March, 1516," says Tregelles, "the whole volume, including the
annotations as well as the Greek and Latin texts, was complete;
in less, in fact, than six months from the time that the first
sheet was begun." The design of this haste was to anticipate the
publication of the Complutensian edition. The critical apparatus
in Erasmus' possession was quite slender. It consisted of such
manuscripts as he found at Basle, with the help of the revised
Latin translation already prepared in England and Brabant. For
the Apocalypse he had but one manuscript, and that defective at
the end. In his four subsequent editions--1519, 1522, 1527,
1535--he made many corrections. In that of 1527 he availed
himself of the Complutensian text. This edition, from which the
fifth and last published during his life differs but slightly,
is the basis of the common text now in use.

(3.) In 1546, 1549, 1550, appeared the three editions of _Robert
Stephens_, the celebrated Parisian printer. In the first two of
these the text is said to have been formed from the
Complutensian and Erasmian. In the third edition, although he
had the aid of thirteen Greek manuscripts, his text is almost
identical with that of Erasmus' fifth edition.

(4.) In 1565, _Theodore Beza_ published at Geneva his first
edition of the Greek Testament with his own Latin version, and
also the Vulgate with annotations. Three other editions followed
in 1576, 1582, 1588-9. He had the use of the Codex Bezae above
described, the Codex Claromontanus (an ancient Graeco-Latin
manuscript of the Pauline epistles), the Syriac version then
recently published by Tremellius, with a close Latin
translation, and Stephens' collations. But he is said not to
have made much use of these helps.

The first of the _Elzevir_ editions, so celebrated for their
typographical beauty, was issued in 1624, its text being mainly
copied from that of Beza. This is the text that has acquired the
name of _Textus receptus_, the _Received Text_, as it was for
more than a century the basis of almost all subsequent editions.
The genealogy of this _Textus receptus_ is thus succinctly given
by Bishop Marsh: "The _Textus receptus_, therefore, or the text
in common use, was copied, with a few exceptions, from the text
of Beza. Beza himself closely followed Stephens; and Step