Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument of reform in society, church, and everyday life, and to this end he composed the Paraphrases, in which the words of Holy Scripture provide the core of a text, vastly expanded to embrace the reforming 'philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond all expectations, and were quickly translated into French, English, and other languages. Paraphrase on Luke is the second of two Luke volumes (Volume 47 forthcoming) and the sixth to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the Collected Works of...

In 1520, the reading public witnessed the eruption of a simmering conflict between Erasmus, the foremost advocate of the new biblical humanism, and Edward Lee, a younger scholar at the University of Louvain and spokesman for the traditionalists in matters of biblical interpretation and church discipline. When Erasmus (perhaps unconsciously) subsumed criticisms Lee had sent to him of his 1516 Annotations on the New Testament into the second edition (1519) without properly crediting their source, Lee resorted to publication of his collection of criticisms.

Erasmus responded immediately...

Erasmus yearned to make the New Testament an effective instrument of reform in society, church, and everyday life, and to this end he composed the Paraphrases, in which the words of Holy Scripture provide the core of a text that was vastly expanded to embrace the reforming "philosophy of Christ." Paraphrase on Luke 1-10 contains the first half of Erasmus's Paraphrase on Luke - the second half of which appeared in this series in 2003 - and completes the set of translations of the Paraphrases into English.

In his Paraphrase on...