Last Updated: Sept 1, 2010 |
Toinard's GNTExcerpt from: Vincent, A History of NT TC, (London, 1899) |
Roman Catholic Editor of a GNT
"The Evangeliorum Harmonia Graeco-Latina of Nicholas Toinard, of Orleans, was published in the same year as Mill's New Testament (1707). Toinard was the first Roman Catholic since Erasmus [1517], and the last before Scholtz (1830), who undertook a critical edition.
In his Prolegomena he announces that he has made a Greek Testament according to the two oldest Vatican codices and the Old Latin Version, where it agreed with them. He was thus working on the same principle afterward proposed by Richard Bentley (in 1720)." 1
1. See Tischendorf, Prolegomena, 227 fwd. Reuss characterises the Harmonia as "liber rarissimus."
The stunning revelation here is that the idea to rely solely upon the 4th century Uncials, in particular Codex Vaticanus 1209 and the Latin Vulgate, was actually first proposed by a Roman Catholic in direct opposition to John Mill's Greek NT and the Textus Receptus, which was the basis and strength of the Reformation.
The Roman Catholic authorities had quickly realized that the King James Bible (1611) and other Protestant translations were causing widespread abandonment of Roman Catholicism. The authority and content of the Textus Receptus and the Reformation Bibles came under direct attack from the RC hierarchy.