Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and the life of individuals in the turbulent world of the sixteenth century. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text vastly expanded to embrace the reforming 'philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond expectation and were quickly translated into French, German, English and other languages.

Volume 49 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and the life of individuals in the turbulent world the sixteenth century. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text vastly expanded to embrace the reforming 'philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond expectation and were quickly translated from Latin into French, German, English, and other languages. This volume is the third Paraphrase to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the CWE.

In it Erasmus...

Among the voices that come across the centuries from early Christianity, few speak with sharper accents, or in more highly colored tones, than that of Tertullian. First in the Latin-speaking West to leave a major corpus of writings, Tertullian is also the first in the West to address in both treatise and tract the issues confronted by Christians in their encounter with the surrounding pagan world. Tertullian belonged to an era when Roman imperial power was at its height and paganism could proudly claim the blessings of the widespread Roman civilization. Though it was an officially tolerant...

CWE 41 is intended as an essential companion to the full range of Erasmus scholarship on the New Testament, as it is translated, annotated and presented in Volumes 42-60.