The first issue of Unio cum Christo in this pre-Reformation celebration year of 2016 presents the captivating issue of the text of the New Testament. It reminds us of the debt of gratitude we owe for the diligent and painstaking efforts of those who labored to recover the best possible text of Scripture from the distant past after nearly a thousand years dominated by Jerome’s Vulgate, which had virtually become the Christian Bible. So familiar is our Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, or the Bible translated into our native tongue, that we easily forget the magnitude of the achievement.
The focus of this issue is primarily on some of the humanists from the time of the Renaissance in Europe whose work contributed to the subsequent translation of Scripture into the vernacular: Erasmus, Lefèvre d’Étaples, Ximenez, Beza, and many others should not be forgotten, nor should the translators who benefited from their work, including Tyndale, Luther, Olivétan, and Coverdale. Their passion for Scripture fueled the fire that blazed abroad in the sixteenth century, post tenebras lux, bringing with it the precious knowledge of Christ as Lord and Savior.
