At times Beza did consult the Peshita, a Syriac translation of the Bible, for various readings, and he also would consult what has since come to be known as the Codex Bezae. However, it should be noted that Beza did attempt with his editions to find older Greek manuscripts upon which to base his Greek text. For his Greek text, Beza was principally indebted to an earlier Greek text produced by Stephanus, who was in turn dependent on Erasmus consequently, Beza’s text was virtually the same as these earlier editions. In these editions, Beza provided the text of the New Testament in three columns: in the left the Greek, in the middle a Latin translation of the Greek, and in the right the Latin Vulgate. The translators of the King James Bible made extensive use of Beza’s 1588– editions. Over the course of the next forty years, Beza would go on to publish nine different editions of the Greek New Testament. First, in 1556 he published an annotated Latin edition of the New Testament, and then in 1565 he added a Greek text. In 1549 he became a professor of Greek at the academy in Lausanne, and in 1558 Calvin invited him to return to Geneva so he could hold a professorship at the newly founded academy.ĭuring Beza’s time as a professor of Greek at Lausanne, he became interested in the New Testament-so interested, in fact, that he determined to publish his very own edition. Later that same year, he went to Geneva and joined the Calvinist movement and formally renounced the Catholic faith. When he recovered, he took it as a sign of divine providence and abandoned his legal career in favor of ecclesiastical pursuits. Shortly after the publication of this work, he fell seriously ill. Though he would earn a reputation as a capable litigator, his real passion was for classical literature, and he would eventually earn some notoriety for publishing a collection of Latin poetry in 1548. The Greek text that was ultimately used as the basis for the KJV New Testament was one produced by the French Calvinist Theodore de Beza (1519–1605).īeza came from a prominent Catholic family at Vézelay in Burgundy and had studied law at Orleans before settling in Paris, where he began a career as a lawyer in 1539.
Blumell is an associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University.Īccording to the explicit instructions of King James that the translation of the Bible he patronized be based on manuscripts written in the original languages of the Bible (see chapter 37)––Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament––the two committees assigned the task of providing a translation for the New Testament employed the Greek texts of the day.
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