Arius

(Note: it would be helpful to get the exact spot and text where the Stunica Rhodian ms. claim is made, per RGA. However, BCEME approaches this differently.)

Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe

At five places, Stunica gave readings from a manuscript Apostolos from Rhodes, then housed in the university library at Alcalá, which he believed was more authoritative than Erasmus manuscript sources. Two of Stunica’s four annotations on 1 Jn record variants from the Rhodian codex, but on the comma this codex was clearly silent.37

37 Stunica 1520, gives five readings from the Codex Rhodiensis (Wettstein Paul 50 = Apostolos 52), at Jn 3:16, 2 Cor 2:3, Jas 1:22, 2 Pt 2:2, and 1 Jn 5:20. On the basis of these readings, Rhodiensis cannot be identified with any extant manuscript. Erasmus later cited the reading from Rhodiensis in his Annotations on 2 Cor 2:3, not mentioning Stunica by name but heaping Ximénez with exaggerated praises. Here Erasmus also suggests that readings in Rhodiensis were altered to make them conform more closely to the readings of the Latin Vulgate. Further, see ASD VI-8:342–345; Delitzsch 1871, 30–32

Nothing there indicates that Stunica actually claimed heavenly witnesses support from the Rhodian ms. Apparently contradicting the bold below. Generally Grantley says that BCEME supercedes RGA, if they differ.

And no such claim being made is the Richard Porson position:
https://books.google.com/books?id=L3g_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA35

See also Drummond p. 339-340
https://archive.org/details/erasmushislifech01drumuoft/page/338/mode/2up
https://books.google.com/books?id=q9vYL3eFvlcC&pg=PA339

Also Thomas Turton on Porson - and Smallbroke to Bentley
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ve1iAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA88

====================

RGA

Erasmus wrote his Apologia respondens ad ea quæ Iacobus Lopis Stunica taxauerat in prima duntaxat Novi Testamenti æditione between June and
September 1521, and it was published in October; this exchange would initiate a remarkable series of no less than thirteen attacks and counter-attacks between the two men.37 On the matter of the comma, the editors of the Complutensian bible claimed to have taken their reading of the Greek text of verses 7 and 8 from a Rhodian manuscript in the library at Alcalá, but the reading in the Complutensian bible is quite different from that in the only two extant manuscripts that contain the comma in Greek (Montfortianus and GA 629), which thus cannot be the Rhodian manuscript.38 Erasmus suspected that the Rhodian manuscript was a fiction, implying that the reading of the comma in the Complutensian text had simply been translated into Greek from the Latin Vulgate. Erasmus begins his critique of Stunica’s annotations on 1 Jn 5:7-8 with a taunt: “Where is that Rhodian codex of yours slumbering all this time?”39

...

In his concluding remarks, Erasmus returns to the Rhodian codex: “Though my dear Stunica so often boasts of his Rhodian codex, to which he attributes such authority, he has strangely not adduced it as an oracle here, especially since it almost agrees with our [Latin] codices so well that it might seem to be a ‘Lesbian straight-edge’ [i.e. evidence made to fit the occasion].”42 (see also p. 369 and on p. 277 is a note involving Charles Butler.)

37 See ASD IX.2:17-47, on the course of this exchange.

38 The Greek text of the comma in the Complutensian bible reads: “ὁτι τρείς εισίν οἱ μαρτυρούντες εν τω ουρανώ, ὁ πατήρ και ὁ λόγος και τό άγιον πνεύμα, και οἱ τρεις εις τό εν εισί. και τρείς εισίν οἱ μαρτυρούντες επί τής γης· τό πνεύμα και τό ύδωρ και τό αίμα.” I give the accentuation of the Greek as in the original in order to highlight its particular features, discussed by Lee, 2005. The parallel Latin text reads: “quoniam tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cælo pater verbum et spiritus sanctus et hi tres unum sunt. et tres sunt qui testimonium dant in terra spiritus et aqua et sanguis.” Wachtel, 1995, 317, remarks that the sixteenth-century editions of the Vulgate tend to follow the reading as given in the Complutensian bible, though with the addition of the phrase et hi tres [in] unum sunt in verse 8. In passing it may be noticed that the reading of the parallel Latin text in GA 629 varies slightly from that in the Complutensian, reading Quia tres sunt in verse 7, and spiritus aqua et sanguis in verse 8. Like the Complutensian, GA 629 omits the phrase et hi tres [in] unum sunt at the end of verse 8, as it had in the corresponding place in the Greek. Nevertheless, the number of differences makes it unlikely that GA 629 was the textual model for the reading of the comma in the Complutensian edition.

39 ASD IX.2:252: “Sed interim vbi dormit codex ille Rhodiensis?” When Johann Heinrich Daniel Moldenhawer went to Alcalá in 1784 to inspect the manuscripts, he was told that a large number had been sold “as useless parchments” (como membranas inutiles) to a manufacturer of fireworks in 1749, and it was feared that the Rhodian manuscript was one of these; Michaelis, 1788a, 165; Delitzsch, 1871, 31-33; Bentley, 1980, 146. Herbert Marsh was clearly sceptical that any librarian would ever do such a thing, and remarked: “as rockets are not made of vellum, it is a certain proof that the MSS. were written on paper, and therefore of no great antiquity.” Michaelis, 1802, 2.2:853. Tregelles, 1849, Appendix:2-3 (and subsequently Delitzsch, 1871, 39-41), argued that the fireworks-maker Torija (not Toryo, as often stated) had bought the leather and parchment from the old bindings when several of the old manuscripts were rebound. Tregelles also asserted that all the manuscripts from Ximénez’ library—apart from the mysterious Codex Rhodiensis—are still in the Complutensian library, but this claim is uncertain; Aland and Aland, 1995, 4.

42 ASD IX.2:258, repeated in 1522 Annotationes; see Appendix II for text.

 

[Steven Avery]

ERASMUS AND THECOMMA JOHANNEUMH. J. DE JONGE
Extract of : Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses,
1980, t. 56, fasc. 4, pp. 381-389
Henk de Jonge
http://www.verhoevenmarc.be/PDF/Comma-Johanneum-DeJonge.pdf
Original : https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/1887/1023/1/279_050.pdf

Erasmus passed the same verdict on the Codex Rhodiensis (minuscule WettsteinPaul 50 = Apostolos 52) from which Stunica cited readings in his polemic againstErasmus.42

See on this codex, which seems to be lost, TREGELLES, An Account, pp 5-6,11-18, DELITZSCH, Entstehungsgeschichte, pp 3032 39-41, J. H. BENTLEY New Lighton the Editing of the Complutensian New Testament in Bibliotheque d’humanisme etRenaissance 42 (1980), pp 145-156, esp. 146

 

[Steven Avery]

Newton
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Historical_Account_of_Two_Notable_Corruptions_of_Scripture
And hence Erasmus, in his answer to Stunica, gloried in the consent of the Spanish manuscripts with his own;

And more about the Erasmus and Complutensian relationship.

 

[Steven Avery]

BCEME - p. 23
28 There is no evidence for the oft-repeated claim, made for example by Scrivener 1894b, 2:405, that Stunica was the editor-in-chief of the project; see Bataillon 1937, 43; and de Jonge in ASD IX-2:14–17.

Bataillon, Marcel. Erasme en Espagne. Paris: Droz, 1937.
https://books.google.com/books?id=PJ3YYyZE5L0C&pg=PA43

Best info is likely
Basil Hall, Humanists and Protestants 1500–1900 (1990)
https://books.google.com/books?id=x_9ZDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA79

Swete
https://books.google.com/books?id=U9Y8AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA173

Wikipedia has the error.

Wikipedia has
. Diego Lopez de Zúñiga, was the chief editor and fluent in Latin as well as both Aramaic and Arabic. He was given a team of various translators. Converted translators and academics were favoured and specifically sought since they were fluent in the source languages and the cultures of the texts. Second in command, Alfonso de Zamora (1476–1544) was a converted Jewish scholar, an expert in thalamic studies, and spoke Hebrew as his first language.


ETC
This massively impressive collection is known after the ancient Latin name, Complutum, of the town and university of Alcalá de Henares, where it was produced under the direction of, and with funding from, the Spanish cardinal, Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros (1436–1517), archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain (1495). Its publication, based on the best contemporary scholarship, was intended to reform and revive the Christian church, as Ximenes makes clear in his prologue (addressed to Pope Leo X), which reflects on the importance of both the original language of Scripture and the original text of Scripture:
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2014/01/10-january-1514-complutensian-polyglot.html

 

[Steven Avery]

CARM
https://forums.carm.org/threads/ecfs-and-the-trinity.11135/page-6#post-871361

========================================

Against all this evidence, Erasmus openly doubted the value of the evidence supplied by ps.-Jerome’s prologue. ... Erasmus suspected that the Rhodian manuscript was a fiction - Raising the Ghost of Arius p. 90-91

Grantley wrote anachronistically here, and super-imposed his view of the Prologue upon Erasmus. Erasmus accepted the Prologue as Jerome's writing.

Notes on Erasmus and the heavenly witnesses.

1) Very curious is the omission of Cyprian in the Erasmus studies of the heavenly witnesses.

2) The Council of Carthage with 400+ orthodox affirming the verse from John was not yet published.

3) Erasmus did a little dance to try to get around the solecism.

4) Old Latin sources including the Freisinger Fragment and the Speculum were not yet discovered. These match up with the Tertullian and Cyprian references.

===========================

As far as I can tell, the Rhodian ms. was not a fiction.

Henk de Jonge in Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum (1980) identifies it as:

Codex Rhodiensis (mmuscule Wettstein Paul 50 = Apostolos 52)

Which is identified, but not extant.

The Rhodian ms. has been thought to have been lost or accidentally destroyed, but I have never heard of a fiction claim until RGA from Grantley, where he incorrectly put it in the mouth of Erasmus. .

===========================

We have some questionable claims from Grantley on this topic in Raising the Ghost of Arius.

1. There is no specific Stunica claim relating the Rhodian ms. to the heavenly witnesses verse.

2. There is no quote from Erasmus that saw the Rhodian ms. as a "fiction".

Both of these appear to be Grantley's very dubious extrapolations.

===========================

In fact, Joseph M. Levine states very clearly that Stunica did not claim the heavenly witnesses verse in the Rhodian ms.

Erasmus and the Problem of the Johannine Comma
Joseph M. Levine
Journal of the History of Ideas
Vol. 58, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), pp. 573-596 (24 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/365396...c4376e7bdb5c89c&seq=21#page_scan_tab_contents

Inevitably, Stunica objected to the absence of the comma. It is well known, he says, that the Greek manuscripts were often corrupt. And in this case, Jerome’s preface to the Canonical Epistles makes it clear that the comma was in the original. The old Latin manuscripts also confirm the passage, and there is no ambiguity or inconsistency between the comma and the rest of John’s epistle, which corroborates the true catholic faith in the Trinity. Stunica had employed an ancient Rhodian manuscript throughout his work to rebut Erasmus. His opponent naturally suspected that it had been revised to accord with the Vulgate. But now Erasmus saw a better chance, for Stunica had failed to cite it—or any other Greek manuscript—as evidence for the comma.

===========================

Grantley is stronger in the later Biblical Criticism in Early Modern England, p. 25-26:

At five places, Stunica gave readings from a manuscript Apostolos from Rhodes, then housed in the university library at Alcalá, which he believed was more authoritative than Erasmus manuscript sources. Two of Stunica’s four annotations on 1 Jn record variants from the Rhodian codex, but on the comma this codex was clearly silent.37 ‘

37 Stunica 1520, gives five readings from the Codex Rhodiensis (Wettstein Paul 50 = Apostolos 52), at Jn 3:16, 2 Cor 2:3, Jas 1:22, 2 Pt 2:2, and 1 Jn 5:20. On the basis of these readings, Rhodiensis cannot be identified with any extant manuscript. Erasmus later cited the reading from Rhodiensis in his Annotations on 2 Cor 2:3, not mentioning Stunica by name but heaping Ximénez with exaggerated praises. Here Erasmus also suggests that readings in Rhodiensis were altered to make them conform more closely to the readings of the Latin Vulgate. Further, see ASD VI-8:342–345; Delitzsch 1871, 30–32.

 

[Steven Avery]

TWOGIG

Ximenes

• [Janssens] The manuscripts used by the authors of the edition of Complute. Here is what Cardinal Ximenes says in this preface to this edition, dedicated to Pope Leo x: ”What we have done our main study is the choice of the copies we have used, in order not to to take as archetypes of our edition as the oldest, and those which appeared to us to offer the most irreproachable correction, and we had to choose in an infinite number of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin copies which we have brought, not without from your country, it is to Your Holiness that we are indebted in particular to the Greek copies, and we can not forget the extreme goodness with which it has deigned to send us, from the apostolic library, to the oldest copies, both the Old and New Testaments, from which we have benefited most from the work we had undertaken” [As to the objections usually made against the copies of the editors of Complute, we find the solution in Joach. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Triada Testium in coelo. Erlangae, 1771.];
Janssens, Herméneutique sacrée ou Introduction à l'Ecriture sainte en général, vol. 2, 1828, p. 80; Translated by Jean-Jacques Pacaud
http://books.google.com/books?id=2Bv0M-OfL4YC&pg=PA80

Janssens, Jean Hermann, and Jean-Jacques Pacaud. Herméneutique sacrée ou Introduction à l'Ecriture sainte en général, et en particulier à chacun des livres de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament, à l'usage des séminaires. Paris: J.-J. Blaise, 1828.
<www.worldcat.org/oclc/490070890>.

Pfieffer - 1754
https://books.google.com/books?id=04f2Ka3lLI0C&pg=PA1

Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436 – 1517 AD)
• Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, O.F.M. (1436 – 8 November 1517), spelled Ximenes in his own lifetime, and
commonly referred to today as simply Cisneros, was a Spanish cardinal, religious figure, and statesman.[1]
Starting from humble beginnings he rose to the heights of power, becoming a religious reformer, twice regent
of Spain, Cardinal, Grand Inquisitor, promoter of the Crusades in North Africa, and founder of the Complutense
University, today the Complutense University of Madrid. Among his intellectual accomplishments, he is best
known for funding the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, the first printed polyglot version of the entire Bible. He
also edited and published the first printed editions of the missal (in 1500) and the breviary (in 1502) of the
Mozarabic Rite, and established a chapel with a college of thirteen priests to celebrate the Mozarabic Liturgy of
the Hours and Eucharist each day in the Toledo Cathedral.Cardinal Cisneros' life coincided with, and greatly
influenced, a dynamic period in the history of Spain during the reign of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of
Castile. During this time Spain underwent many significant changes, leading it into its prominent role in the
Spanish Golden Age (1500–1700).
(Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. Wikipedia. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Jiménez_de_Cisneros>)

• [Evanson] ...the Printed Editions of the Greek New Testament ...First in honor stands that stupendous and magnificent monument, the Complutensian Polyglott of Ximenes, which contains the”Princeps”Edition of the Greek Testament. ... The Complutensian reads 1 John 5:7: therefore that verse stood in the Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament then existing and consulted by the Editors.
(William Alleyn Evanson,”Translator's Introduction”in New Criticisms on the Celebrated Text, 1 John V. 7, 1829, p. xvii-xviii)

SA: Note that the conclusion of Evanson that they had Greek mss. is quite dubious.

Codex Complutensis MS 31 : VL 109 (900-999 AD)
VL 109 (Codex Complutensis 1, also known as the first Bible of Alcalá; Image 11)
In the sixteenth century, the manuscript was given to the Complutense University by Cardinal Ximenez, who was instrumental in the creation of the first printed multilingual edition of the Bible, the Complutensian Polyglot.

• Olin, John C. Catholic Reform: From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495-1563 : an Essay with Illustrative Documents and a Brief Study of St. Ignatius Loyola. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990

 

[Steven Avery]

CARM
https://forums.carm.org/threads/ecfs-and-the-trinity.11135/page-6#post-871576

This goes after the post two posts up.

================================

This is the Stunica 1520 referenced above that gives the verses used from the Rhodian ms. Grantley may be supplying this information from his own checking, or perhaps the other ASD (likely Andrew J. Brown) or Delitzsch reference.

Stunica, Jacobus Lopis [Diego Lopez de Zúñiga]. Annotationes Iacobi Lopidis Stunicae contra Erasmum Roterodamum in defensionem tralationis novi testamenti. Alcalá: Arnald Guillén de Brocar, 1520.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Q...frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

==============================

BCEME has more on Stunica, some helpful, some errant, the key spot is:

Stunica had not cited any manuscript evidence for the comma against Erasmus, but only the purported evidence of the fathers. Moreover, ‘an unprejudiced Reader would presently guess from the marginal Note in the very Complutensian Edition itself, that the Editors put in this Text upon the Authority of St Thomas Aquinas, who knew no Greek; and not from their Vatican Manuscripts.’320 Clarke also cited Mill to support his statement that the comma was not present in the Scriptural text known to Tertullian and Cyprian.321

320 S. Clarke 1714b, 209.
321 S. Clarke 1714b, 210–212.

A Reply to the Objections of Robert Nelson, Esq; and of an anonymous Author, against Dr Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity. London: Knapton, 1714b.
Samuel Clarke
http://books.google.com/books?id=BhstAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA209

We have the proper acknowledgement that Stunica had not cited any manuscript, correcting RGA.

The theory stated from Samuel Clarke that the Complutensian was including the verse on the authority of Aquinas is totally wrong, since the Aquinas input related to not including "the three are one" in the earthly witnesses. Grantley should have noted the correction to Clarke. However, this Aquinas issue comes up a few times in RGA and BCEME.

Similarly Grantley has gotten the situation jumbled up on how Clarke references Mill in the context of Cyprian.
(This is similar to an error in RGA on Mill.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=BhstAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA210

Mill was in favor of the Tertullian and Cyprian references and said they corrected their copies from Greek originals, as noted by Armfield.

==============================