PMRG/CMEMS Public Lecture: “‘Ponder whether it be not changed for the better’: Erasmus’ Revolutionary New Testament at 500”, by Kirk Essary (UWA)

Date: Wednesday 18 May, 2016
Time: 6:30pm-7:30pm
Venue: Arts Lecture Room 6, G.62, ground floor, Arts Building), UWA
RSVP: This is a free event. RSVPs aren’t required – just come along!

In 1516, Erasmus published the first critical edition of the Greek New Testament, along with a fresh Latin translation of it on facing pages. Controversy arose immediately, for the very existence of Erasmus’ project called into question the long-standing legitimacy of the Vulgate Latin Bible. For the next twenty years, Erasmus would revise and republish his version, along with an increasingly lengthy set of ‘annotationes’, which consisted of philological and theological comments in defence of his choices as a text-critic and translator. While Erasmus’ Bible was rejected by the Catholic Church, its legacy was secured in the fact that Protestants would very soon come to use it extensively, along with his notes, both for the composition of their own commentaries and as a basis for vernacular translations. This paper is meant to celebrate the quincentenary of Erasmus’ New Testament by considering the significance and method of its production as a Renaissance text, and also the role it played in the religious revolutions of the sixteenth century.

Kirk Essary is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Meanings Program of the Centre at The University of Western Australia under the direction of Yasmin Haskell. He holds an MA in Classics (Texas Tech University, 2008) an MA in Religions of Western Antiquity (Florida State University, 2010), and a PhD in the History of Religions (Florida State University, 2014). His publications have considered Erasmus’ and Calvin’s reception of New Testament texts: on the problem of Christian eloquence in 1 Corinthians; on the radical humility and self-emptying of Christ in Philippians 2; on the problem of Christ’s fear in the Garden of Gethsemane. He has also published on the Calvinist underpinnings of the ‘silence of God’ trope in the novels of Cormac McCarthy.