Since other publishers in Italy and Spain were producing similar editions, Froben pressured Erasmus to conclude the project in record time. Thus, in 1516, the first edition of the Greek New Testament was published. Unfortunately, however, because of the pressure from the publisher Froben, the text of this first edition was especially deficient: Erasmus was able to use only eight manuscripts available to him in Basel, and all manuscripts were late—most dated to the twelfth and fifteenth century.
It was in this first edition that Erasmus famously left out from the Greek the Trinitarian Formula in 1 John 5:7–8. He argued that the Formula was absent from the Greek manuscripts he consulted, even though it was present in the Latin Vulgate, the version authorized by the Roman Catholic Church.
As expected, Erasmus produced other editions of the Greek New Testament (1519, 1522, 1527, 1535), making few changes to the text. In his third edition, he added the Trinitarian Formula back in the Greek text because someone introduced him to a Greek manuscript that had the Formula. This manuscript was produced around 1510 and 1520 by a scribe named Roy. Some believe the document was crafted to provide Erasmus precisely with the missing Greek evidence for the Formula. The editions of Erasmus circulated widely and thus became the standard text of the Greek New Testament.
Other editions of the Greek New Testament appeared in the sixteenth century. In 1524, Wolfius Cephaleus edited a Greek New Testament. The most significant aspect of this edition is that Wolfius removed the Trinitarian Formula from the Greek text. By doing so, he contradicted the edition Erasmus produced in 1522.
In the middle of the century, Robert Estienne or Stephanus (1503–1559), son of a Parisian publisher, produced four editions of the Greek New Testament: 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1551. The text printed in these editions rarely deviates from the text edited by Erasmus. However, Stephanus added some innovations. The main one appears in the fourth edition: for the first time, verse numbers accompany the biblical text.
In the first half of the 1600s, the Dutch brothers Bonaventure (1583–1652) and Abraham (1592–1652) Elzevir continued the legacy of Erasmus. They produced three editions of the Greek New Testament: 1624, 1633, and 1641. Like Stephanus, the Elzevirs printed the text of Erasmus. This time, however, the text acquires an elevated status because the Elzevirs write in the preface to the 1633 edition that they are presenting to the reader “the text received by all.” For the first time, therefore, the text of Erasmus becomes known as the Textus Receptus or the Received Text (a.k.a. TR).
Several editions of the Greek New Testament appeared from 1516 to 1641. Nonetheless, the text being perpetuated was the same one Erasmus produced based on eight late manuscripts. And from now on, this unsatisfactory text is perpetuated with the canonized status of Received Text.
