Erasmus had access to most of the same set of manuscripts as did modern translators with the obvious exception of Codex Sinaiticus, which was not rescued from the trash can at St. Catherine's monastery until the mid-19th century.
and in Question 12
The texts used by Erasmus for his first edition: 1 - 11th century, contained the Gospels, Acts, Epistles. Erasmus did not rely very much on 1 because it read too much like Codex B/Vaticanus. (9) 2 - 15th century, contained the Gospels. 2ap - 12th-14th century, contained Acts and the Epistles. Erasmus depended upon 2 and 2ap because they were the best and most accurate texts. (10) 4ap - 15th century, containing Revelation. Erasmus mainly used 2 and 2ap, occasionally used 1 and 4ap. (11) Erasmus may have had as many as 10 manuscripts at his disposal, 4 from England, 5 at Basle and one loaned to him by John Reuchlin. (12) Thomas Strouse mentions that the earliest of his manuscripts went back to the 5th century, "advisedly." (13) Bishop Charles John Ellicott, Chairman of the Revision Committee, said about the Received Text: "The manuscripts which Erasmus used differ, for the most part, only in small and insignificant details from the bulk of the cursive manuscripts. The general character of their text is the same. By this observation the pedigree of the Received Text is carried up beyond the individual manuscripts used by Erasmus . . .
This is in contradiction to what Metzger writes in The Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed., Oxford Univ Press (1968).
The printing began on 2 October 1515, and in a remarkably short time (1 March 1516) the entire edition was finished, a large folio volume of about 1,000 pages which, as Erasmus himself declared later, was 'precipitated rather than edited' [praecipitatum verius quam editum). Owing to the haste in production, the volume contains hundreds of typographical errors; in fact, Scrivener once declared, '[It] is in that respect the most faulty book I know.'' Since Erasmus could not find a manuscript which contained the entire Greek Testament, he utilized several for various parts of the New Testament. For most of the text he relied on two rather inferior manuscripts from a monastic library at Basle, one of the Gospels (see Plate XV) and one of the Acts and Epistles, both dating from about the twelfth century. Erasmus compared them with two or three others of the same books and entered occasional corrections for the printer in the margins or between the lines of the Greek script. For the Book of Revelation he had but one manuscript, dating from the twelfth century, which he had borrowed from his friend Reuchlin. Unfortunately, this manuscript lacked the final leaf, which had contained the last six verses of the book. For these verses, as well as a few other passages throughout the book where the Greek text of the Apocalypse and the adjoining Greek commentary with which the manuscript was supplied are so mixed up as to be indistinguishable, Erasmus depended upon the Latin Vulgate, translating this text into Greek. As would be expected from such a procedure, here and there in Erasmus’ self-made Greek text are readings which have never been found in any Greek manuscript – but which are still perpetuated today in printings of the so-called Textus Receptus of the Greek New Testament [p99-100]
and
Thus the text of Erasmus' Greek New Testament rests upon a half-dozen minuscule manuscripts. The oldest and best of these manuscripts (codex I, a minuscule of the tenth century, which agrees often with the earlier uncial text) he used least, because he was afraid of its supposedly erratic text! Erasmus' text is inferior in critical value to the Complutensian, yet because was the first on the market and was available in a cheaper and more convenient form, it attained a much wider circulation and exercised a far greater influence than its rival, which had been in preparation from 1502 to 1514.[p. 102-103]
Since Dr. Metzger is one of the formost authorities in textual analysis of the NT, I would expect that Dr. Cereghin and Bishop Ellicott to deal specifically with these issues, which they have not. The problem here is that those who hold to the preservation of the TR have let their presuppositions determine their conclusions. The historical data just don't support the conclusions. Yes, the translators who prepared the TR did the best that they could with what they had at the time. Given Erasmus' love of manuscripts, he would have loved to have had the wealth of manuscripts we have today. He would have used the same procedure as Metzger and others. Even Burgon advocated basically the same procedure in his writings.
Thank You,......Again,............ for your postings!
m
Maranatha!